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[dlmax63]

I need some help from anybody who can offer suggestions...

I have a disc set which is all multiple artists but the title of each CD is different; i.e. "Guitar Rock - 1968-1969"  and "Guitar Rock - 1970-1971". Each disc currently shows up in the "(Multiple Artists)" group as it should. What I'd prefer, however, is to have them show up still in "(Multiple Artists)" but under "Guitar Rock". I'd like this to be expandable to each individual disc when selected. Basically another level to the tree so that the discs don't take up so much tree space unless I choose to expand it.

I want a tree structure like this:

Audio
==>Artist/Album
====>(Multiple Artists)
======>Guitar Rock
========>Guitar Rock - 1968-1969
========>Guitar Rock - 1970-1971

I don't know if this even can be done. If it can, how would I go about doing it?

As always, thanks for your responses/suggestions.

[MrC]

A quick response.  The "(Multiple Artists)" entry is auto-created by MC when you have varying artists in an album and no Album Artist.  So "Guitar Rock" could not both be listed under "(Multiple Artists)" and by itself be the single artist named "Guitar Rock".

And if you set an Album Artist, then your entries would not be under "(Multiple Artists)".

Best to use Panes and selections to narrow your choices rather than the tree.

[dlmax63]

Thanks for the reply, MrC.

Yeah, I kind of thought it couldn't be done. I'm already familiar with how it's works with having the album artist set to "(Multiple Artists)".  However, I was hoping that there would be a more elegant way to work around it. I really don't like taking that much real estate under M-A for this and other disc sets that I have. I think I'll just re-tag with disc numbers and make the album names consistent as a work around.

[csimon]

What you require is a Disc Number/Part of Set field which you can slip in after the Album name level, given that the album name is the same for all discs in the set (i.e. Guitar Rock). Unfortunately, this field is numeric only therefore you can't put in a name of a disc.

What I have done is to use another field to hold the name of the disc. You can either hijack an existing field or create one of your own.

I have this exact structure as I too have many multi-disc sets where I would like to refer to each disc by its name.  For example:

Music of the World
  Africa
  Australia
  Asia
  Europe
  etc.

Relaxing with Nature
  Water
  Earth
  Sky
  etc.

Eurovision Song Contest
   2002 Tallinn, Estonia
   2003 Riga, Latvia
   2004 Istanbul, Turkey
   etc.

Therefore you only get the boxed set represented once in your Album level and you can then drill-down further to expand the selection.  Note that it gives you an extra level of categorisation and it's up to you how you use it, it doesn't even have to ralte to a boxed set as such. My Eurovision example above is a good case, this is not actually a boxed set, but I would prefer to have all the CDs listed under one generic entry to start with rather than having each CD listed separately.  In fact, each year is actually a boxed set in itself, 2008 consists of 2 CDs for example, but I have not made any differentiation between them and have lumped all tracks together.

This structure is incredibly useful for DLNA views.  There has been (heated) debate as to the usefulness of drill-down views as opposed to being able to filter using panes etc, but it depends which method you find easier for you and most appropriate for the situation.

The one disadvantage to this method is that unfortunately you get an extraneous level for all single-CD albums. I have put in a request in the past for MC to be able to skip a level when that level returns only one choice.  the Webremote client does this automatically it seems but I would like the facility to be available at server level so that any client (e.g. DLNA) will behave as I want it to. Unfortunately, although several people have this "boxed set" problem and the most logical way to solve it is by creating another field and level to indicate the "volume" name within the boxed set, it is not thought a high priority for the development team to allow skipping of the level where it is superfluous.

[csimon]

PS. If your problem is that you don't actually know how to create the extra level once you have got the fields set up, it's just a case of using the Customise Views facility to add the extra step between two existing levels.

[csimon]

PPS. If it's a case of wanting to use the Album Name as an Artist in the special case of multiple artist albums, then you could replace your Album Artist level with an expression that returns Album Name if it's a various artists album, otherwise returns Album Artist.

[dlmax63]

csimon

Thanks for your suggestion.

I took a simpler approach and just lost the dates in the album names and put in disc numbers. My naming structure for music files is "if(isequal([disc #],unknown,8),,[disc #].)[Track #] - [Album] - [Artist] - [Name]". For the artwork, I went with "Disc [disc #] - [Name]" and made the name that of the album. This makes it easier for me to identify the cover art when I add from file.

I know there's got to be an easier way to do it. I like my file names to give a more specific indication of the album name, but in this case I've compromised to the generic "Guitar Rock"

Thanks again.

[MrC]

I know there's got to be an easier way to do it. I like my file names to give a more specific indication of the album name, but in this case I've compromised to the generic "Guitar Rock"

I'm sure you are aware that track file names are independent.  Name them as comprehensively as you need.  Create a custom field to contain an album's subtitle (eg. 1970-1971, or "Guitar Rock 1970-1971", and use a rename rule that includes it along with your disk #, track #, name, etc.

[MrC]

Another consideration for you.

You can create a nested list within the tree and the panes using the listbuild() function.  With this, and the help of custom fields, you can create what you want.  

For example, I have a series of volumes of Cafe del Mar albums.

I created two new custom fields, called [my album] and [myseries], where [my album] contains the root of the album name (in this example, I used "Cafe DEL MAR"), and where [myseries] contains the volume specifier (eg. "Vol. 2", "Vol. 3", "Dreams Vol. 4").

Using listbuild(), we can create a nested list structure such as:

Audio
==>Artist/Album
====>(Multiple Artists)
======>Cafe DEL MAR
========>2006
========>Dreams
========>Dreams, Vol.2
etc.

In the expression below, I use the standard [album] if [my album] is empty, and [year] if [myseries] is empty.  Note: I have only tagged the Cafe del Mar series so you see all the other [album]'s in the list, and I did not set the [myseries] value for Cafe del Mar, Vol. 13 so it shows under Cafe DEL MAR/2006.

listbuild(1,\,[album artist (auto)],if(isempty([my album]),[album],[my album]),if(isempty([myseries]),[year],[myseries]))&datatype=

[dlmax63]

Thanks again, MrC,

I kind of like that idea, it's simple in appearance and would be pretty easy to create. I've haven't used listbuild yet so I'll play around with it.

dlmax63