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[fredphoesh]

Hi Jim and guys,

I have a few requests, mostly for Theatre view. Now I don't mind that you guys spell it incorrectly  ;-) but id love these few things:

1/ more intuitive and consistent menu system in Theater View > Audio.  I like the look of the double layered menu system at the top, and understand it is designed that way for saving screen real-estate but I often find it confusing and IMO, unnecessarily complicated. I find that using it with a wireless keyboard's arrow keys with that menu system I am often doing things I do not want to do. There does not seem to be a good intuitive flow between menu items or why a specific top level item results in the display of certain other second line of items. Navigating is often frustrating, often I inadvertently leave the album I am listening to. For example, if I am browsing Album covers beginning with the letter R and want to return to Now Playing, I have to either press the up arrow 100 times or press the left arrow a few times, and doing that often results in going "Back" to the Theater View main page by mistake, and returning to Audio loses your place in your browsing, ie you are no longer browsing the letter R but are back to the start of the alphabet... This could be a lot easier is all...

2/ keyboard shortcuts, particularly in Theater view.  For example when playing music, it would be so intuitive and easy if "N" took you to Now playing, "L" took you to List, "I" took you to Info, "B" took you to Big screen... and space bar toggled play and stop. Similar easy keystrokes could show your playback commands and take you to the Now Playing controls like volume, rating, progress bar etc... and a keyboard command like backspace would take you up to the top menu without leaving that particular album.  At work, I spend my life entering keyboard shortcuts, Final Cut, After Effects, Motion, Photoshop, and ALL of them have their most used commands mapped to SINGLE keyboard commands, not delimited ones. I would very much like to see this ease and speed implemented. There is no reason why one should have to press CTRL-S with the left hand and CTRL-P with the right to stop and start. ALL pro software I know of use the space bar for this. When you need to enter text, you click in a text field and all keyboard commands become inoperable because you are typing. When you are not entering text in a field, FCP, AE, PSP etc reactivate single key keyboard commands for speed and ease.

3/ it would be GREAT to have artist biographies and album reviews downloaded on the fly to read while listening. I guess this would be similar to Info view where it shows ID3 comments if you set it that way, but with this added info. Big fonts of course!

4/ ability to rotate photographs while viewing them, R to rotate right, L to rotate Left.
 
5/ a find feature enabling you to search artist/album/movie/etc

6/ a way to add tracks or albums to a playlist while in theatre view. At present you can add an album, but cannot add a second album or a track to that same playlist. A playlist in theatre view seems to be created once, then if you try to add another item to a playlist of the same name, it will automatically create a second playlist with an appended name (playlist 01 or the similar). Perhaps this would work well if you mark a selected artist or album or track by clicking on a keyboard command like CTRL-X. Do this repeatedly, then press CTRL-S to save your selected items in a playlist. (X and S would take you, as they do, to albums/artists starting with those letters )

Ok, nuf for now, thanks for the lovely software Jim & guys...

Mark.

[JimH]

1.  Navigation won't change.  It was very difficult to get it working in all cases needed (mouse, touchscreen, keyboard, remote).  A remote works best, in my opinion.  There is an alternate navigation in options.  Left arrow always takes you back.

2.  N, L, etc. probably won't work, since they are needed for normal characters.  Search, for example.  Right arrow, left arrow work now.

3.  More metadata is always good.

5.  Search is there now.  And, in any view, try typing M, for example, to get to the artists beginning with M.  I believe the number pad also works for this, used as if it were a phone.

6.  You should be able to add a track.  Maybe not from all views.

[fredphoesh]

2.  N, L, etc. probably won't work, since they are needed for normal characters.  Search, for example.  Right arrow, left arrow work now.

Hi Jim, the arrows are clumsy. I think there is a LOT that can be done to improve the keyboard commands in MC, starting with pressing the space bar to toggle play/stop. With regard to keyboard commands for navigating Theatre View, perhaps either pressing and holding keys like N, or L for over one second would change your view, or perhaps the dreaded delimiters, or even function keys?

