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[dcwebman]

I saw the list of New Features in the MC14 forum but beyond finally having a true restore setting and webremote, what is going to be in MC15? I see more features listed and I hate to admit it, but they are above my head and I have no idea what they mean. It looks like MC is going in a direction to supporting high-end equipment which is way beyond me. I doubt I'll ever have a use for things like kernel streaming, URL reader, audio renderer, etc. It appears I'm way beyond the times because I don't have a true HTPC set up with the latest and greatest receiver/amp that supports all these extra features along with wanting to store all my DVDs on a hard drive.

I've loved MC since I first started with it because it's by far the best audio organizer out there. One version got better image support and I'm really wanting to dedicate all my free(?) time to MC to finally import and tag all my images, but there are missing features that other free apps like Picasa have, and new image features in MC seem to have stopped.

I used to think I was on top of the latest technology and had the latest equipment but apparently I am way behind now. Am I the kind of customer that's turning into a minority and being overlooked?

[park]

You may not want to watch your videos on the computer at the moment, but I'd venture that the time is coming when you will. When it is as easy to buy a movie as it is to buy a CD, and you dont have to deal with all the horrible DRM etc, you'll appreciate that the audio renderer takes the hassle out of audio configuration, and that the URL reader lets you stream your movies from Library Server computers to clients. I think that JRiver is going in the right direction with video support. I have used it more for movies than anything else in the last couple of years.

I hear you with images though. I'd love to see MC be a total flickr one stop shop. I'd like to be able to upload my images to flickr via MC (including setting creative commons copyright to them, and adding people tags), watch my subscribed Groups, Contacts and my own photostream as slideshows in Theaterview, and even be able to apply new tags to my flickr photos without leaving MC. If MC made this easy for me, and really wore it's flickr credentials on its' sleeve so to speak, by integrating various different flickr functionality all accross the program, I think that MC would be the number one app in Flickr's app garden, and flickr alone would generate a good chunk of MC's revenue.

Better stacking for photos, better workflow and tagging of RAW files, face recognition, auto tagging based on folder or criteria etc. would all also make photo organization that much less tedious.

[lpr]

I kind of understand your concerns... as for me, MC is an audio related tool only (and the best there is) and I'll admit that I also edit my cover art with its picture editor But all those video, tv, contacts, etc. options are things I don't use within MC.

I just hope MC15 will keep to add audio related features and that webremote is a good start

[Marty3d]

I'm also have the feeling that MC is going in another direction than me.
I waited a looong time for Theater View getting improved for watching TV shows and movies, but the clunky handling of manually tagging and updating video actually finally made me go for another solution (better and free). So, J River dropped the ball on that one. Fancy audio renderers? Nah, I don't really have any use for stuff like that.

I tried MC for images, but found dedicated tools being better for that (plus I never figured out how to play music while watching pictures...)

Web Remote? DLNA? I don't even know what it's supposed to do. I use the good old Library Server, but am kind of disappointed that it never leaves beta. No checking if the server is alive (client brought to its knees if it's not), no automatic sync.

No, where MC still is the knight in shining armor is Music. Tagging, categorizing and the speed of the database, it's fantastic!

My wish is that J River took MC back to the roots, fixed it up and removed all dangling threads (speaking of threads, have you seen the thread about the recommendation/suggestion system that no one seems to know what it is for?). But these requests come up at every major release

My two ören,
/Martin

[raldo]

I didn't want to post this in the main board because I don't want to sound too pessimistic and hurt any possible sales. I saw the list of New Features in the MC14 forum but beyond finally having a true restore setting and webremote, what is going to be in MC15? I see more features listed and I hate to admit it, but they are above my head and I have no idea what they mean. It looks like MC is going in a direction to supporting high-end equipment which is way beyond me. I doubt I'll ever have a use for things like kernel streaming, URL reader, audio renderer, etc. It appears I'm way beyond the times because I don't have a true HTPC set up with the latest and greatest receiver/amp that supports all these extra features along with wanting to store all my DVDs on a hard drive.

Well, it's "All Media - One Interface", so I guess DLNA, URL streaming, audio renderer would be a big part of that statement.

[...] and I'm really wanting to dedicate all my free(?) time to MC to finally import and tag all my images, but there are missing features that other free apps like Picasa have, and new image features in MC seem to have stopped.

[...]customer that's turning into a minority and being overlooked?

-- But I very much agree with you that Images is a very neglected part of MC. Maybe that explains why there is so little talk of images in the forums: people simply aren't using MC for images...

I don't believe Face Detection and  Recognition should be a part of MC. Those are difficult and expensive techologies which require large development and support efforts.  So these functions are much better taken care of by other companies such as Microsoft (live photo gallery), Google (Picasa), etc. Thus I believe a "trade off" wrt. face tag data would be to  support emerging standards such as Microsoft Photo 1.2 XMP ( MS Live Gallery and Picasa through AvPicFaceXmpTagger

By support of MS Photo 1.2, for example, I mean:
o Ability to decode/encode MS Photo 1.2 and update "People" tag accordingly (or maybe some other tag which contains the rectangle info).
o Features for simple editing and adding of such XMP face tags (NO recognition/detection)
o  Features for placing people tags in an image if People exist with no related XMP
o Display face tags. Mechanisms for turning off display of face tags (core command)

And then there are some other issues:
o Please fix the latitude and longitude tags so that they are not cast to integers (do I hear a google maps plugin, anybody?)
o Make 1-1 maps of EXIF and IPTC tags vs. MC tags. For example, currently city, state, location is mapped to "Places" when they should be 3 tags.
o Support All Exif, IPTC tags.
o Support Various versions of IPTC with the same vigour as Audio IDvxyz is supported.

[darichman]

I must admit I'm in a similar spot to dcwebman. I find the new features very interesting, but lack the infrastructure and the time/funds/knowledge to make the most of them at the moment. There are certainly existing features I'd like to see further developed but for now I'm happy just seeing where things go with MC15 and staying along for the ride. I am also (finally) working and don't have quite as much time for testing / experimenting as I used to

I am currently very happy with audio in MC. I use it for casual playback, and have a nice system set up for tagging which works very well for me.

Metadata / better series handling for videos. I'm not sure of the best way forward here, but would like to see Series/Movie and Season taggable in their own right somehow, with metadata display possible at each level.

Images - face tagging. And I pretty much agree with raldo's entire last post. I haven't done anything with my photos in MC for ages now, because I'm hesitant to start down a path of people/face tagging only to have a new standard arise within the program which renders my work obsolete. Any plans here?

Also, I had some big plans for notes - but development seems a bit slow here

[park]

Also Ratings applied to RAW or DNG files in MC dont appear in Bridge. That's a pain, because I still need to jump to Bridge to access the Camera RAW software for image processing.

One more photo organization enhancement would be if you could show the number of stars (rating) as an overlay over the thumbnails, so we could see which photos we havent rated yet at a glance and compare the ratings of files in a sequence in the list just by looking, rather than having to select each file and look at the ratings pane/tag window.

[rick.ca]

I forgot to mention I'm probably in a worse position than others here as I'll be moving into my girlfriend's house in May.

I'm having an anxiety attack just reading this. Anyone who can figure out how to use MC surely has a fair chance with women. But both at once?! Yikes. I think you should be honest and tell her you can't be moving in until these things are sorted out.

Maybe we need a "Relationship Issues" forum. It could be included in Theatre View News. That would give her an incentive to learn how to use your remote/Theatre View and a place to vent about your geekiness.