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[greg.smalter]

I have a single music folder in the file system. This folder contains one subfolder for each album I have ripped. It also contains one giant folder of "Other Music" that is basically one-off mp3s I've gotten without ripping a whole album (or in a lot of cases, non-commercial music tracks).

In the default Album view, about 50% of the thumbnails have no cover art and/or say "Unassigned" because for the "Other Music" MP3s, it tries to figure out what album the song is from (sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it doesn't) and in all cases it doesn't find cover art. Anyway, this is the same was how Windows Media Player does it, so it's no big deal, but my Album view is polluted with things that look as important as albums but aren't.

One way I could solve this would be to add a filter to the Album view to only show files that are not in the /Other Music path. I don't know exactly how to do this but I'm pretty confident it's possible.

Better than this, though, would be if "Other Music" did show up, but it showed up as a single thumbnail instead of one thumbnail for each album MC thinks the individual MP3s are from. So, every thumbnail in the main album view would be a nice, pretty, (with cover art) actual album I have ripped; except for one which would have no art, and I could navigate into that if I wanted to play some weird song.

Either way, I need to stop my album view from being polluted by things that aren't albums. Suggestions?

[MrC]

Quick response to get you some ideas...

You can filter so that tracks that do/don't match some criteria are not shown.

Customize the view, and click Set rules for file display....  In your case, select the Filename (path) field, and enter either the full path or portion thereof, and select the appropriate pulldown (eg. contains, does not contain, etc.).  So if you wanted to skip files that contain the folder name "Non-album Tracks", select "does not contain" and enter that folder name.  OK your way out of the dialog and now those tracks will not be displayed in this view.

The Album groupings you see, are driven by the track's properties (eg. Album, Artist, Genre, etc.).  Views are configured to utilize these, and organize the tracks according to the view's rules.  So you can change the rules in a stock view, or just create a new view to suit your needs.  You might for example, create a view which uses an expression indicating that all Non-album Tracks are grouped (those, for example, w/out track numbers), otherwise group by Album.

Within your Non-album Track folder, if any of the tracks has artwork, and you group them as mentioned above, the grouping thumbnails will be appear as a stack of the track's artwork (which cycles).

Here's is an example of a view grouping Non-album Tracks into one group, and all other albums by Album name.  Note how the Non-album Tracks group is a stack of thumbnails.

[rick.ca]

You might for example, create a view which uses an expression indicating that all Non-album Tracks are grouped (those, for example, w/out track numbers), otherwise group by Album.

Or, if it's not otherwise being used, just set [Album]=[Other Music] for all tracks in that folder. It should then be treated as any other "Multiple Artist" album.

[greg.smalter]

I got really good results very easily by just adding a new view and selecting the File System option on the left radio button. Now, Other Music is grouped into one thumbnail. The only drawback versus what I was envisioning is that my 15 Bon Jovi albums show up as one thumbnail instead of 15, but that's probably helpful just as often as it's harmful, so I'll take this for now.

[MrC]

Ok.  Just so you know, there are nicer, more complete (and not difficult) ways to accomplish what you're asking.  Whenever you're ready...

I don't know what was happening to the image above - seems like it wouldn't load when hosted at Google Docs.  I've moved it now to pix01, so it should appear.