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[MBlue72]

Hello –

I have been using MC12 and MC13 for a little more than a year and am generally satisfied with it. I use it only for my audio files, almost exclusively for managing and editing metadata, etc. I use another program (dBpoweramp) for ripping and play my music on my stereo system through a Squeezebox system.

My question relates to the best way to print out my holdings by album. I am a classical music lover. I have organized my data structure such that the “Artist” field holds composers (Haydn, etc.); the “Genre” field holds a custom genre structure which I have developed specific to each composer; the “Album” field holds the name of the piece (String Quartet, Op. 20/4); and the “Name” field hold each movement. Thus, an Album will contain anywhere from one to 20+ movements.

I am simply trying to create and print a report that lists my holdings at the album level (not movement level), for a particular Artist (Composer). I am not too familiar with “Library Views” and customizing views. This is undoubtedly the real problem here. I have searched this forum and have tried many of the past suggestions to similar questions. These suggestions usually involve creating a playlist, then exporting the playlist either in HTML or TXT format. Although awkward, these approaches worked, except I keep ending up with reports that list all of the movements for each album. So I am guessing I have not set up the view correctly. Can anyone help me?

Sidebar: I have been very surprised that Media Center does not have a bona fide reporting function. The ability to easily create and print out reports would seem to be a real “must have” for a database-oriented application such as this. Am I missing something? Are there plans to add this functionality?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. I am open to suggestions that work within Media Center, a plugin or even suggestions of other programs that can access the database separately. I am familiar with Microsoft Access and, of course, Excel.

Thank you,

Dave

[JimH]

Select what you want, then do File/Export/Export to Playlists.

[Matt]

You can make a library view by artist, album, composer, or any other data.

You can export or print a list from the File menu.

[MBlue72]

Thanks Jim, but when I follow that approach I get a complete list showing each movement. I am trying to get a list just of the albums (which for me are the compositions). I am sure my problem is not knowing how to design the view itself (before following your suggested approach). That's what I tried to explain in my first posting.

I need to have the view not include the "Name" field. But when I remove that field from the view, each composition is still repeated for all the movements. As an example, Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is repeated in the list four times -- once for each movement, even though the "Name" field is not shown.

Did I explain it better?

Thanks again for you response,

Dave

[Matt]

Add a new 'Empty View' library view by right-clicking 'Audio' in the tree.

Add the category 'Album'.

Pick 'View As' 'More > Album Details'.

Click OK.

View, export, copy, etc. the list.

[MBlue72]

Matt:

Thanks for your posts. I've just played with this a bit and it looks promising. I'll let you know how it works out (I am running out the door for an appointment now).

Thank again,

Dave

[MBlue72]

Matt, with your help I am making some progress. (Thanks!) I now have a view that is a list of albums and when I invoke “File>Print List …” I get a rudimentary listing of all albums. I cannot see a way to adjust the font size or width of columns however, so I end up with a 44-page report that is mostly “white space.”  Do I have any control over the output?

I have also tried creating an XML file by invoking “File>Library>Export to XML.” I have tried to import the resultant XML file into Excel (so I can adjust fonts, column widths, etc.) but so far have run into errors. I can keep working on this if you say it’s the easiest way to go.

Am I missing something here? It seems pretty tedious for a listing of albums.

Thanks again for all your help,

Dave

[Lasse_Lus]

Blue, will copy & paste (to excel) do it better ? 

[MBlue72]

LL:

Thanks for your suggestion.

I have tried that several times. I keep getting an error message: "Microsoft Office Excel cannot paste the data." Does that technique work for you?

Thanks again,

Dave

[Lasse_Lus]

blue, you do copy directly from the MC list detail ?! (select all, copy, paste)

..i have never experienced that error before...but what about pasting to notepad first, does that work ?..then copy again into excel..(just to check)

[MBlue72]

What a strange situation! I tried to copy and paste part (or all) of the list into Excel several more times, getting the same error message each time. I then opened up Microsoft Word and typed in a few words. I tried to "cut and paste" from what I had typed -- it wouldn't work. I could not get "copy and paste" to work either!

After scratching my head a bit, I closed down all of my open programs, rebooted my system and opened up everything again. This time, when I "copy and pasted" from the MC database listing into Excel -- it worked fine!

So LL, Matt and Jim, thank you. Matt, your help is especially appreciated since you pointed the way to creating a view without the "Name" field showing. That had been the stumbling block for me.

While I do very much appreciate all of your comments and suggestions, I still wonder if there is an easier and more powerful way to generate reports? I really would love to have an album listing "grouped" first by Artist, then by Genre. Is there any way to do this from within MC? A "flat file" approach is at least workable (and more than I had three hours ago), but given the sophistication of MC, I wonder if there is a more elegant approach? Is there a way to use Microsoft Access (or any other program) to access the MC database directly? Worst case, I guess I could copy and paste the entire MC database into an Excel spreadsheet, then import that into Access. Obviously the disadvantage is that I would have to go through the same steps each time I want to print a report.

Anyway, I really appreciate your help. Thank you.

Dave

[Lasse_Lus]

I still wonder if there is an easier and more powerful way to generate reports? I really would love to have an album listing "grouped" first by Artist, then by Genre. Is there any way to do this from within MC? A "flat file" approach is at least workable (and more than I had three hours ago), but given the sophistication of MC, I wonder if there is a more elegant approach? Is there a way to use Microsoft Access (or any other program) to access the MC database directly? Worst case, I guess I could copy and paste the entire MC database into an Excel spreadsheet, then import that into Access. Obviously the disadvantage is that I would have to go through the same steps each time I want to print a report.

Anyway, I really appreciate your help. Thank you.

Dave

i'm glad your copy issue was just one of those that went away 

there are no "easy" way what i know..and it always depends how much effort should be put in to be able to grab a report once in a while, so maybe the copy and paste into access and then a report from there would do it

but if you want to automate it, you can use MC13.exe, (check the developmentzone http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Media_Center_Core_Commands) then you can trigger an export and in combination with some other script for example autohotkey you can accomplish quite alot..

but if this is the only report i guess the most easy way to to this is

1) link a specific textfile into access
2) copy the data from mc
3) open (specefic) textfile and paste, save
4) run your report from access (or excel) via batchfile

[MBlue72]

LL:

Thanks for your additional help. I've looked at the site you've linked to. At first blush, I am thinking if I want to "automate" the process in some fashion, it might be easier to create an Access database application that will serve basically as a "shell" for generating the reports I want. I would have to copy and paste the entire MC view into either an Excel spreadsheet or somehow directly into Access (have to think about that). This still is pretty cumbersome, as I would need to do this for every change I make (add a CD, change any meta data, etc.). Hmmm. 

Thanks again,

Dave