5.  Search is there now.  And, in any view, try typing M, for example, to get to the artists beginning with M.  I believe the number pad also works for this, used as if it were a phone.

Nope, that does not work as a search. If you are searching for an album that has the word "Honey" in it, pressing H would not find Tupelo Honey!

6.  You should be able to add a track.  Maybe not from all views.

It seems in Theatre View you can only add one album to a playlist, cannot add a second album to that playlist, and cannot add a single track or an artist to a playlist.

Tx
Mark.

[JimH]

Hi Jim, the arrows are clumsy.

Please explain why they are clumsy.  Are you using a keyboard?  Take a look at the remote we sell (ad above).

Nope, that does not work as a search. If you are searching for an album that has the word "Honey" in it, pressing H would not find Tupelo Honey!

I just tried it.  It works.  You need to be in an Album view though.  Also look for the Search feature.  It's there.

[rick.ca]

With regard to keyboard commands for navigating Theatre View...

The keyboard is a rather unusual choice for a Theatre View input device. There are advantages, of course, and if you prefer it, that's fine. But there's already a facility for customizing keys and hot key combinations to do whatever available command you want.

Nope, that does not work as a search.

That's not what Jim said. If you press a letter while in a list, it will jump to the first item beginning with that letter. If you want to do a search, use the search facility.

It seems in Theatre View you can only add one album to a playlist, cannot add a second album to that playlist, and cannot add a single track or an artist to a playlist.

AFAIK, there's nothing in Theatre View for building and managing playlists. Standard View is clearly the more appropriate place to be doing that sort of activity. But if you insist, there is a way. Using Add All, you can add a track, an album, an artist, or any selection to Playing Now. You can then save PN as a playlist.

[fredphoesh]

The keyboard is a rather unusual choice for a Theatre View input device. There are advantages, of course, and if you prefer it, that's fine. But there's already a facility for customizing keys and hot key combinations to do whatever available command you want.

That's not what Jim said. If you press a letter while in a list, it will jump to the first item beginning with that letter. If you want to do a search, use the search facility.

AFAIK, there's nothing in Theatre View for building and managing playlists. Standard View is clearly the more appropriate place to be doing that sort of activity. But if you insist, there is a way. Using Add All, you can add a track, an album, an artist, or any selection to Playing Now. You can then save PN as a playlist.

Hi Jim and Rick, sorry about the delayed response, I had not set this thread for notifications, so was merrily waiting for a response...

WRT arrows and menus, if I have navigated down to one of the tracks in List view, I can either press the up arrow 2-20 times (depending on where I am in a list and how many tracks there are) or press the left arrow once to get to the secondary meny, then up arrow once to get to the top menu. I like to view albums in Info view because in Playing Now view the cover art obscures too much of the background due to the centrally placed cover art... but then sometimes want to scroll to another part of the track, so go to Playing Now, or want to choose a specific track, so go to Info. I feel that by having keyboard shortcuts to get to these 3 modes in Theatre view would make it a lot more pleasant to use. In general, I am very much in favour of user customiseable keyboard shortcuts.

If you are playing a track in the normal view of MC, ie, not Theatre view, but then switch over to theatre view and go to Playing Now, there seems to be no way to go back to albums unless you first go to the Theatre view main menu then choose Audio. I think BACK should take you to albums since you are already listening to music, not back to the Theatre view main menu... or Albums should be included in that top level so one does not have to go backwards and forwards.
 
WRT the search, I get that pressing H would take me to all albums or artists starting with the letter H, which helps if the word you remember is the first word of the album/artist name, but that does not help to find an album where you can only remember one word in the middle of the name... For example, H would not help if I could remember only the Honey part of the album Tupelo Honey.

