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[ThoBar]

Hi all,

I'm about ready to start re-building my MC12 library with full biography and other information, and was wondering if there was a way to do this in a more 'relational' way.

Basically, I have (for example) Beethoven's Complete works. Now I would like his Bio, as well as that of the conductor, orchestra and some information specifically on the work to be displayed on my TV when I play something by Beethoven. No big deal, as this is what custom fields etc are for, but I really only want to enter it once for "Composer=Ludwig van Beethoven", or "Conductor=Herbert von Karajan" etc, rather than for every file that is done by Beethoven.

So... is there any way to accomodate this in the MC12 Database (I suspect not). Accomodate as in, point a track's Bio tag to that of another track, or hold the Bio tag as an independent field that can be referenced by multiple tags. As in the composer/artist/orchestra/band/... would be a primary key, and the Bio would be an associated field... (I think I've made myself clear :S)

-or-

Is it possible to extract information stored in text files for a Track Info display, based on tags in the library (maybe with some of that fancy-shmancy jscript stuff)?

• Example: So if the Composer tag is "Ludwig van Beethoven", the trackinfo display will open and display "x:\Music\Bios\ludwig van beethoven.txt"
  

Sorry if there is something that already does this, but didnt see anything...

Cheers,
C.

[Edited for comprehensibility]

[Matt]

MC's database is relational internally for performance reasons so if you enter the same data over and over, it's only stored once.

However, there's no editable metadata for groupings like "file types", "artists", etc.

If you click a grouping in the panes or library view, the "Tag" Action Window will allow you to see and edit all the files in the group at once, so this might be a nice workaround. (and it allows any type of grouping you want to be viewed)

[ThoBar]

Matt,

Thanks for the reply. I will test your suggested method to see how it 'feels' to me. If nothing else, it will definitely be my fall back option.

I am considering my second option as a preference, as it may (if I can get it to work) enable me to have detailed text or HTML pages with not only textual information, but also multiple images stored and referencable from multiple albums, works etc, as well as from external apps.

This way I could have a detailed Bio, with multiple portraits, photos, art, ..., that are common across a composer or artist, and not require the images stored alongside the album files.

An alternative to this of course is for MC to store multiple images per file or even multiple images per field per file 
So, I could have an image stored against the album name, one against the orchestra, one against the composer, ... you get the idea 
oooh, and then, you could do the same for bio type information as well! The possibilities are endless!

[Edit]
Can this be done with some kind of smartlist-to-<insert random field name>  association?
[/Edit]

As an aside, I cant see how to add second image field to the library, not possible?

Cheers,
C.

[ThoBar]

I LOVE MediaCenter....

Trying a hack of the Dreamstate trackinfo viz, replacing the href statement in...

<map name="m_index_r6_c2">
<area shape="rect" coords="0,0,160,26" href="TRACKINFO_OPENPAGE_lyrics.html" onMouseOut="MM_swapImage('index_r6_c2','','index_r6_c2.jpg','index_r3_c3','','index_r3_c3.jpg',1);"  onMouseOver="MM_displayStatusMsg(' ');MM_swapImage('index_r6_c2','','index_r6_c2_f2.jpg','index_r3_c3','','index_r3_c3_f3.jpg',1);return document.MM_returnValue"  >
</map>

with

href="e:\Music\Composers\TrackInfo_Insert(Composer)\biography.html"

works a TREAT...

I love MC12!