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[forbigd]

All,
I am really enjoying the power of MC. It has so many things you can do and ways to see your data.
I wonder if you Gurus have a way to make this work for me. I have many TV shows on a server ready to be watched.
I have them all imported correctly and have even learned how to make Theater View work as easily as our previous player that the wife is growing to like it (No small feat).
I have set it up to show a list of episodes in a row without seasons being a choice. Sorted so the next Season/Episode is displayed at the top and once played it disappears from the view.
This is working well, here is how it could be better. Using round numbers we have say 30 different Series on the server. All these shows will be gotten too eventually (great intentions ).
But for now we are only actively watching 10 or 12 of them, bouncing around from show to show during an evening. The list of Shows though shows all 30. We have to scroll or page down to find a show we are watching. Sure I could move the not currently watched shows somewhere else, but we like having them all available to MC, and, the "actors" and other fields are useful.

Can I set a rule or make an expression that says. "Of these TV SERIES, Show the SERIES that have an episode that has been PLAYED." Don't show the episode that has been played, but use the fact that the episode has been played as the criteria for making the whole series visible in a view. If we decide we want to start a new series, we just watch an episode from it picked from file view or whatever, and then it appears in the view we want to use all the time.
Makes sense?

Also, is there a way to change the data in "number plays"? So if I play something I can still hide it?

Thanks

Don

[rick.ca]

I have separate views for 'active' and 'inactive' series based on various criteria. That's nice in that it classifies them automatically, but it doesn't give me an easy way to switch them from one to the other. Your post gave me an idea for something more versatile...

Unfortunately, the expression language is unable to set an attribute of one file based on that of another. So we can't set a series as 'active' when one of it's episodes has been played. But we can take advantage of a relational field to flag all the episodes of a series simultaneously. So I created a series-related [s.Active] field (the 's.' prefix is just my way of designating a series-related field) with a single acceptable value of 'Y' (i.e., it must be 'Y' or empty). I then set it to 'Y' for the series I'm currently watching, and revised the Rules for file display for my active/inactive views to use this flag. I also added [s.Active] to Options > Theatre View > Advanced > Tag Menu Fields (video) so the flag is easier to set from Theatre View.

Now I can make a series 'active' by flagging any episode, and 'inactive' by clearing the flag. Having two views means all series are accessible regardless of this classification. It's not a automatic as you might like, but the flag is easy to set, and it avoids the problem of a series being made 'active' by watching one episode—when that is not the desired result.

[forbigd]

Thanks so much. You gave me the key to what I wanted and more.
I am learning alot with MC, but as the saying goes, you don't know what you don't know.
I did as you suggested and it works fine, and I used the field to also denote WHO's shows they are.
So instead of limiting it to Y, I gave it four other choices relating to the four members of the family (or combinations). So now when the wife picks Her Tv Shows, it only shows HER shows, and shows the next episode to play.
Here is an easy one I learned on my own. The wife finds that somehow a series may be missing an episode. In theater view you don't know if the one coming next IS next. So I changed the text that shows in theater view to add [Series] [Episode] at the end of the [Name]. Now she can see in advance that the next few are the right ones...in order. Very comforting for her.
Although if I add any formatting like dashes between the Series and Episode it shows up in the name of the movies too. I'll figure that out.

Thanks again.

Don (forbigd, I'm "d")