WRT playlists, I was hoping to be able to sit on my couch, listen to music, and when I hear something nice, add it to one or another playlist... all from 10 feet away using my mini wireless keyboard. In INFO in Theatre View you can "save as playlist" but this can only save once to a playlist... each subsequent time you save to the same playlist it creates a new playlist.

WRT remote control, The Asrock ION 330 HT's come with a remote which works OKl in theatre view, but use the keyboard predominantly because for some things I prefer boxee to MC, and for entering youtube or bbc iplayer titles in a search field, you need a keyboard to do that properly and quickly.

Other than all that, I would like a keyboard and remote control key that takes me directly from MC main interface to Albums in Theatre view, skipping all the menu stuff. I imagine that might be possible right now... so Im gonna check the options now.

Cheers and thanks,
Mark.

[JimH]

WRT arrows and menus, if I have navigated down to one of the tracks in List view, I can either press the up arrow 2-20 times (depending on where I am in a list and how many tracks there are) or press the left arrow once to get to the secondary meny, then up arrow once to get to the top menu.

Left arrow once to get to the second roller, left arrow again to get to the first roller, left arrow again to return to the home screen of Theater View.

Attached screenshot is a search for "piano".

[fredphoesh]

Left arrow once to get to the second roller, left arrow again to get to the first roller, left arrow again to return to the home screen of Theater View.

Attached screenshot is a search for "piano".

Jim, where is the Search function in Audio in Theatre View? I am in Audio, have all my albums in front of me, have checked every single menu (AFAIK) and cannot find a way to enter a Search.  aah, it is NOT in Audio? I have just found it in the root menu. I try to keep away from the root menu as it is never a place I want to be... I am trying to find a way to go straight from MC main interface to Album. I would expect to see some search facility there. Perhaps CTRL-F or even F2 could be mapped for that?

Tx
Mark.

[MrHaugen]

Search vs List Jump
If you want to search you'll have to use the search function. It's at the main menu. Hitting letters is a fast travel system. It's not really a search function.

I DO however agree that there is a more elegant options for this. Ive asked for it before as well.
What COULD be done is to have the letters the is hit, to pop up in a nice overlay as you type it. You could have bigger letters overlaying a small part of the media list. As you hit more letters, more of the media files that does not match the search criteria would vanish. This could be done exactly as the standard view search function today. BUT, you'd have to have a smart way of clearing the results though. Getting back to that complete list. Either way, this letter overlay could be added, to better illustrate the media jumping. Even if it would still just take you to the start of the names, and not really search for anything.

Navigation
When it comes to navigation I kind of agree as well. It is not the most intuitive way of browsing, but you do get a lot more control with this solution than you would with other competing Media Center Solutions. When you have used it a few days, you'll get to know it well.

I DO however think that some of the controls on the rollers should be moved to a new options and search box on the right side of the media lists. It could be activated with a single button on the roller, and hold things like search, list styles etc, list types, genre selection/rating/watched not watched, played not played etc (filtering). Only things that I think should be on the rollers is basically navigation and play controls. Getting rid of some of the least used buttons could ease up the navigation a lot, AND you could add more neat functions in the options box, like my examples with filtering. It would do wonders with big lists.

Shortcuts
Playing now and other stuff should be possible to make shortcuts for I think, but I have not tried it my self yet. A shortcut interface for MC15 would be nice. It's not that cool to edit text files. At least not for the newbies.

[fredphoesh]

Left arrow once to get to the second roller, left arrow again to get to the first roller, left arrow again to return to the home screen of Theater View.

Attached screenshot is a search for "piano".

Jim, there are several issues with the search function:

1/ Searching honey found what seems like literally hundreds of results, the vast majority of which do not have honey in the search result, for example the entire tracklist of Radiohead's The Bends was found by searching for Honey.
 
2/ Once I search for Honey and the results displayed, the cursor is on the letter H in the virtual keyboard, so you have to press R arrow 7 times to get to the list of results. Similarly, if you are down a long list of items, you have to press left 7 times to get out of the list and back to the top menu.

