Actually all my files have a master custom field called 'Catagory' that i've defined as a string list along the lines of 'Albums', 'Singles', 'Downloads', 'Audiobooks', 'Pictures' etc
Each view I have only includes the files in this catagory - leaving an 'Uncatagorized' view for ones I havn't assigned yet
This way, images or videos can be assigned to albums etc, so that book cover pictures can be included with audiobooks, audio tracks like comentaries can be assigned with videos
I value this program as the 'techie' version of media player, as at the moment it allows me to see a collection of apparently unrelated files as a single object
Remove this, and i can't see a reason not to use the built in media player
Granted, it takes a little bit longer to set up, but then this is offset by how easy it is to just drag an image to a book or a text file with the cast list to a film
My method isn't for everyone, but that's the beauty of this program at the moment
Once you start exploring the system, you can alter it to exactly your requirements (apart from that really annoying left hand tree list that always shows alphabetically - Matt the tree and the contents really should sort in the same order)
The least worst option I'd vote for is
A clean install starts in 'user' mode, then you can go to the options to enable umm 'power user' mode
Far from wanting this to be slimmed down, I'd argue in the long term for it to be enhanced
Strip this database, rewrite it as a proper sql system, uses blobs to store the thumbnails instead of the halfway house of DB+associated files
I wrote an external browser of MC files for myself using ADO and MSDE in about 3 hours - these guys have to worry about more than I did though, so I'd expect a longer development time (call it months for hours)
Granted, ADO will be a bit slower than direct access to their own data, but the tests I've performed with a db on a lan server generate differences that have to be measured using a stopwatch compared to MC (and a db on your own pc wuld be quicker than that, but I was going for the worst case), and in a lot of places MC performs worse
This would also give the added benefit of a world wide system of search expressions that anyone can find easily on the web
Now compare that to
All your audio is sorted the same
?
Now, I do appreciate that this is overkill for a lot of users, but providing a cut down view system is just an interface question and is quite easy to resolve (but time consuming)
I can't see the value in devolving this into a replica of media player and then buying it
Yes, I can see the reason for an easy version (all the posts about simple things show that a lot of users can't/won't investigate the options) , but I can't see why I should upgrade to a 'brain-dead' version
Why would I buy it when the older version does more than than the newer version ?
If this change is made, I would not buy mc 12 - I bought this exactly because of what Matt's worried about, and so far have made JRiver a total of an extra fouteen people whou bought it because of this feature (not including me), purely from how they saw it working on my pc and I could show them how it could be adapted to their requirement
I think a web page with hints and tips would be a better option than lobotomizing this wonderful program