Topic: New and Interesting Ways to use MC! (Read 21856 times)

darichman · « **on:** January 09, 2008, 10:28:26 pm »

Media Centre is marketed as a player/organiser of media. For most people, this means music, videos and maybe photos.

How do you use MC?
I found I moved beyond the three category ("Audio" "Images" "Video") categories a long time ago and use my own categories in the tree... If I could remove the three tiles at the top of the tree pane I would!

I think there are a lot of users who really don't know what MC is capable of. The aim of this thread is to show what you can do with MC. If you use MC to catalog your stuffed animal collection, post it here!

As an example, my library consists of...

Media Library

Music (Audio, Music Videos, Sheet Music
Moving Pictures (Film, Comedy, Television, Documentaries, Live TV, Clips & Trailers
Art & Images (Classic Art, Digital Art, Photography)
Print (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Magazines, Comics, Poetry)
Games (Game Media, Emulated Games (WIP!)
General Interest (Funny Videos, Funny Pictures etc)

Personal Library

Family Tree (Photos, Census Data, Service Records, Certificates)
Research (Projects, Journal Articles, Lecture Notes)

Some pics can be found here: http://www.pix01.com/gallery/7E547B99-5004-478D-A4AC-37AD672F51A4/MC_Screens/

Classical Art

Click to enlarge.

Music

Click to enlarge.

Images

Click to enlarge.

gappie · « **Reply #1 on:** January 10, 2008, 04:46:09 am »

that is very nice. gives a nice impression of what is possible. i also played around a bit to let mc manage my whole computer and work. this computer is not so much for media. it is suprising what you can do, altough im not there yet.

i changed one of the main groups to Docs (you also need to change the language file for that).
to give an impression : http://pix01.com/cI@veq31

Jaguu · « **Reply #2 on:** January 10, 2008, 05:16:50 am »

Really nice and thoughtful work. Although I follow a similar line and did quite a bit with my artworks and classical music, you put much more detailed thought in building your system. I especially like that you use two distinct libraries (media and personal). Always tried to figure out how I could best separate the two. Never thought of using two distinct libraries.

I also agree that the top level Audio/Image/Video do not any longer reflect the media reality and we should be able to create our own in our own way. I think here along the line of sub media type or virtual media type. I also think along a line of a container based media type which could hold different media types which could be managed as whole entity.

I also support your idea of hierarchical fields such as Artist[Bio, Birth date, Death Date, Nationality etc]

Alex B · « **Reply #3 on:** January 10, 2008, 05:24:30 am »

Looks like the example sceenshots have the Pane view active. I use it for serious tagging, but for casual browsing I use mostly "thumbnails on top / details on bottom" views. That option may not be obvious for a newcomer.

I posted a "thumbnails on top / details on bottom" how-to with several screenshots just a few days ago:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=44356.0

darichman · « **Reply #4 on:** January 10, 2008, 05:37:37 am »

Quote from: Jaguu on January 10, 2008, 05:16:50 am

I also agree that the top level Audio/Image/Video do not any longer reflect the media reality and we should be able to create our own in our own way. I think here along the line of sub media type or virtual media type. I also think along a line of a container based media type which could hold different media types which could be managed as whole entity.

I also support your idea of hierarchical fields such as Artist[Bio, Birth date, Death Date, Nationality etc]

I have found you can organise just about anything with two "type" categories [Type 1] and [Type 2] for media format/platform
...and two "genre" fields (I use three)

I think MC is in a perfect position to become the ideal media cataloguer as well -- a true artist and album database (or film or game database for that matter) -- something to actually compete with AMG
The only way this will happen is to adopt that style of database -- separate artist and album tables which the file table draws from...

Quote from: Alex B on January 10, 2008, 05:24:30 am

Looks like the example sceenshots have the Pane view active. I use it for serious tagging, but for casual browsing I use mostly "thumbnails on top / details on bottom" views. That option may not be obvious for a newcomer.

I like the panes

You're right, the thumbnail view on the top can be really useful... I'm sure a lot of my views could really benefit from it.
Honestly, you can spend hours fiddling round with this program and then you'll find that view that is "just right"

Nice pics!

Jaguu · « **Reply #5 on:** January 10, 2008, 06:16:09 am »

Quote

I have found you can organise just about anything with two "type" categories [Type 1] and [Type 2] for media format/platform ...and two "genre" fields (I use three)

I agree. I use the following fields: "Virtual media", "file type", "Genre", "Subgenre"

p7389 · « **Reply #6 on:** January 10, 2008, 10:41:17 pm »

How do you do get the separate things in the menu like that? I.e. 1. Music, 2. etc. etc.? That looks really interesting... True, I only use it for audio currently. But I want to learn more nevertheless!