3/ The primary reason for doing the search was to find the album called Tupelo Honey, but when I find Tupelo Honey, its the track, not the album it found, so only plays that track.

4/ the search results are not alphabetical but seem to be grouped in the albums in which they were found.

5/ I cannot search for Tupelo Honey!! When I press the space bar it starts playing the first track in the search of the word Tupelo. So it seems one cannot enter a space in the search. When one is entering text in a field, keyboard shortcuts like pressing space to play should be disabled until the text has been entered.

Thanks!
Mark.

[rick.ca]

I feel that by having keyboard shortcuts to get to these 3 modes in Theatre view would make it a lot more pleasant to use. In general, I am very much in favour of user customiseable keyboard shortcuts.

So why don't you make some keyboard shortcuts, as I suggest? I don't think there are separate commands for the List and Details views, but there is one for the main PN view.

If you are playing a track in the normal view of MC, ie, not Theatre view, but then switch over to theatre view and go to Playing Now, there seems to be no way to go back to albums unless you first go to the Theatre view main menu then choose Audio.

This is not feasible. There is no fixed "album view" in Theatre View (or Standard View, for that matter). It's a product of the user's unique configuration. I have about seven different audio views which display albums. The program has no way of know which one I might want to use.

WRT playlists, I was hoping to be able to sit on my couch, listen to music, and when I hear something nice, add it to one or another playlist... all from 10 feet away using my mini wireless keyboard.

I can see some utility in that, but the idea is too vague. Obviously, all the playlist functionality in Standard View is not going to be added to Theatre View. Something like this needs to be simple, easy to use (even without a keyboard) and integrate well with existing functions. For example, a simple "Add to Theatre View playlist" function. This would literally just add the selected item(s) to a special playlist designated for this purpose. This playlist could be viewed and changed in Theatre View—like any other playlist—but the main purpose would be to simply "capture" whatever items the user is interested in. Standard view could then be used to move these items to other playlists, or whatever the user is interested in doing with them. But maybe this is a bit too simple—it can be done now by tagging the items in a particular manner, and then using a smartlist to display the items tagged that way.

I am trying to find a way to go straight from MC main interface to Album. I would expect to see some search facility there.

I suspect you must be expecting your search results will somehow magically be displayed in the same "album view." Again, this is probably not feasible. If it were, it's not at all clear how this might work. For example, should a search invoked from a particular view be restricted to items allowed in that view? As it is, Search is a completely independent function properly located on the main menu. Once you go there, you would have to navigate through the menus in the usual way to return to any particular file view.

Your consistent references to an "album view" suggest you're still using the default views. If so, you're probably far too dependent on Search for finding things. Consider building views that make better use of your tag information and allow you to browse your collection by categories. I use this almost exclusively, and only use Search in the rare cases like remembering the name of a track but not the artist. Otherwise, I pick the most suitable view (depending on the genre and what I do remember or what I'm interested in), navigate through a few categories, to a list were the item is easily found. This is usually faster, and maybe even fewer keystrokes or button presses than a search.

1/ Searching honey found what seems like literally hundreds of results, the vast majority of which do not have honey in the search result, for example the entire tracklist of Radiohead's The Bends was found by searching for Honey.

You're not restricting your searches to a media type (Audio) and/or a particular field (Name).

2/ Once I search for Honey and the results displayed, the cursor is on the letter H in the virtual keyboard, so you have to press R arrow 7 times to get to the list of results. Similarly, if you are down a long list of items, you have to press left 7 times to get out of the list and back to the top menu.

No. Just like everywhere else in the interface, left-arrow takes you "back."

3/ The primary reason for doing the search was to find the album called Tupelo Honey, but when I find Tupelo Honey, its the track, not the album it found, so only plays that track.

