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[leezer3]

Just noticed this rather odd behaviour when trying to classify various video files a little better- There are two different parts to this:
1. When keeping a TV series in an album, the cover art displayed in album thumbnail view is derived from the file with the first track number. It appears to be impossible to add coverart for the series as a whole, while retaining the induvidual preview image for each file.
2. There is no way to get further details on the files contained within an album when using album thumbnail view. I believe this to be by design, but personally, I would classify it as a bug- Again, going back to the TV series example, in a typical TV series there are upwards of twenty episodes. Therefore, using album thumbnail, I'm unable to access the episodes within the series. Selecting the album from within the side pane, which I would expect to display all the tracks within it simply presents me with the thumbnail of the album, but no track listing. Conversely, using thumbnail view will give me the induvidual epidodes displayed, but with no way to filter them down (And I notice that it doesn't even display them in the album & track numbering 100% of the time- Acutal bug?). I think that what is needed here, is an option to browse by album thumnail, but then to display the contents of the album. The way I would personally implement it, is through the side view pane, so that an album may be selected there to view the contents.

Thoughts?

-Leezer-

[Mr ChriZ]

1.  That would be nice, not sure how it would work though.
2 You mean like this:
http://img461.imageshack.us/my.php?image=stillsharpesc4.png

and
Filtering down:
http://img518.imageshack.us/my.php?image=stillsharpeps6.png

(Excuse the broken thumbnails, for reasons unknown to me they won't
build correctly with MC 12).

[leezer3]

1. The way I would choose to do this is by the implementation of a second image field for videos, so that there was a Coverart field & a preview image field. The coverart would then take precedence in viewing by series (album), but when viewing a single series, the preview would take precedence. A workaround for this does seem to be to add the coverart solely to the first video file, but IMHO this is somewhat of a kludge.
2. Thats pretty much what I'm looking for, but again I would like to have the previews available when I have selected the series. How did you do that though? I can't get MC to do anything resembling that ATM.

Broken thumbnails- Right-click on the file, and tell MC to delete the coverart. Sometimes it seems to build a blank thumbnail picture, not sure why & if its a bug or not, but doing this should cause it to regenerate the thumnail image.

-Leezer-

[Mr ChriZ]

2. Thats pretty much what I'm looking for, but again I would like to have the previews available when I have selected the series.

Sorry I intended to show a 3rd screenshot which showed exactly that as well,
but run out of time.
Here's a few more:
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3136/seriesbreakdowncx8.png
http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/6835/seriesbreakdownepisodetp9.png
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/2872/episodebreakdownve8.png

How did you do that though? I can't get MC to do anything resembling that ATM.

OK here goes...
Presumably you've tagged your files in some way such that they contain
an Episode Number, a Series/Season Number, and also the programme name (ie LOST)?
You also need a way of identifying what video files are from a TV Series, so that the view
will only display these video files, and not films for example.
I do this by a custom tag called Video Type, which is displayed for Video files only.
For all my Tv Series files I set the tag to "TV-Series".  I think there is a default field
now called Media Sub Type, which you could also use.

First of all you want to create a new view.
I've actually put mine on the root of the tree since I go there
quite a lot, you can alternatively create it under the Video Node.


Select the node you wish the item to appear under,
or select the Start Node if you wish it to appear on the root
of the tree.

Then from the edit menu select "Add View Scheme"
On the dialouge for creating the view scheme, there is an
option to select view items to be displayed.



Add the items Programme, Episode, and Series,
make sure they are in that order, so that Programmes at the top of the list

In the 2nd box enter the name for the view scheme, I called mine TV-Series

The 3rd box doesn't really matter so much and can be edited at a later date
if need be.

The 4th box is more important.
This is where you select what items are displayed in the view.
Mine looks like this
[Media Type]=[Video] [Video Type]=[TV Series]
This selects all Video Files which are of Video Type TV-Series

Press the OK button to create the view.

When you first go into the view, it will be in Panes Mode.
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/2632/invasionpanesyq4.png
You've got two choices, you can use it in Panes mode,
or You can view things individually, by selecting Programme from the drop down.

[leezer3]

Thanks- Thats much better than I did have it, but there are a few things it still seems to be making difficult-
1. Multi-series shows. This is more of a problem when each series has its own subtitle, for example Star Trek. I use the season tag to denominate the numerical order of each series, the series field for the subtitle (In other words, original, Enterprise, Voyager etc.), and it only appears to be possible to sort by one or the other. I have a distinct preference for navigating by the subtitle, but these need to be in order for things to work properly, and I'd much rather not add an excess number to the start of this field.
2. Sorting within panes- It only appears to be possible to sort the item within the pane in either ascending or descending order. Again, I feel it would be better to be able to set a custom sorting as per any of the other view fields.
3. Is it at all possible to remove the 'All' that is selected by default? Its just a little annoying, and I'd much rather the first item in the list was selected.
4. When selecting an item in a pane, it automatically selects the 'All' option for all the panes to the right of the current. This is becase I would consider it to be more logical for it to display the thumbnails of all the items available in the next pane- In other words, if the next pane was series, I'd expect it to display the thumbnails for all the different series available under the current category, rather than displaying all the possible episodes.

