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[MP101User]

There may be a very obvious way to do this, but I'm scratching my head at the moment.

I'm working in a fairly standard View Scheme that has Artists then Albums.
What I want to do is have a field to define the order that I want my albums shown for a particular artist. For example, normally I'll force any Best Of compilation to the top of the list and then show the rest of the albums in release order (or maybe reverse release order, since I may be more likley to play the more recent offerings).
I don't want this field displayed anywhere, its just to change the order of the albums (at the moment they're alphabetically listed by default.

I suppose this is just like "Track Number" which allows you to specify the order of tracks within an album, but at the next level up.

Hope this makes sense. Is it easily done?

M.

[MP101User]

Well, I've done a bit more thinking, but not really got the solution yet.

I think I could use Year (Album) and sort the tree by this field. The problems with this workaround are that:
(i) I'd have to manually set the field for compilations so that they appear at an appropriate point in the list.
(ii) I'd have to have the year as another layer in the tree.

(ii) alone makes this a non starter for me as I think my simple Artist-Album treee would become Artist-Year-Album.

I assume I'm not missing anything obvious. Anyone?  ?

Thanks,
M.

[leezer3]

Try having a poke around in the view settings dialog- Right-click, choose view settings & then customize current view. You should then be able to invisibly sort by year by using the sort column.

-Leezer=

[MP101User]

Thanks for the reply. I've had a little play.

Unfortunately, I mainly play via my MP101 and I think your solution only works on the PC front end, rather than the view scheme sent to the client machine.

I should probably have given that info in my first message 

Thanks again,

M.

[leezer3]

Ah, that might be a problem. As I understand it, MC can only sort at its end, using the PC. When you send files to the MP101, all it really gets is a list. It then chooses to sort the list as it sees fit.
I've had a quick ferret myself (Don't have one I'm afraid), & as far as I can see you can't do what you're after without some hacking.
This is a bodge solution I know, but you could simply add a number to the start of each album, so they're listed in the order you want them- Ie.
1. Prophets, Seers, Sages & the Angels of the Ages
2. Electric Warrior
.... and so on. The starting number will overide the alphabetical sorting & preserve your view scheme, but its not perfect.

-Leezer-

[JimH]

Bodge
n. 1. A botch; a patch

source

[MP101User]

Thanks Leezer3,

Renaming the albums had crossed my mind, but it is a bit cludgy. Think I'll give it up as a bad job. Shame.

M.

[hit_ny]

Is there a way to send a field called Year - Album to the MP101.

Would automaticaly sort itself right ?

If that works, then you can customise a field to send what you want.

[MP101User]

It sounds like the sort of thing that should be simple, but I'm struggling still.

In "Edit View Scheme" under Step 4 I've got
Media Type: Audio Sort: Year - Album

But this doesn't affect the order of the albums in either the tree in MC12 (Which is simply Artist/Album) or on the MP101.

Thanks for the continued interest though - I'd love to crack this one...

M.

[hit_ny]

Try Artist/Year - Album

in your view scheme.

Thing is Year - Album does not exist in your library, its a calculated field. So MC joins both fields for display.

I'm wondering if you create a user field called Year_Album and copy the contents of Year - Album to it and then send that to your MP101.

[MP101User]

Thanks, that's a slightly better workaround. (There's no problem sending the claculated field to the MP101 so it's slightly simpler than you think.)

It just means that the MP101 display will show the year before every album, which I was hoping to avoid.

Thanks for your help.

M.

[MP101User]

Been working like this for a while and it's working well.
There is one problem. Albums with tracks from different years (best ofs and CDs with bonus tracks) get split into different albums as the tracks have different years.
So, i now want to set up an "album year" field and calculate it from my already populated "track year" field. It would have to be the same for all tracks on an album and should be the mode (most common) year for the various tracks. I'd settle for it being the min year or the year from track one.
It's well beyond me though. What should I put in the new field to have it correctly calculated? (A manual method is not an option due to the number of albums involved...)
M.

[joh]

How about creating a custom field album_sort_year, and another one album_type. Mark all your 'best of' albums as album_type = compilation. Then set album_sort_year to 0 if album_type is "compilation" and otherwise to [year]. Sort your view on album_sort_year.

Good Luck! /OLle