You could have searched on Album, revised the search to the full album name once found, and then Play All. But maybe a "Play Album" command (i.e., expand selection to album) could be added to Search and/or PN.

4/ the search results are not alphabetical but seem to be grouped in the albums in which they were found.

Isn't that more useful than alphabetical?

5/ I cannot search for Tupelo Honey!! When I press the space bar it starts playing the first track in the search of the word Tupelo. So it seems one cannot enter a space in the search. When one is entering text in a field, keyboard shortcuts like pressing space to play should be disabled until the text has been entered.

The interface is designed to allow the use of as many input devices as possible. It's not reasonable to expect it to "know" which one you're using and adapt to it. This is an OSK that accepts keyboard input. But as you can see from the OSK, the space is represented by an underscore—so that's what you should be entering with the keyboard. Just so you don't think I'm a biased remote user (although I am), think of it this way: It's designed for a touch screen. Where on the screen do you touch to enter a space? How do you emulate that with your keyboard?

[fredphoesh]

So why don't you make some keyboard shortcuts, as I suggest?

Wow, a fantastically detailed response... deserves a decent reply, but also great thanks for taking that kind of time.

Its now midnight, so I will respond tomorrow sometime.

Tx again
Mark.

[fredphoesh]

So why don't you make some keyboard shortcuts, as I suggest? I don't think there are separate commands for the List and Details views, but there is one for the main PN view.

actually using the remote that came with the Asrock, I have a remote that is every bit as effective as a keyboard and a lot smaller... I did not look at that section of the Options before as I assumed it was for the remote sold by J River where in fact you can use any remote and learn commands... nice!

A request please for a mappable command to take you directly to the List and Info Details views to avoid lots of arrowing about.

This is not feasible. There is no fixed "album view" in Theatre View (or Standard View, for that matter). It's a product of the user's unique configuration. I have about seven different audio views which display albums. The program has no way of know which one I might want to use.

at present if you are in now playing and want to see albums you have to go to the main theatre view menu and choose audio. Then you can choose albums. So I dont understand why you having several album views will affect being able to go to albums or not?

I can see some utility in that, but the idea is too vague. Obviously, all the playlist functionality in Standard View is not going to be added to Theatre View. Something like this needs to be simple, easy to use (even without a keyboard) and integrate well with existing functions. For example, a simple "Add to Theatre View playlist" function. This would literally just add the selected item(s) to a special playlist designated for this purpose. This playlist could be viewed and changed in Theatre View—like any other playlist—but the main purpose would be to simply "capture" whatever items the user is interested in. Standard view could then be used to move these items to other playlists, or whatever the user is interested in doing with them. But maybe this is a bit too simple—it can be done now by tagging the items in a particular manner, and then using a smartlist to display the items tagged that way.

I think the most simple and most effective would be for a single button on a remote or a single keystroke would be the shortcut to add the currently selected track or album or artist to A playlist. The playlist gets created in the background automatically. When you are finished choosing you simply find "save playlist" in the theatre menu and that is done.

I suspect you must be expecting your search results will somehow magically be displayed in the same "album view." Again, this is probably not feasible. If it were, it's not at all clear how this might work. For example, should a search invoked from a particular view be restricted to items allowed in that view? As it is, Search is a completely independent function properly located on the main menu. Once you go there, you would have to navigate through the menus in the usual way to return to any particular file view.

yep, I would think that if I was listening to music, a search would find music, not videos or photos. I would also expect it to find artists if i was in artist view and albums in albums view and perhaps a checkbox could be toggled to opt for including a track title search. By default all other metadata would be left out. That makes sense for me because if you are in theatre mode you are listening, not fiddling with the details of your library, all the metadata is best dealt with in the normal view where you can see lots of details and have all the tools at your disposal.

Your consistent references to an "album view" suggest you're still using the default views.

i will look into how other views might help me though I dont much like categorising my music as a lot of it does not fit into a narrow slot.