Give me a few mins, and I'll post some edited piccies of what I'm ideally trying to achieve.

-Leezer-

[Mr ChriZ]

Thanks- Thats much better than I did have it, but there are a few things it still seems to be making difficult-
1. Multi-series shows. This is more of a problem when each series has its own subtitle, for example Star Trek. I use the season tag to denominate the numerical order of each series, the series field for the subtitle (In other words, original, Enterprise, Voyager etc.), and it only appears to be possible to sort by one or the other. I have a distinct preference for navigating by the subtitle, but these need to be in order for things to work properly, and I'd much rather not add an excess number to the start of this field.

This is a limitation as MC stands at the moment... the only thing I could suggest is changing the programme
name to say "Star Trek Voyager"  They would then be seen as seperate programmes.  Of course the major
down side to this is you can't just select Star Trek, and then hit play to get about 14 days solid of Star Trek playing ;-)
Effectively what you want is Dyanmic Panes, where by a Pane is only visible if a certain tag is filled in.
I like that idea.

2. Sorting within panes- It only appears to be possible to sort the item within the pane in either ascending or descending order. Again, I feel it would be better to be able to set a custom sorting as per any of the other view fields.

That couldn't work, because say you wanted the programmes pane sorted by date, the programme it self doesn't have a date value assigned to it.  All the episodes of a Progamme could have a different date, or they could have the same date. I believe it's mechanically impossible.

3. Is it at all possible to remove the 'All' that is selected by default? Its just a little annoying, and I'd much rather the first item in the list was selected.

Nope, fraid not. 

4. When selecting an item in a pane, it automatically selects the 'All' option for all the panes to the right of the current. This is becase I would consider it to be more logical for it to display the thumbnails of all the items available in the next pane- In other words, if the next pane was series, I'd expect it to display the thumbnails for all the different series available under the current category, rather than displaying all the possible episodes.

I'll wait to see your screenshots on this one...

[leezer3]

Right, these are the results of a quick bit of photochopping, and are the way in which I'd like it to behave.

1- IThe initial view when selecting TV series. The first artist (Overarching) alphabetically in the list should be selected, and the list of sub-series presented, with thumbnails/ covers displayed for the series as a whole, rather than the induvidual episodes, which is the current behaviour:
[img=http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5731/1bp9.th.jpg]
2- The second pane contains the list of sub-series, and when one of these is selected, episode thumbnails for the series should be displayed-
[img=http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/9194/2wj7.th.jpg]

I've also moved the panes to the bottom, again can't find an option to do this in MC, just personal preference though I suspect 

With regards to my second point in the last post, you've misunderstood me slightly. I know my examples are jumping around a little, sorry, but I'm trying to illustrate this in the best way possible.
Babylon 5 has a total of 5 series, subtitled:
1. The Gathering
2. The Coming of Shadows
3. Point of No Return
4. No Surrender, No Retreat

Using the pane system in MC, I set the series to be displayed in the second pane- The pane system will only allow for sorting of its contents in ascending or descending order (Alphabetically), and this means that the series names become displaced. The only way to get around this is to add the series number at the start of the title, which I'd much rather not do. Throughout the rest of MC, you can customise the tag which defines the way in which a list of items are sorted, but this appears to be impossible in pane view.

[Mr ChriZ]

With regards to my second point in the last post, you've misunderstood me slightly. I know my examples are jumping around a little, sorry, but I'm trying to illustrate this in the best way possible.
Babylon 5 has a total of 5 series, subtitled:
1. The Gathering
2. The Coming of Shadows
3. Point of No Return
4. No Surrender, No Retreat

Using the pane system in MC, I set the series to be displayed in the second pane- The pane system will only allow for sorting of its contents in ascending or descending order (Alphabetically), and this means that the series names become displaced. The only way to get around this is to add the series number at the start of the title, which I'd much rather not do. Throughout the rest of MC, you can customise the tag which defines the way in which a list of items are sorted, but this appears to be impossible in pane view.

OK so you have your series pane sorted by series number, now if there were two episodes with the same name (Which ok is unlikely),  The Pane system will automatically group them, as this is how it works, and then it can't sort them because they have different serial numbers...

Here is a possible soloution to this problem
You create another custom tag with a calculated field which contain the [Series Number] followed by the [Series Name]
Then use the calculated field in your user panes...
It won't look as nice but it will do the job, and also mean that it's compatible
with both series with numbers, and series with names.