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[DrPhatteus]

Not sure how to go about this, but I am hoping its possible.

Some background:
A good portion of my library is dedicated to live recordings (mostly of legitimate origin, heh) from sites like etree.org. Well, the filenames themselves are composed in a convention of band name, show date, disc and track number (e.g. gd1970-02-13d1t04.mp3). There might be 20 or more tracks named like this per show. The tracks are WAV files, so I do the MP3 encoding and have no real way to get meaningful info into ID3 tags. Each live recording DOES include a text file with show info and set/song lists.

So as I am perusing my library in theater mode, when I come to one of these live shows all I see is a list of files like the sample I named above. If I am looking for a particular song or want to know what songs were played at this show I am SOL.

 ?

Is there some way to have .txt files displayed in theater view?
Optionally, if I found someway of converting all those text files to image files, could I have image files listed in theater view as I am browsing my music library?

I'm just looking for someway to view this info from within the library... any tips would really be a big help, I'm stranded here!

Thanks!

[JimH]

If the files are tagged, or if you tag them, you can rename them from the tags.   Library Tools/Rename Files from Properties.  Try one or two to see how it works before doing a lot.

[DrPhatteus]

Thanks, Jim, but unfortunately the files originated as wave files and I used LAME on them and created the MP3's... The tags DO have stuff like artist and show date (obtained by using a consistent directory structure and using an ID3 tagging utility to update the tags from the folder names).

But the file names are not very helpful, and I have thousands of these files. As I mentioned, each show does have a corresponding text file- If I could just gain access to this text file I would be in good shape.

[JimH]

I've no idea whether it will help, but MC can import txt files and other documents.  They will appear in the library as "document" instead of "audio", for example.

You could add your txt files to playlists with audio files.

[DrPhatteus]

Now that's a cool tip! We are on the right track, thanks Jim!

I never really paid any attention to the "Documents" category on the left of the main window. I do see all the text files that relate to my live recordings in there. Thanks for pointing that out.

So, how would you recommend that I go about viewing these in Theater mode? Any way to list these files along with the mp3's that comprise a certain "album"? Not sure what you mean when you say "add your txt files to playlists with audio files." Like, create a playlist for each album?

I will play around- maybe I can add "Documents" to theater view - It wouldn't be the ultimate solution, but still a giant step in the right direction.

[ThoBar]

One thing I stumbled on to a while a go, which I think may help... You can modify the Track Info templates used (optionally) by playing now in Theater View to point to other files. See this post for how I got it to work...

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=38688.msg263264#msg263264

[DrPhatteus]

Nice one, confishy. Thank you for showing me that post. I don't know much about those Now Playing page templates (yet!) but seems I could display a wealth of info, kinda like you described in the original post. I love it!  Have you seen documentation regarding what can be used for tag placeholders & such?

I sure wish I could access that data before I chose to play the track though. I am almost thinking maybe I could find an app that would convert my text files to images (e.g. folder.jpg) for each folder. Then as I moved through that part of my library, if I could view the folder.jpg large enough I could read the setlists that way. It ain't pretty, but it could work.

Either way I'm looking forward to diving into those Now Playing templates this weekend.

[ThoBar]

You're welcome... there is a caveat that I have only just discovered however... the modification I make in the referenced post seem to work only in the context of a javascript segment of a webpage. For example, using TRACKINFO_INSERT_COMPOSER will not work from within a index.html in pure html, nor will TrackInfo_Insert(Composer). It appears MC supports only limited fields with the TRACKINFO_INSERT_<fieldname> "tag" and the TrackInfo_Insert(<field>) command requires Javascript.

JR, please correct me if I'm wrong, but that does seem to be the case. It would be nice if this was extended a tad to be able to use all fields.

C.

[DrPhatteus]

Aha!

With some of the tidbits of info above, I was able to tag my setlist files (under "Documents" in Standard View) with appropriate album names (thanks to the Library Tools File Info from Filename option - man these guys thought of everything

And with some tweaking of my view schemes, I can now see my setlist text files listed along with the tracks for each show (album) in Theater View! This is a pretty incredible thing- probably won't resonate with most of you- I understand what I am doing here is off the beaten path for sure. But it just goes to show that the inherent flexibility in this app is quite broad. Thanks MC crew! 

Sooooo, my next mission is to actually view the setlist. Right now if I "play" the text file, it opens in notepad (the default file handler for text files in XP). I'm gonna have to program my remote with some keystrokes to close Notepad. Or something.

I'm hoping there's some way to do the viewing within MC.

Interestingly enough, WMP can play text files... you can view them right there, hmmmmmmmm. Wheels turning....

[hit_ny]

I'm not familiar with theater view, but is there a way to disply visualizatoins in it.

If so all you need is a visualization that can display the txt file for the album you play. This will show up in the area reserved for visualizations just like with cover art.