No. Just like everywhere else in the interface, left-arrow takes you "back."

well if you are on the left already, the left arrow takes you UP rather than back... but I know what you mean. And if you have just searched and want to get to your results which are displayed to your RIGHT, you have to press LEFT to go UP then down to get to the list... an example of what I meant by clumsy, but I do understand there are many remote interfaces that all need to work.

 

You could have searched on Album, revised the search to the full album name once found, and then Play All. But maybe a "Play Album" command (i.e., expand selection to album) could be added to Search and/or PN.

afaik there is no way to revise a search in theatre view, nor is there a way to search "on Album".

Isn't that more useful than alphabetical?

nope its not. It means scrolling down hundreds of finds, video, photo, music, to find something by name, that is not listed alphabetically... not useful at all. If once could filter results by album, and show albums only, then it would be a lot easier to find a single track, but given it would not even let me search and find "tupelo honey" because of the space in the name, it became very hard to find even the track called tupelo honey.

The interface is designed to allow the use of as many input devices as possible. It's not reasonable to expect it to "know" which one you're using and adapt to it. This is an OSK that accepts keyboard input. But as you can see from the OSK, the space is represented by an underscore—so that's what you should be entering with the keyboard. Just so you don't think I'm a biased remote user (although I am), think of it this way: It's designed for a touch screen. Where on the screen do you touch to enter a space? How do you emulate that with your keyboard?

Ive just tried Tupelo_Honey and tupelo_honey, neither finds the song Tupelo Honey using the keyboard. When using the mouse to manually click each letter on the virtual keyboard, the _ key enters a space and Tupelo Honey actually does find all TRACKS in that album (and a few other things) but there still is no way to play the album!

Also, when entering text in the search field, there doesnt seem like a good reason (I am no software writer!) to not have space bar enter spaces, and to resume play-pause when you have completed entering the text. I see this particular part of the interface does not have a way to "enter" text, it is just filtered as you type, but in the rest of the main MC interface if you are, say, renaming a file, pressing space will make a space, not cause a file to start playing.

Anyhow, for me, I wouldnt want to be a squeaky wheel for features I do not feel strongly about... the ones I do feel strongly about are mappable commands to go between INFO / PLAYING NOW / LIST when in theatre view.

Thanks for all your time,
Mark.

[rick.ca]

So I dont understand why you having several album views will affect being able to go to albums or not?

I was attempting to illustrate that "Albums," as a location the program is aware of, does not exist.

When you are finished choosing you simply find "save playlist" in the theatre menu and that is done.

How is this different than what I described, other than being unnecessary and making it easy to lose the information?

I would also expect it to find artists if i was in artist view and albums in albums view and perhaps a checkbox could be toggled to opt for including a track title search.

I don't think this is a reasonable expectation. If a collection is well organized and a view is properly designed for it's intended purpose, a search should only rarely be necessary. So providing it as a global function not tied to a view is perfectly reasonable. It helps, of course, to know how it works—particularly that it can be restricted by media type and some specific fields.

I dont much like categorising my music as a lot of it does not fit into a narrow slot.

If it were all the same, it wouldn't need to be categorized.

afaik there is no way to revise a search in theatre view, nor is there a way to search "on Album".

I don't know what to say. The commands are right there on the roller. Are you using the Obsidian skin?

nope its not. It means scrolling down hundreds of finds, video, photo, music, to find something by name, that is not listed alphabetically... not useful at all.

You can't justify such a statement. Sometimes grouping by album will be more useful, sometimes it will not. On balance, I think it's more useful than sorting them alphabetically. In any case, if there are hundreds of items, your search term is too broad.

...but there still is no way to play the album!

Sure there is.

[fredphoesh]

I don't care too much for the tone of your last responses rick. This conversation has stopped being productive, instead it seems to be defensive and patronising.

So that will be it for me in this thread,
Cheers,
Mark.