MC is very flexible ... and what it does not offer out of the box, one can find creative ways to get what one wants
So here is my take on Box Sets and Discs (i have not touch my settings in years ... but recently was trying to peddle concept of having ability to define cover arts and nested cover arts for MC32 ... and while exploring what it could offer, stumbled upon this)
First ... BoxSets and albums with multiple Discs - sounds the same ... aka you buy single package and there are more than one CD in that package.
For me, the distinction are following:
> albums with multiple Discs - usually compilation albums like Greatest Hits where multiple discs are there because tracks could not be fit on single CD. Its interesting to group tracks by discs, because often one has preference to particular disc ... and so groping by disc allows one to select a disc and just play it.
> BoxSets - usually reissue of all albums in single package. So each disc is actually an album. Or artist took care in creating each disc - and even assign names to disc (instead of just Disc 1 and Disc 2). One can consider each disc as an album, where one can even assign distinct album tags to each disc.
MULTIPLE DISCS
One can easily set up view in Theatre View to display [Album]->[Disc #]->[Tracks]. But then getting to disc menu - you get album cover art for each disc (3 discs - you get 3 same pictures of album cover art) ... how boring.
To make it pretty ... one can use Series/Seasons cover arts to get what one wants ... one can easily copy value of tag [Disc #] to [Season]. One can easily copy album key to tag [Season]. (key uniquely identifies each album ... for most users it will be AlbumKey() ... for me that never works, especially for "Greatest Hits" by various artists ... so personally, my Album tag are unique ... combination of album name + catalogue#/barcode ... and i have separate tag "Album Title").
Then in C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 31\Cover Art\Seasons ... create images of your discs ... name them
"[whatever is in your Series tag that identifies album uniquely] - Season [disc #]"
you only need to do this for albums with multiple discs ... as MC has feature that skip displaying group if it only has one item (a feature I will exploit for displaying BoxSets)
Then in TheatreView options just add Season to group by ... done
BOX SETS
First define each disc in Box Set as separate Album ... then for those albums put in Series the name of the Box Set.
Defne view for TheareView [Series]->[Albums]->[Seasons] ... thats it
Well not quite ... if you put images of BoxSets in C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 31\Cover Art\Series ... this view will display BoxSet covers ... BUT and thats a BIG BUT ... Series view only accepts rectangular images (ratio of about 1000x1500), if ratio is incorrect then the view pads images with bars ... ugly as you can see in attached picture (not just for Box Set images but for all albums' cover which are usually square)
Can do this ... [put series in Expression]->[Album]->[Season] ... you wont get BoxSet/Series cover art, instead you get stack images of Albums that belongs to Box Set ... which in my opinion not bad, and way better that padded view of Series + you can customize text under cover art in this mode
Hopefully, JRiver can remove the padding on Series view, which will make repurposing of Series view much better
Selecting box set will take you to view that display "albums" belonging to that Box Set. Selecting normal albums in Series View skips Album View (here is the exploit i was talking about) and goes to Season/Disc view (if album has multiple disc - not the same as boxset) or goes to track listing if album have just one disc (here is the second time using he exploit)
Thats it folks ... hopefully this helped at least one person ... so that i did not waste my time typing this lol
Author
Topic: Another take on Box Sets and Discs for Theatre View (Read 618 times)