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[DanoRoo]

I have all my media arranged in MC18 library in the same fashion in which it's arranged on my hard drive.  Music>Artist>Albums.  But, there is one exception.  On my hard drive, I have one folder called "singles" which contains hundreds of individual songs by different artists.  When I imported my music, the contents of the singles folder was dispersed so that each single file shows up as it's own generic album art icon (and individual song) in the artists view of MC18.  How can I get this "singles" folder to be represented by a single icon in the artists window with the individual songs kept in that folder instead of dispersed among my list of album oriented artists? 

[Samson]

A few options,
[EDIT]-The usual way to deal with compilations (as I understand it ) is  either:
   1) Use the [Album Artist] tag and call it "My Compilation", "Best of 80's", whatever. Then structure your "View As" categories as Album Artist/Album. This will display your regular albums like an Artist/Album view (where album artist and artist are one and the same) plus show your compilations by what you called them mixed in with regular albums.
   2) Use the [Album Artist Auto] tag by leaving Album artist blank and MC automatically detects tracks with different artists  and fills in the [Album Artist Auto] field as "(Multiple Artists)". Then structure your "view as" categories as Album Artist Auto/Album. This will display your regular albums like an Artist/Album view (where album artist and artist are one and the same) plus show your compilations lumped together as (Multiple Artists) at the top of the screen.[/EDIT]


the simplest [edit- Custom] way for me is select all the individual tracks (your "singles") and in the Action Window > Tag > in the [Artist] field type "Singles". Assign whatever cover art you want and Job done.Note that you have created a fake artist called "Singles" but there's no rule against that.

 This is only relevant when looking at a Library which is grouped by [artists]/[album] If you look at the Library grouped by category [Album] then you wont see all the individulal artists but rather all the individual albums.

[DanoRoo]

Thanks Samson.  I'll follow your advise, but how do I navigate to the Action Window? Attempting to follow your advise, here is what I've done:
I right clicked on one of the single files and chose Locate > On Disc (inside media center) which allows me to view the entire list of singles that I want to consolidate.  But, when I select all the files, I see no option called "Action Window".  How do I apply the steps you suggested?  I apologize if these questions seem elementary, but I have very little experience with the functions of MC.

[Samson]

The action window is bottom left on the "Standard View" screen as shown in pic (click to enlarge).

 Click on "Tag" to show the tag window

You can see the fly out menu to show whatever tags you want.
(cont next post)

[Samson]

If you right click on a library top left of pic (highlighted) > customize view.

"View as" Categories are set up as [artist] then [album] in this view like yours?

on the top right are the "art icons" you mentioned for albums.They are thmbs of "cover art".

Cont next post

[Samson]

"View as" "categories" can also be changed to  "panes", another popular view. In the right top view you can see the two (a little confusingly ) pane's "categories". You can keep on adding to the left or right by right clickong in this area "add (pane) category to left or right"

So you can tag files in the pic 1 above by selecting one or multiple albums top right or one or multiple tracks bottom right.Tag away in the tag window bottom left.

You can do similar things tagging directly in the panes view but a little more complicated to explain right now.

(cont next post)

[Samson]

[EDIT - I stress this is not the standard way of dealing with compilations, I have also tidied up this post]

Going back to pic 1 above you can see I have an artist/ album view similar to your description. This is my desktop pc set up in early days and not exactly how I do it now on HTPC but it still works well I think. Others may chime in with alternatives.

Note I have a compilation album "A Woman's Heart". In this "artist/album" view it would normally show multiple instances of the same album, one for each artist (as neither of us desire).

So I named the [Artist] and [Album] fields (see bottom left of pic), " A Womans Heart" .

In addition I added "Mary Black" to the [Artist] tag   for the tracks with Mary Black,  "A Womans Heart;Mary Black". The colon allows tagging with more than one artist.

"Mary Black" will show up as a single thumbnail and clicking the thumb will open a window with ALL her albums INCLUDING a thumb for each compilation album she is in (opening to all her tracks on that compo album). Compilation albums will be shown once only in the main view.

Ther are a millions ways of organising media in MC. Now check out how clever Marco does it, http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68960.msg464065#msg464065

[Samson]

You can also tag the way you mentioned "locate on disc" but a bit messier showing non media files etc.

There is a "recently imported" under Playlists (top left of Standard View), if you imported your Singles windows explorer Directory then media files will be there in "recently imported" also (depending on time frame) and in a more consolidated way than scattered through an artist/album library, particularly as you have over 100 tracks to find. You can create an even better smartlist to polish this function even more to look at recent imports and facilitate tagging.

[jmone]

FYI, I'm a big fan of using Album Artist = (Multiple Artists) for this sort of management (see pic).  It is perfect for VA compilations (either purchased as this example is or one that you make yourself from various tracks)

[Samson]

Jmone is correct (he is annoying that way ..kidding  ).

[EDIT] I have edited my initial post to reflect this.


   

[Samson]

The problem with standard methods is no way of having ALL representations of an artist appearing under the one umbrella of their name. Albums are listed separate to compilations and not cross referenced. For example under artist, Mary Black,  all of her albums will be listed  but her tracks on compilation albums will not be referenced or grouped with her main albums. Apparently MC cannot link a track to multiple albums. You could duplicate the files or as a workaround assign more than one "artist" to the same track.(which is what i have done).
 

   

[csimon]

I have all my media arranged in MC18 library in the same fashion in which it's arranged on my hard drive.  Music>Artist>Albums.  But, there is one exception.  On my hard drive, I have one folder called "singles" which contains hundreds of individual songs by different artists.  When I imported my music, the contents of the singles folder was dispersed so that each single file shows up as it's own generic album art icon (and individual song) in the artists view of MC18.  How can I get this "singles" folder to be represented by a single icon in the artists window with the individual songs kept in that folder instead of dispersed among my list of album oriented artists? 

1. You could create a fake album called "Singles" by putting "Singles" into the Album tag for each of these files (you could even set up an auto-import rule that would do this automatically for those files). then, when you drill-down into an Artist, you get all their albums plus one called Singles which contains all the individual tracks that you mention.

2. I deal with this by having a separate custom tag called Medium into which I put Albums, Live Albums, Compilation Albums, 7" Singles, 12" Singles, CD Singles.  I've added this tag as another category in my View, i.e. my custom view is Album Artist followed by Medium followed by Album.  So when I drill down by Artist, I get all their works categorised by the various "mediums" first.  Because I don't want all their live albums and miscellaneous compilations mixed in with the studio albums, likewise the singles.

[jmone]

Jmone is correct (he is annoying that way ..kidding  ).

Can you speak to my wife?