Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dembow]

Hey everyone, I hope someone can help me figure this one out.

When using Genres under the Audio section and then selecting Artists or Albums for a particular genre, this displays the artist/album tiles. Selecting one brings up the song list at the bottom of the program window but in a completely random order. Logically, here I'm expecting the songs to be in track number order, especially if I click on the Track # column. This behavior is quite unusual considering I'm using the same Group By and Sort Inside Groups By options that work just fine when in Albums or Artists section under the Audio.

I'm running version 27.0.66. I've went through the Customize List and/or Thumbnail View page on the Wiki and have tried all kind of grouping and sorting combinations, but I'm still seeing randomly sorted songs particularly when using Genres. Would love to hear that I'm doing something wrong here and that this can be easily solved with a simple click. Otherwise, this might be something to consider fixing in future versions.

[JimH]

Are you clicking on the title header for track?  That should sort by track#.

[wer]

Welcome to the forums.

You don't show the whole window, so we can't see any arrows on the column headers that indicate sorting order, nor do you show how you have the view defined.  Those are important things to show when you're asking why a view behaves as it does.  You don't say what different results occur when you try different things.  You talk about clicking column headers but you don't even say what happens when you do.

So I'll take a guess.

Customize View->Set rules for file display->Modify results

I wonder what you have under Modify Results->Sort by...  Anything at all? 

Make the only rule there "Sort by Track# (a-z)"

[marko]

The screenshot shows the file list of a 'Categories' view.

In my testing, in both my own, far from default MC, and a clean, default installation MC (wow, that one is seriously fast), and here's what I see...

In Category views, any sorting rules specified in "Customize View->Set rules for file display->Modify results->Sort By..." are ignored. The top, category pane defaults to sorting by "Name", which translates to whatever the category is dealing with, and the file list sorts by "Default".

Switch the view to "Panes", and the sorting specified in "Set rules for file display" is immediately used.
Switch it back to "Categories" and it is once again ignored.

I would suggest applying the "Default" sort to the bottom file list, if for no other reason than to get back to basics. From memory, the "Default" uses:
Artist > Album > Disc # > Track # > Name

If that still does not work, keep the setting like so, and close MC.
Go to your library folder, on Windows, this will, by default, be at: C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 27\Library

There, you should see a folder named "Cache", enter this folder...
Now, you should see a folder named "File List Sort". Delete this folder.

Close your file browser windows, launch MC...
Do the files sort correctly now?

-marko.

[wer]

In Category views, any sorting rules specified in "Customize View->Set rules for file display->Modify results->Sort By..." are ignored. The top, category pane defaults to sorting by "Name", which translates to whatever the category is dealing with, and the file list sorts by "Default".

I tried on mine before posting (in a Categories view, the Genre view to be exact), and that was not the case. The "Customize View->Set rules for file display->Modify results->Sort By..." setting was respected.

I could change that setting to different sorts, and the file list (lower pane) immediately changed to reflect the sort method I specified.

There is some additional complexity going on, because the state of "Use parent scheme rules for file display" also affects the outcome.

[wer]

I've done a bit more testing, and I think I see the source of the discrepancy between what you and I saw, Marko.

If you have a sort method set in "Sort inside groups by" from the dropdown menu in the file list, that seems to override the "Set rules for file display->Modify results->Sort By..." setting, giving the appearance that it is ignored.

If, however, you go to Sort inside groups by->Custom and remove all the rules there (there will be rules shown if you have previously selected a sort method other than Default, or clicked column headers to sort), THEN the sort is inherited from "Set rules for file display->Modify results->Sort By...".

Once you remove the rules from Sort inside groups by->Custom, then the "Set rules for file display->Modify results->Sort By..." becomes active and you can change it, live, as much as you want.

If you then select a specific sort from the Sort inside groups by menu, that seems to re-assert the dominance of that sort, and the Set Rules for File display sort is then ignored again.

In other words, by your actions in the "Sort inside groups by" menu, you can activate or deactivate the sorting in "Set rules for file display".

One other strange thing: When looking at the Genre view, each Genre shown in the upper pane is a set of tiled album cover images from each Genre. I observe that when changing the sort using the "Sort inside groups by" menu, it changes the order in which those album covers are tiled.  In other words, "Blues" still stays in the same place in the top pane as a Genre, but the order of the album covers in Blues, and thus the topmost-showing album cover, changes when you change the sort order in the file list. I can't see why that should happen, but it does happen deterministically.

