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[jhermosillo]

Hello Maybe this has been discussed previously but i can't figure it out to find something, my issue or suggestion is the follwing:

I have a big library, about 3TB Hi-res files, My issue here is when I use webplay or webremote, WebGizmo and go to artist or album to browse, the list is divided by sevaral pages with Numbers, and it is very difficult and annoying to try to guess in which page is the artist or are a range of artists. Don't you think would be much better to have an alphabet instead of numbered Pages?

Just a quick suggestion, Or is there anyway I can customize this?

Thanks


John

[MrC]

You can customize how the albums are presented.  Perhaps a range of letters would help.  In Tools > Options > Media Network, make changes as the screenshot shows, and restart MC.

This doesn't eliminate the page numbers, but reduces the number of them.

[jhermosillo]

You can customize how the albums are presented.  Perhaps a range of letters would help.  In Tools > Options > Media Network, make changes as the screenshot shows, and restart MC.

This doesn't eliminate the page numbers, but reduces the number of them.

Thanks will try

[wildcatknh]

You can customize how the albums are presented.  Perhaps a range of letters would help.  In Tools > Options > Media Network, make changes as the screenshot shows, and restart MC.

This doesn't eliminate the page numbers, but reduces the number of them.

MrC,

I've tried several times to edit the views in WebGizmo for the same reason that jhermosillo did ... to make things easier to organize and find ... but have never seen my changes show up either through a web browser or on an Android phone.  I've also seen several other posters mention that their changes didn't show up as well.  What could we be doing wrong?  Once we change the views and save them as you instruct ... is there something else that needs to be done to make the changes 'active'?

[MrC]

Try these steps:

1) Set: Tools > Options > Startup > Windows Startup: Run on Windows startup: Nothing.
2) Tools > Options > Media Network > Advanced > Customize views for Gizmo & WebGizmo...
2a) Under Items to Show, select Audio and press Add.
2b) Select Library Item.
2c) Under Details for New Library Item, set the Name to TEST.
2d) Under Show Cateogories In This Order, press Add and select Artist under Select Field.  Do this again, selecting the Album category.  OK your way out.
3) Quit Media Center.  Check Task Manager to ensure Media Center is no longer running.  If it is, terminate it.
4) Launch Media Center.
5) Quit your browser, re-launch and navigate to the start page for webgizmo, and select This Location, and then Audio.

You should now see your new addition.

[wildcatknh]

Try these steps:

1) Set: Tools > Options > Startup > Windows Startup: Run on Windows startup: Nothing.
2) Tools > Options > Media Network > Advanced > Customize views for Gizmo & WebGizmo...
2a) Under Items to Show, select Audio and press Add.
2b) Select Library Item.
2c) Under Details for New Library Item, set the Name to TEST.
2d) Under Show Cateogories In This Order, press Add and select Artist under Select Field.  Do this again, selecting the Album category.  OK your way out.
3) Quit Media Center.  Check Task Manager to ensure Media Center is no longer running.  If it is, terminate it.
4) Launch Media Center.
5) Quit your browser, re-launch and navigate to the start page for webgizmo, and select This Location, and then Audio.

You should now see your new addition.

I walked through all those steps ... being very careful to follow them exactly ... and the Test item does not show up. 

But here's the interesting thing ... the changes that I made a couple of days ago that I mentioned in my first post (and had given up on seeing) ARE there now.  Thoughts on this development?  Are my browser and Android device taking some period of time to sync to Media Center for some reason?

And, another question ... I want to be able to access my files when away from the house either on Android or through a web browser.  You had me change the setting Run On Windows Startup to Nothing.  Don't I need to run Media Server on startup to ensure that my media files are always available?  (I already have DLNA enabled.)

 

[MrC]

Browsers will cache web pages, so you'll want to ensure a fresh page is loaded after you modify your Gizmo view.

And MC needs to regenerate the dynamic page views after you customize {Web}Gizmo views.  I believe this requires a restart of MC.

So, if you're not seeing your customizations, either your browser is giving you old pages, or the MC server was not restarted (this is why I had you disable the Server temporarily, and ensure there was no Media Center server process running).

You can force re-loading of pages in browsers by holding down the Shift key and hitting Refresh.

Feel free to enable the server so that it runs in the background after you quit the MC GUI.

There's no sync delay period.

[wildcatknh]

Okay ... think I'm good now.  I actually re-booted both the pc that runs MC and the laptop that I was using to try and view my changes through a web browser.  I guess I never actually shut down MC completely.  I also cleared all my browsing history and cache from the web browser.

I now see all my changes both in the web browser and on my Android phone.

Thanks so much for the help.

[NickF]

The critical issue is to stop and restart the Media Center Server after any changes.

MrC, many thanks for the proposal above for grouping items.  I have now done this for Albums, Artists and Movies.  A bit of trial and error was required to get the right field names but they all work fine now.  I was about to embark on designing some html and javascript to do something like this.  Your solution was soooo much easier!

As a matter of interest, for Album grouping, I chose FormatRange([Album], 3, 0) as the expression and used your FormatRange([Album Artist (auto)], 3, 0) expression for Artists.
For Movies, I used FormatRange([Name], 3, 0).

One query I have - In the "All" grouping, the caption shows ( 8 ).  This is obviously the number of alphabetic groups.  Can this number be removed?

A second query - I have now done the same for Recorded TV.  I have used [Name] - [Date Recorded] for the caption.  The problem is that the date includes the time, which I don't want.  Can I shorten [Date Recorded] so it just shows the date?

Many thanks,

Nick.

[MrC]

There is no way to remove the All item in Panes.  Think of it as a way to select everything, or to deselect a current selection.

You can format any date field using FormatDate().  You can use individual date-component specifiers, or any of the various combined specifiers (and any combination you want).

For sorting, a year-month-day format works best:

   formatdate([Date Recorded,0], Year-MM-dd)

Be sure to use the raw field format (the ,0 at the end of the field name).