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[Wolcott]

I have 2 Cd's that contain the complete ballet Swan Lake.  I would like both Cd's to be ripped to one file so I could play the entire ballet with one click instead of having to open the second file from the second CD after the first file ends, and I am sure this has been answered before, but I couldn't find anything in the Wiki on it, and I couldn't figure out what to search for here in the forum.

[MrC]

Do you care if they are one file?  Or is the important thing that you can start playback of the entire album (both discs)?

[Wolcott]

My first choice is one file so I could see all the movements in one file and select specific pieces without having to flip between files/albums, but I could live with just being able to play the two files together, starting with the first cd and ending with the second.

[MrC]

I am confused by how you think you'll "see" all the movements in one file.  You're going to need separate titles/chapters if you want to label / play separate movements.  Otherwise, one file or many doesn't matter for gapless playback - one track will immediately follow another, without gaps, so the transitions are seamless.  And it doesn't matter how many physical files exist across albums either.

Some folks like to use a single file per album with CUE files.  Support has been troublesome according to reports and issues mentioned in the forum, but I don't know the state of CUE playback in recent MC versions (don't use it).

Most folks just rip to a lossless format such as FLAC, set the Album tag, and set the Disc # tag appropriately.  In your MC views such as Album, you'll see a single entry, and you can just hit Play.

[Wolcott]

Maybe the Disk # tag is the answer, although I don't remember seeing it.  I have several albums that are 2 cd sets.  When I rip them, each cd is listed as a separate album.  If I play a song from cd #1 and want to follow it with a song from cd #2 from the same set, I have to click on the 2nd album to see the song.  My goal is to have one album in the Album view that contains all the songs from both cds.  I do rip to FLAC format.  It would be great if the software realized the 2nd cd had the same title as the first cd and would create just one album for both cds.  Maybe it does, and I don't know how use it.

[mojave]

I have lots of 2-CD albums. I do the same as what MrC suggested to you and it works perfectly.

[MrC]

Look to the bottom left of the MC window, for Action Window.  Expand Tag.  Now you'll see the default tags for particular media types.  Disc # and Album will be there.  Select all the tracks for a single disc.  Check Disc #; it should have a single number, and not say [Varies].  If it does say [Varies], click-to-edit and enter a (disc) number. Do the same for the next disc in the album.

Now, select all the tracks for the album, all discs.  Examine the Album tag.  It should have a value (the album's title), and should not say [Varies].  If it says [Varies], change it to the album's name.

Now you should see, in the Albums view for example, a single entry.

[Wolcott]

Just to clarify, if I have an album called "Swan Lake" and it has 2 cds, and after I rip the disks I have two albums showing in the Album view in MC, with each album containing the songs from one cd only, I want to edit the tag entry called "Album" so both have exactly the same name (although they may already have the same name).  I assume one tag will have "Disk 1" and the other album tag will have "Disk 2".  If I change the tag that says "Disk 2" to say "Disk 1" than all the songs from disk 2 will be appended to the album with the tag that says "Disk 1".  Is that correct?

[MrC]

So long as the album title is the same, the collection of files will be grouped, since the view you are using groups by Album title.

Again, though, tag the Album as "Swan Lake", and set the Disc # field correctly to 1 and 2, for each disc, respectively.

[Listener]

Maybe the Disk # tag is the answer, although I don't remember seeing it.  I have several albums that are 2 cd sets.  When I rip them, each cd is listed as a separate album.  If I play a song from cd #1 and want to follow it with a song from cd #2 from the same set, I have to click on the 2nd album to see the song.  My goal is to have one album in the Album view that contains all the songs from both cds.  I do rip to FLAC format.  It would be great if the software realized the 2nd cd had the same title as the first cd and would create just one album for both cds.  Maybe it does, and I don't know how use it.

1. Rip each CD in the 2 CD set and set the same album tag with 1 file per track.  Set the Disk # tag to 1 for the 1st CD and to 2 for the 2nd CD.  If JRiver doesn't use the same album tag for both CDs, edit the Album tag before you start ripping the 1st CD.  If you have already ripped the CDs, you can edit the album field.

2. In the view you use to select files to be played, sort the files by Album and then track #.

If you select an album representing a 2 CD set, the tracks will be displayed in disk # and then track order.  If you click on play with all or none of the tracks selected, they will be played in the order displayed.