-Will

[marko]

Tis a minefield eh? One other setting I forgot about, that I think is on by default?, that I have turned off, is the save sorting when clicking on column headers. It's a horrible setting if you ask me.

Apply the sort rules via the view settings, turn off that column header option and then use column header clicks for temporary sort changes as required.

I had wondered if perhaps this was also contributing to dembow's experience...

[dembow]

I noticed I completely cut off the screenshot. My bad. Everything is set to Default as suggested. Thought it'd be easier to show this behavior with a video although the Xbox Game Bar in Windows for some reason didn't record the drop-down menus for some reason.

https://youtu.be/DMUlokV6zjQ

[wer]

dembow, the video just shows some clicking around.

Try actually changing the sort using some of the methods we described, and see if that fixes your problem.

[dembow]

Thanks wer. I won't lie, it took me a bit to understand your reply and navigate through the menus. It seems that the problem I was having was with set modifiers in the Set rules for file display that wer was mentioning. I was struggling to locate that setting.

You need to click on the arrow in the Genres > Selected_genre tab and select the Customize View. In the new window under Included Files is where this setting was and for some reason there were a couple of modifiers set (screenshot below) which appear exclusively for the Genres view. None are present when viewing the library in Albums or Artists view. I wonder if this is default behavior for Genres or if perhaps I have somehow inadvertently set these along the way. To resolve my initial problem with the Genres view I have added Album and Track #. I was then prompted to save the view or create a copy. In fear of messing something up, I selected the latter which created a new Genres Copy view.

I can now finally use the Genres view by Artists or Albums and when selecting one the songs are correctly sorted in the track number order in the bottom Files list. I appreciate everyone jumping in to help with this.

[marko]

I wonder if this is default behavior for Genres or if perhaps I have somehow inadvertently set these along the way.

One other setting I forgot about, that I think is on by default?, that I have turned off, is the save sorting when clicking on column headers.

??

[wer]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I thought you understood where those things were, because it seemed like you were talking about modifying them in your original post, you said you read the wiki page, and "Customize view" was actually visible in your original screenshot (so at that point I knew you knew where it was). And if you explain to people too carefully or pedantically like they don't know, they get upset when you tell them things they know because they think you're talking down to them. You can't win really.  I choose to assume people know what they're doing, until they prove otherwise. So anyway if we meet again like this and what I say isn't understandable just say so.

You can get "Customize view" in several ways. (1) In the menu depicted in your screenshot, (2) from the dropdown menu on the tab in the upper pane, and (3) by right-clicking on the name of the view in the tree (in your case, the word Genres). "Customize View" appears on all those menus.

Judging from your second screenshot, you had modified that at some point in the past. Perhaps by clicking column headers.  Do you have the option Marko mentioned, Options->Tree & View->Sorting->Save changes on list header clicks  enabled??  That's probably how some of that junk got in your latest screenshot. You can remove the ones you don't want, like sorting by size.

There are lots of different ways you can sort in MC, and there can be some overlap, as you can infer from the exchange Marko and I had.  It can be confusing.  Marko and I are pretty experienced, but still, as you could probably tell, neither of us was definitely sure what your problem was... It was sort of a "Hmm, well, it might be this, or maybe that..." sort of situation. Like I said, it can be confusing.

Like when I saw Marko's first post. I know Marko definitely knows what he's talking about, so I was sure he wasn't wrong, but what he was saying was wrong on my PC; and I knew I wasn't wrong either. So his post surprised me... But I figured there had to be an explanation, and there was.

Another thing that complicates the situation is that a lot of the people who are best suited to answer complicated questions, they've been using MC so long and they've customized their MC so much, they don't even remember what the default state is supposed to be. So when you told me you'd left some settings at the defaults, that didn't mean anything to me. I just thought to myself "Pfft, I wonder what the defaults actually are."  And I wasn't going to do a fresh install of MC on a new machine just to find out.

So for example, I have no idea what the default state of "Save changes on list header clicks" is. I have it enabled. I think Marko keeps it off. If I recall, I think that option was added (don't remember when) to actually make it easier for people so they wouldn't have to go into Customize View to permanently change the sort.