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[kstuart]

This original question is a bit old, but I thought I'd chime in quickly... I have two methods:

1. If they are not identical albums and include additional content (ie. a re-release that includes additional tracks) then I give them different Album tags.
2. If they are identical albums other than formatting concerns (ie a multichannel version and a stereo version, an original mono and re-released stereo version, or a FLAC version and a MP3 version) then I use stacks.

Basically, if I want to be able to select and use one of the versions as my "default play" type, and I only want to keep those additional versions for "special purposes or circumstances" then I use stacks.  If it contains different content, then it is a different album as far as I'm concerned.  Mostly, things end up working well with stacks (type #2).  A good example would be the Pink Floyd reissue of Piper at the Gates of Dawn.  I had the original mono release for a long time.  Then they re-released a "remastered stereo-expanded version".  I'm not a purist and so I listened to the new version and liked it, so I stacked it "on top of" my original mono version of the same album.  I wanted to keep the mono version just for good measure, but I didn't really need to use it very often, it was mostly kept for archive and completeness purposes.

A good counter example I've run into a lot is my largish collection of Aphex Twin/Richard D James stuff.  He constantly issued different versions of albums for different places (Japan vs US vs Europe), or even sometimes just with different labels (the BMG version of RDJ The Album was quite different from the "original" release).  These versions were often substantially different from one another, including different tracks, with tracks in different orders, or even divided up into multiple discs differently (and in a few cases, tracks with the same song "title" were actually quite different songs).  These, where I have the different versions, get tagged with separate album tags.

Lastly, I'll occasionally do a "hybrid approach".  If an album is re-released with identical content but then has a bunch of "bonus tracks" tacked onto the end, I usually only keep the extended version.  However, if there is a reason to keep the original version (the subsequent release was remastered, for example) then I'll lop off the "bonus tracks" and tag them as a separate album, and stack the versions of the "original album".

Stacks are nice because you can choose which of the versions you like best and then stack that on top.  In some cases, remastering makes things worse.  In those cases, it might be nice to have the remastered version for some reason (maybe one or two tracks are good), but then I'll stack the original on top because that's the experience I generally want when I just play the songs.

Okay, so how exactly do you stack albums, as opposed to single files ?

Meaning what menu, what do I click ?

( There seems to be no documentation on this in either the wiki or the Forum that I could find. )

[glynor]

You wouldn't stack the album itself as a "single unit", you'd stack each file in the album individually.

Now, of course, you can do this in one fell swoop.  There are a few different choices under Right-Click > Stacks > Advanced > Autostack Files by X that you can use on big batches of files at once.

What I commonly use this for is if I have different versions of the same file (FLAC + MP3, for example).  Select these files in a view, right-click > Stacks > Advanced > Autostack Files by Artist, Album, Track #, and Name.  Done.

There are other uses too.  Unlike the post you quoted, I also stack "related content" in some cases.  So, for example, I almost never care about keeping "extras" from BluRay/DVD discs I've ripped.  However, there's a movie here and there that I really like (such as A Clockwork Orange, for example) where I ripped it to high quality, and then ripped the extras too.

I usually stack the extras "underneath" the copy of the main movie in my Library.  That way, I don't see them in everyday use, and don't have to worry about them cluttering up views, but they're there if I ever want to get to them, nicely grouped with their "source movie".

And I've mentioned handy uses for photos (which is what they were initially designed for) other places recently.

[kstuart]

Presumably the result is a stack that is tagged as Album: Dark Side of the Moon so should the various albums be also so tagged, or do they need to be tagged as other Album tags ?

Will the hidden albums show up in any sort of search ?

Can they have differing numbers of tracks, or is your scheme necessary due to stack limitations ?

[glynor]

Basically everything in MC's Library operates at the "file level".  Levels above the "file" are all metadata tags, not physical database entries (in almost all cases).  The file is the "atom".

Stacks operate on files.

You can have some files stacked and some not inside an album, but you'd do it on an individual basis, per-file.  The Autostack Files by X is just a timesaver to automatically find and stack identical files (perfect for that FLAC vs MP3 version of the same exact songs from the same exact album).

When you stack a file, they're still two separate database entries, and still handled separately.  They just "group" together in views.  Then, you can click the little plus next to the file and "expand" the stack to see the members, and use them individually (or Unstack a particular member to make it independent again).  You CAN (though maybe shouldn't) stack anything you want together.  So, you could stack a whole album into one stack (but then you'd only be able to play whatever song you put "on top" without expanding the stack manually).  You could stack a video file and a photo together, or a video, PDF, photo, audio file, and executable.  It doesn't care.  They're just database entries that are grouped together when viewed (the members below the "top" are there, but never "used" by default).

The best way to learn about it is probably to make a set of test files, and play around with it a bit.

[kstuart]

So you pretty much have to remove the bonus files if you want to stack albums that have different number of tracks.

