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[murrayp]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to Media Center, and use it only for music, but I'm finding it really rather excellent, especially in sound quality via Wasapi.

I guess I'm a baby boomer, so not so "track" oriented, but rather "album" oriented.  I have around 500 cds ripped.  Rummaging through them to find a particular cd is a bit tedious if you can't remember the name to search on. Genres help, but they can be a bit hit and miss too.  What I'd really prefer is to be able to create my own subgroups or categories (preferably like folders or whatever you call them that you can click on on the left - eg like genres) such that I can name them and place whatever weird sub-category in each one that suits me.  Drag and drop would be the obvious way to do this.  I don't mean that this is where the albums then live, but that they are simply listed in that folder (and equally could be deleted from it).  Of course then they could be listed in several folders if it suited me.  Then I could click on the folder and be presented with just the few albums belonging to the sub-category.  Finding for instance an old 1960's jazz record, or one of many varied audiophile compilations, should be quite easy then.  I've seen some players use smart folders but the rules needed are not as convoluted as my needs I'm afraid!  I'm quite happy to organise my own.  One category that would be usefully employed then though, would be a category of so far un-categoprised albums - ie ones that still need referencing into subcategories.

Is this, or something similar possible with MC14?  I guess this sounds a little specific, but if one is replacing a somewhat organised shelf of cds, this is what needs to be reproduced in the library.  I guess I'm far from unusual in this respect.

Many thanks for a great program!

Murray

[MrHaugen]

It's perfectly possible. You could probably use the "Keyword" filed as it is. If not you can make your own custom library field. You do this in Options -> Library & Folders -> Manage Library Fields... Hit "Add New Field" to begin. You could add a field called Music Groups or something maybe? Set the value to List, Semi-Colon Delimited. You can then add what ever details you want to the field, and later on you can enable tagging mode with Alt + Enter. You should be able to drag and drop the albums to your new field and appropriate category to tag it easily.

I got some custom fields for albums my self, but that's for sub genre and artist and album rating.

[gappie]

i think you are not far from unusual.  
you have several options in mc, you can make your own library fields, combine several fields in expressions and searches, use playlists, etc.
one thing that might be easy to start with is for instance using keywords. make a view with panes and album thumbnails, keywords at the top. now you can add keywords easely, drag and drop albums to one or several keywords etc.

hope it gives an idea.

 
gab

edit: and as mr haugen already said..

[bunglemebaby]

Of course then they could be listed in several folders if it suited me.

Good advice listed above by Gappie and MrHagen, but if you want this behavior from a custom created field you would choose "List, semi-colon delimited" instead of "String" type when creating it. This option will make the field behave exactly like the [Keywords] field, in that you can assign multiple labels/subgroup/category to any individual album (or individual song if you were to choose to do so).
This way if you've got a fusion album, you can label it with "Rock", "Jazz" and "Fusion" so that it will appear in any one of these "folders" when you select it.

Once you've decided how you want to work this custom field you can start to experiment with different ways of using it. The different views you can create in MC are very useful. I'd suggest trying a pane based view (with your custom field as a pane) as an alternative to the folder browsing on the left (but of course to each his own).

Enjoy making your digital music collection useful .

-JB

[MrHaugen]

Good point Bungle. I've corrected my suggestion.
It's just that I'm used to using only one category for my own albums. That's why I often use string.

[murrayp]

Many thanks guys - I appreciate the advice.  I can see I'm only beginning to understand the detail in Media Center - it sure has the feel of quite a mature program with a great deal of detail and thought hidden underneath.  The prompt advice is second to none too - great!  As for theater view with remote - this looks perfect for home audio so the remote is on order already!  Tks again!