Really, MC does so many things you never knew...

dcwebman · « **Reply #7 on:** January 11, 2008, 07:17:26 am »

Quote from: p7389 on January 10, 2008, 10:41:17 pm

How do you do get the separate things in the menu like that? I.e. 1. Music, 2. etc. etc.?

Select the Edit menu and then Add View Scheme.

Jaguu · « **Reply #8 on:** January 11, 2008, 08:22:11 am »

Quote

Select the Edit menu and then Add View Scheme.

Not exactly correct

You need to select "Start" and then select the "Edit Menu>Add View Scheme". Otherwise you cannot add view schemes to the root.

gappie · « **Reply #9 on:** January 11, 2008, 08:27:54 am »

Quote from: Jaguu on January 11, 2008, 08:22:11 am

Not exactly correct You need to select "Start" and then select the "Edit Menu>Add View Scheme". Otherwise you cannot add view schemes to the root.

or for instance, playing now, when you have start disabled.

Alex B · « **Reply #10 on:** January 11, 2008, 08:38:06 am »

Quote from: gappie on January 11, 2008, 08:27:54 am

or for instance, playing now, when you have start disabled.

In other words: you can select any "non-view scheme" tree item. Playing Now, Playlists, Services & Plugins etc work as well. If a "view scheme" item is selected MC creates a child view scheme.

Jaguu · « **Reply #11 on:** January 11, 2008, 10:36:16 am »

Quote

How do you do get the separate things in the menu like that? I.e. 1. Music, 2. etc. etc.?

1. Select the Edit menu and then Add View Scheme.

2. Not exactly correct! You need to select "Start" and then select the "Edit Menu>Add View Scheme".
Otherwise you cannot add view schemes to the root.

3. or for instance, playing now, when you have start disabled.

4. In other words: you can select any "non-view scheme" tree item. Playing Now, Playlists, Services & Plugins etc work as well.
If a "view scheme" item is selected MC creates a child view scheme

This seems not to be the best implementation of a feature in MC12 as it took 4 core Interact users with an overall total of 8543 postings to assemble the correct answer on how to use such a simple feature

dcwebman · « **Reply #12 on:** January 11, 2008, 06:05:45 pm »

Next time, it would be easier to just point to the wiki:
http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Add_a_custom_view_scheme_group_to_Media_Center%27s_tree

darichman · « **Reply #13 on:** January 11, 2008, 06:32:30 pm »

Still though, it is a really useful feature which would be almost impossible to just stumble across...

p7389 · « **Reply #14 on:** January 11, 2008, 07:14:21 pm »

Quote from: darichman on January 11, 2008, 06:32:30 pm

Still though, it is a really useful feature which would be almost impossible to just stumble across...

Yes, I never knew till I saw your screenshot. Planning to try it out pretty soon.

Yes, I could trawl the wiki aimlessly. But I don't want to. If I have something specific to look up, the wiki is great. Otherwise... how will you know what to look for?

EDIT: misread... point to the wiki

... That would have been fine

skeeterfood · « **Reply #15 on:** January 11, 2008, 09:26:51 pm »

Before everyone goes off creating top-level view schemes, it should probably be noted that there is currently NO WAY to show them in Theater View. You're limited to Audio, Images, Video and their children only.

-John

darichman · « **Reply #16 on:** January 12, 2008, 12:26:54 am »

Quote from: skeeterfood on January 11, 2008, 09:26:51 pm

Before everyone goes off creating top-level view schemes, it should probably be noted that there is currently NO WAY to show them in Theater View. You're limited to Audio, Images, Video and their children only.

-John

And it's a real shame

And probably one of the main reasons I don't use Theatre View
Anyone listening?

rk8257@yahoo.com · « **Reply #17 on:** January 12, 2008, 08:46:07 am »

I am a musician that using backing tracks in midi or mp3 format. I use MC Audio to store all my tracks (AUDIO) and also have lyric sheets/chord charts (Documents) that are in PDF format. I open the PDF copy to Clipboard (outside of MC) and the go to Album Cover Artwork for a particular track and Paste from Clipboard. I set it to display view. When I click on the Track to play the track, a thumbnail of the Album Cover Appears in the Bottom left hand corner (It is now a lyric sheet/chord chart). I double click and it opens the PDF Lyrics in Full screen display view.

The main issue I have is the Album Cover is somehow tagged by Album and artist. If I have several tracks from the same artist MC recognizes only the first Album Cover entry so I wind up with the same lyrics for two different songs. I am sure there is an easy answer. Anyone got a way around it. Thanks

Rick

MusicHawk · « **Reply #18 on:** January 12, 2008, 09:46:03 am »

>> go to Album Cover Artwork for a particular track and Paste from Clipboard.

>> the Album Cover is somehow tagged by Album and artist. If I have several tracks from the same artist MC recognizes only the first Album Cover entry so I wind up with the same lyrics for two different songs.

