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[stricko]

I've been playing with an idea which seems so simple, someone must have done it before. I've go various video files that I'd like to group together in some way;

- dvd rips from multi disk sets (this is really my area of interest)
- series sets of avi's
- odd bits on video on common subjects

I've copied all of my nicely formatted "Name" fields into the "Album" field. Most are unique, so this in nice and simple.
For the small number of multifile sets, i've changed the Album field to a consistent value
I've adjusted some views to look at Album instead of Name

And bingo, it works like a charm. Most Albums have only a single Name, so they behave as if there is only one level.

Has anyone else gone down this route? Is there something obvious that I've missed that will mess this up?

All I need now is something that will copy tags from one file to another. Anybody got any ideas?

[stricko]

A bit more digging and I've spotted the Disk # field which can be used to give a similar effect. I think the Album approach has one advantage, in that you get the info panel displayed  at the point that you discover you've got multiple disks....

It must be obvious that I'm only beginning to play with this, if anyone has worked out a slicker solution, then let me know...........

[pwantzel]

I've copied all of my nicely formatted "Name" fields into the "Album" field.

How did you do this?  One at a time, manually?  Or is there a way to do this to many entries at once?

[JimH]

Probably done with Library Tools, Move / Copy Fields.

[stricko]

Exactly, very handy bit of functionality

[stricko]

OK, I've been playing around with this a bit more, and come up with what I think is a more elegent solution.

The biggest drawback with the approach of using an Album value for all files seemed to be maintenance. I'm adding stuff into the library at a pretty constant rate, and I didn't want to add yet another step into the process of getting files properly tagged. Most titles in my collection are single disk or single file, so it seemed logical that I should have to do nothing more than I do already to deal with such titles. But I wanted an approach that treated individual disks and sets in the same way. I've read up on various uses of the series/season field, but this seemed to have similar issues to using the Disk no field. So.....

I use the Series field to mark each disk or file with the name I want to give to the "set". For Example...

30 Rock, Series 1, has 3 disks, each with it's own unique entry in the database.
For the 3 entries, I set the "series" tag to 30 Rock, Series 1
I then have a new calculated field, called Title, which checks the series field for a value. If set, it uses it, otherwise it uses the Name field.

So my 30 Rock disks above, would all have a title of 30 Rock, Series 1 (taken from the Series tag), but a single disk entry would have a Title field containing the Name tag.

So If I now have a query using the Title tag, 30 Rock, Series 1 has a single entry (with multiphle files within it).

I can now group disks/files however I want, e.g. all the Godfather films together, replicating or creating "box-set" structures as necessary.

Any thoughts?

[Lasse_Lus]

All I need now is something that will copy tags from one file to another. Anybody got any ideas?

have you tried stacks ? the thing is that it seems that you can't collapse videos.. all other files works

my thought was that maybe if you need to treat several files as one and be able to inherit
then maybe stacks is for you (and hopefully the developer will fix the video stack collapse issue)

just a thought 

[stricko]

Er.... stacks. I'll look that one up

[stricko]

Could be useful, especially for the copying tags capability. A quick test suggested that you can't see the individual files from within Theater view (which is my main interest here). I agree thatif you wanted to combine files it might be useful, but I'd want ea lot more contro, of what come at the top etc.