Bill
 

[Wolcott]

Mr C and Bill,
  The screen shot in Mr C's post is EXACTLY what I want.  I just can't figure out how to get there.  I am using MC 18.0.212.  I am including a couple of screen shots showing what I have.  I added "Disk #" since it wasn't part of the default tags.  They correctly show disc 1 and disc 2.  I changed the name of the album in the tags box by deleting the (CD01) and (CD02) part of the title, but that didn't change anything.  You can see the name of the file hasn't changed.  Do I need to go into windows explorer and change the file names?  You can see I have several multiple cd sets.  I would like to have one album called 'Round Midnight that contained the contents of both cds.  Now I have two albums, one for each cd.

[MrC]

Let's proceed this way.

Select the files for both of those discs, and use File > Export Playlist.  Select:

   Format: Text File (CSV delimited)
   Included Fields: All Fields
   Output Range: Selection

Save it to the Desktop, zip it, and attach it in a reply here.  I'll take a look at the data.

[Wolcott]

Thank you taking the time to look at my problem.  Here are the files

[MrC]

I'm not seeing anything wrong with the data.

Have you refreshed the view after making the changes to the album name?  Use F5.

Also, it appears from your screenshots and the two separate files attached, you're not aware you can select both album covers from the top categories, so that all album tracks appear in the file list at the bottom.  You can more easily select all tracks this way, and examine values such as Album in the Tag Action Window, or Export Playlist, or ...

[Wolcott]

  Amazing!  I had to close and open MC (for some reason F5 didn't work, but I'm using a wireless keyboard) and presto, I had one album instead of 2.  Thank you.  This is what I was trying to do.  Thank you again.
  Just out of curiosity, if I wanted to break them into 2 albums, would I select the songs from the first cd (click on the first song and shift-click on the last song) and just change the name of the album in the album tag?
  You were correct, I didn't know I could select more than one album at a time.  Does that mean MC will play all songs from all selected albums without stopping, meaning I won't have to select the first song in each album and click on the play button?  If true, that's really great because I could then put on music for the evening and wouldn't have to select the next album every hour or so.
  Both of these techniques seem really useful, but I couldn't figure out how to find the information without asking the forum.  Are these sorts of playback features described somewhere (which actually is my original question)?  I couldn't find it on the Wiki, and I couldn't find it searching the forum.

[MrC]

Good stuff.

Hidden in the recesses of the Wiki is an old, out of date, user manual.  Check the left side of the wiki.  It might help.

There are many ways to select and play, so its hard to describe all of them.  And there is a Double-click setting that acts on a logical grouping.  You might want to have your Categories up top grouped (like you do now) with a single entry for an album so that you can just click to play that album.  But you might like the File List below to grouped by Album - Disc # so that the discs are separated in the file list, and therefore, you can double click a track in one of the lists.

The default behavior is that Double Clicking an item will play all items in the clicked grouping.

Experiment, and ask questions when you need to.

[Listener]

Wolcott,

Some info that might help you:

1. Sometimes when you make a change to a tag value, MC doesn't react fully to the change right away.  It isn't really a mistake but rather a choice about how the user interface should work.  For example, when you edited the album tag removing the CD number, MC no longer had the old album value in its database.  However, if it immediately removed the album name and cover art from the list in the upper area and since no album was now selected, displayed all files from all albums, you might be confused about what happened.  Sometimes MC continues to show the old album tag vallue and cover art and list the contents of that album.  You see the same list of files that you saw before the album tag change.

MC may not fully update what it displays to reflect the tag value change until you leave the view and come back.

2. The Play button is overloaded.  That is, it has more than one function and at any one time, it may serve one purpose and not the other. 

If you click on the play button while MC is not playing anything, it starts playing the first track among those you have selected.  (If you haven't selected any files, it treats them as those all the files listed were selected.)  The other files selected are queued up to be played after the first tract is finished. 

Once MC starts playing a file, the play button works as a pause/stop button.  (Like a tape recorder.)

However, you can select some files, right click with the mouse over one of those files, and choose "Play" or "Add to playing now".  Chosing "Play" causes MC to immediately replace the track currently playing by the first file in the group you selected and replace any tracks in the queue by the rest of the saelected tracks.  Choosing "Add to playing now" causes the selected tracks to be queued for playback after everything already in the queue.

As MrC said, Experiment.

Bill