Autostack Files by Artist, Album, Track #, and Name.

Those particular tags are the ones that Stack requires to be the same in order to stack ?

So:

 Autostack Files by Artist, Album, and Name.

would do the same thing, except not require the Track numbers to be the same ?

[glynor]

So you pretty much have to remove the bonus files if you want to stack albums that have different number of tracks.

Autostack Files by Artist, Album, Track #, and Name.

Those particular tags are the ones that Stack requires to be the same in order to stack ?

So:

 Autostack Files by Artist, Album, and Name.

would do the same thing, except not require the Track numbers to be the same ?

Correct, except you don't have to remove the extras, they'll just not get stacked with anything.

[glynor]

I should add:  Stacking doesn't change the files, and you can always undo it later.

It is just a set of metadata tags that work together.

[kstuart]

When something is stacked underneath something else, will it still show up in some sort of MC18 search ?

Or is it invisible within MC18 until I un-stack it ?

[marko]

Officially, they remain hidden until unstacked.

It is possible to force them out of hiding though. See: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=55782.0

I use stacking extensively with my photos and would not do so if there was no way to manage the stacks.

[kstuart]

Officially, they remain hidden until unstacked.

So, let's say that I have several different versions of a music album (original CD, remastered CD, high resolution FLAC) and I stack them so that "Play" always plays the best sounding version.

Are there any views or searches that will turn up information in the tags of the hidden versions ?

For example, if I have a Comment field that says "Remastered by John Doe", can I do some sort of search for "John Doe"  that will include hidden stacked items ?

[glynor]

Well, to be clear:  Not just "unstacked" but also expanded (opened in the GUI).

Unstacking would mean "removing the stack".  As Marko indicated, though, there is a workaround too, if you need to search for lower "members" specifically.

[kstuart]

Well, to be clear:  Not just "unstacked" but also expanded (opened in the GUI).

Unstacking would mean "removing the stack".  As Marko indicated, though, there is a workaround too, if you need to search for lower "members" specifically.

Marko's link seemed to be for the reverse - to see if something exists in the database as a hidden stacked file.

I'm looking to see if there is a search (or view) for a string ("John Doe") in Fields, that will produce a result if the string is in the hidden stacked file.

[glynor]

No, his method would work.

You can use his suggested search to make a view that shows ALL STACKED TRACKS regardless of Collapsed/Expanded status.  Then, you can just switch to that view, and search using the regular search widget.  You could, modify that search to just show all files (that's the ~d=a part, but you'll have to tweak it to hide things like Deleted Items, removable media, Optical disc entries, and other stuff first).

You might be able to do something like [Stack Top]=-1 || [Stack Top]=0 to search all files, stacked or not, combined with the ~d=a modifier.  I'm not sure, I'd have to try it out to see.  (EDIT:  I think you might need to do it a different way, actually.  Because that would still exclude files where [Stack Top] was a particular key, which is true for the members of the stacks...  In any case, if you just use ~d=a, and then modify the search to exclude the extremely ugly, you should be able to get what you want.)

Searching using the search box always searches the contents of the currently selected view, ergo, it'll search everything.

An easier method (and what I've used before when I need to check for Stacked files on occasion) is switch to your All Media View (you should really have an all-media view, as you're obviously an advanced user), then:
Control-A
Right Click > Stacks > Expand
Search

When you're done:
Control-A
Right Click > Stacks > Collapse

[glynor]

Hey, by the way, Marko... In that other thread, you mention that the contents of the [Stack Top] and [Stack Member] fields are "seemingly random" numbers.

They aren't random.

Each file in the MC Database is assigned a Key (the index of the file).  You can retrieve the Key for a particular file using MCWS (among many other ways) like this:
http://<SERVER>:<PORT>/MCWS/v1/File/GetInfo?File=<FILENAME>&FileType=Filename

The Stack "seemingly random numbers" are the File Keys.  So, [Stack Top] is the File Key of the file that is the Stack Top of that particular stack.  [Stack Files] is a list of the file keys of the other files in the stack.

You can modify the contents of, and arrangement of, the stacks by simply changing these tags around.

So, if you remove the File Key of a particular file from the [Stack Files] list (which is tagged only on the Stack Top file), the file in question is removed from the Stack.
Each file in the stack is tagged with [Stack Top]=File Key of your Top.  That way, MC knows how to "look up" the rest of the Stack members when it has ANY member of the Stack.  It simply pulls the [Stack Files] tag of the [Stack Top] listed, and then it has the keys for each file in the stack.

That's how the StackSwap and Add As Stack features of my FileIngester addon work.  It simply manipulates the [Stack Top] and [Stack Files] tags to add and remove (and reshuffle) files in and out of the stack in question (or even to create a new stack out of thin air).  It is really a quite simple, and elegant, system they built, and simple to manipulate via the Automation interfaces if you put in a little elbow grease.