I raised the same issue a few days ago, because the automatic renaming messed up many hours of Cover Art/image work until I settled on a workaround. It's a by-design feature of MC and undoubtedly is terrific for many users with simple organization of tracks by Arist - Album. But I have 72 thousand (and growing) music tracks that can't be organized this way. (And, I love your idea of adding sheet music, probably another 10 thousand "tracks" for me.) So I'm hoping to get more control over MC's image file naming and assignment.

The "problem" happens when Pasting in the Cover Art because the image on the Clipboard has no "name" and MC has to name it *something* when creating the image file. My request is for control over the naming, using the same method provided to Rename Files From Properties.

WORKAROUND: For images that will encounter this naming conflict, separately Paste/create the image file, not via MC but using Windows Paint or similar, so the image file can be given a unique name that is NOT Artist-Album. (Or paste ONE image into MC, then using a file manager, locate the file and rename before pasting the next image, etc.) Then go back into MC, go to the track, open Tags, switch to Image, locate the image File on your computer, and select it for the track -- LOTS of cumbersome steps.

This works because the new image gets a file name that is NOT what MC will use for automatic naming, so it won't be nuked every time a new image is Pasted into the same artist/album combination.

It's also possibly possible (depending on how you need to organize the actual media files) to prevent this by organizing via lots of folders so same-named image files don't collide. But this is tail-wagging-dog, organizing media files just to prevent image problems; much better would be to control image file naming to work with any media file organization.

rjm · « **Reply #19 on:** January 12, 2008, 12:06:15 pm »

Quote from: darichman on January 12, 2008, 12:26:54 am

And it's a real shame And probably one of the main reasons I don't use Theatre View
Anyone listening?

+1

Jinster · « **Reply #20 on:** January 13, 2008, 07:24:03 am »

Thanks for the post Chris. A nice example of what MC can do if everything is tagged properly.

I noticed you have an absolutely huge database of images and stuff. And everything seem meticulously tagged. Can I ask how you did it? I'd imagine this would take literally hundreds if not thousands of hours to do the whole database? For example, to tag every photo with location and all the people in it? Is there a special time saving technique? Do you put MC panes in some sort of power-user tagging mode arrangement?

p7389 · « **Reply #21 on:** January 13, 2008, 08:20:09 pm »

I've taken some time to look at the pictures now. Pretty nice, I must say. Really extremely super organised.

I would specifically like to thank you for showing me that you can extend the fields showed in the tag action window - I figured out myself how it is done after seeing it. Gonna create a tagging viewscheme now.

It's crazy, all the things you have organised. You really amass stuff

I'm extremely impressed.

p7389 · « **Reply #22 on:** January 13, 2008, 08:32:23 pm »

Actually, just the other day I organised my soundtracks in a way I think might possibly be worthy of being displayed in this thread:

I think it's sort of neat. Sure, I don't have all that many soundtracks, but nevertheless. And it's great to have them separated. They annoyed me among the "proper" albums

.

benn600 · « **Reply #23 on:** January 13, 2008, 08:34:06 pm »

I (and looks like others) greatly appreciate the ability to scale even LARGER cover art and thumbnails. Yep, I asked for this a while ago and appreciate them listening!

How did you get such large hover popup images?

darichman · « **Reply #24 on:** January 13, 2008, 08:54:18 pm »

Quote from: Jinster on January 13, 2008, 07:24:03 am

Thanks for the post Chris. A nice example of what MC can do if everything is tagged properly.

I noticed you have an absolutely huge database of images and stuff. And everything seem meticulously tagged. Can I ask how you did it? I'd imagine this would take literally hundreds if not thousands of hours to do the whole database? For example, to tag every photo with location and all the people in it? Is there a special time saving technique? Do you put MC panes in some sort of power-user tagging mode arrangement?

Thanks!! I must admit that not everything is tagged

I do people/places as I get photos... I find if you leave it too long it never gets done! Or you forget

There's a bunch of scanned photos I haven't even touched yet... I use panes to tag people. If you select a new album in the panes, once you've tagged a few people in that album, the people pane will fill up pretty quickly. After that, it's just a matter of ticking checkboxes which doesn't take long at all.... so no, no super-duper auto tagging mode or anything, just a bit of work when I get the chance!

Quote from: p7389 on January 13, 2008, 08:20:09 pm

I've taken some time to look at the pictures now. Pretty nice, I must say. Really extremely super organised.

I would specifically like to thank you for showing me that you can extend the fields showed in the tag action window - I figured out myself how it is done after seeing it. Gonna create a tagging viewscheme now.

Yeah it's amazing what you can do... I plan to make use of the "nested panes" functionality as soon as I get the chance... that will mean fewer panes at the top!

To get the tags you want in the AW, just edit the columns you show in the view scheme, then in the AW menu, select "Show Tags in Current View"

darichman · « **Reply #25 on:** January 13, 2008, 09:06:50 pm »

Quote from: benn600 on January 13, 2008, 08:34:06 pm

How did you get such large hover popup images?

I don't know

They've always come up that way for me!

p7389 · « **Reply #26 on:** January 13, 2008, 09:11:11 pm »

Quote from: darichman on January 13, 2008, 08:54:18 pm

To get the tags you want in the AW, just edit the columns you show in the view scheme, then in the AW menu, select "Show Tags in Current View"

That was my thought. Tagging view scheme... It's gonna be awesome!

darichman · « **Reply #27 on:** January 13, 2008, 09:12:09 pm »

Quote from: p7389 on January 13, 2008, 08:32:23 pm

I think it's sort of neat. Sure, I don't have all that many soundtracks, but nevertheless. And it's great to have them separated. They annoyed me among the "proper" albums .

Sure is

Soundtracks can be problematic, because they just don't fit into your standard naming and viewing conventions for popular music. Classical music is another difficult one! Here is a pic of how I set out my soundtracks to give you an idea...

Soundtracks

Click to enlarge.

p7389 · « **Reply #28 on:** January 13, 2008, 09:15:08 pm »

Essentially the same... But like 50x more stuff

Also on the subject of stuff that doesn't fit in, just the other day when I did soem organising I also separated all the bonus tracks and such stuff from remastered releases, bonus discs etc - when there's a CD with bonus tracks I always separate the bonus stuff as it's own album to honour the integrity of the original work.

So for instance, I own the Talking Heads brick, so for all their albums I had e.g. "77" followed by "77 (Brick Bonus)"... etc. But all those things are separated into a view scheme of their own now. It's bliss

. I'm sort of considering to remove the (Bonus Tracks) appendix... But I guess that would screw things up majorly when actually viewing them together (moreso since I reorder the tracklisting for the bonus things to start at 1 again)...

hit_ny · « **Reply #29 on:** January 14, 2008, 12:54:11 am »

Quote from: p7389 on January 13, 2008, 09:15:08 pm

Also on the subject of stuff that doesn't fit in, just the other day when I did soem organising I also separated all the bonus tracks and such stuff from remastered releases, bonus discs etc - when there's a CD with bonus tracks I always separate the bonus stuff as it's own album to honour the integrity of the original work.

I think this is overkill to do at a viewscheme level and there isn't a need to do so.

Quote from: p7389 on January 13, 2008, 09:15:08 pm

So for instance, I own the Talking Heads brick, so for all their albums I had e.g. "77" followed by "77 (Brick Bonus)"... etc. But all those things are separated into a view scheme of their own now. It's bliss . I'm sort of considering to remove the (Bonus Tracks) appendix... But I guess that would screw things up majorly when actually viewing them together (moreso since I reorder the tracklisting for the bonus things to start at 1 again)...

If you must, at the file system level, instead have 2 folders, "77" & "77 (Brick Bonus)"

At the viewscheme level, use the same [Album] tag for both.

For the bonus track(s), append (Bonus) at the end of [Name]

Since conceptually both belong to "77" and if I was looking for "77" in a view scheme, it makes more sense to view them as one.

p7389 · « **Reply #30 on:** January 14, 2008, 01:59:15 am »

You are right. There is no need to do so. And, as I said, I have a viewscheme where they are all visible (the standard one). I don't agree (if I understood you correctly) that they should be tagged with the same album - as I wrote, I separate them for the sake of representing the album as it was originally released. They do conceptually belong to each other, in a sense, but when browsing the albums, I prefer to see only the albums, and should I want to construct some Talking Heads playlist I'll just use the audio viewing scheme where they all are (since in that case I'll be caring about individual tracks and not album wholes). I guess that's really the gist of it - I generally care more about albums than individual tracks. When I start an album I want it to stop when it ends, and not go on to... other stuff. I usually don't even go to the track level when I browse.

hit_ny · « **Reply #31 on:** January 14, 2008, 08:19:50 am »

Quote from: p7389 on January 14, 2008, 01:59:15 am

I don't agree (if I understood you correctly) that they should be tagged with the same album

That's exactly what i mean, often you find albums sold in different countries and the difference is maybe a (bonus) mix or two added. In this case the bonus tracks are actually part of the album.

I was thinking of seperate bonus tracks in the same way.

Unless they are EPs or just singles, which of course would be different.

ThoBar · « **Reply #32 on:** January 14, 2008, 09:09:52 am »

Something occurred to me this evening for a potentially new use of MC, that being the organisation of wine (or book or beer or ...) reviews.
Not quite sure how it would be best set up yet (HTML/Text+image/...?), but the nested keyword and other DB cpablilites of MC would obviously be very useful.

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Author Topic: New and Interesting Ways to use MC! (Read 21856 times)