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[sbens]

Hello,

I'm running JRiver Media Center version 20.0.62 on Windows. I've added a custom field to the library called "Artist Sort". I've created a custom view where:

Expression to group by: FirstNotEmpty([Artist Sort], [Artist])
Expression to display: [Artist, 1]

For bands, I leave Artist Sort empty. For people, Artist is say "Bob Marley", and Artist Sort is "Marley, Bob".

The "Expression to group by" works properly, and I get my artists sorted the way I'd like. However, the "Expression to display" doesn't have any effect. JRiver displays "Marley, Bob" instead of "Bob Marley". In fact, no matter what expression I type for "Expression to display", it has no effect. I've even tried things like [Bitrate], and it still displays the result of the group by expression.

I'm new to JRiver, so I feel like I'm missing something very basic. I'm out of ideas, so any pointers would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[thecrow]

When I enter an expression to customise the way Standard View presents Albums and add a separate expression to customise the text displayed. The text displayed is always as the original expression and not as that entered in the Expression to display box.
Is this a bug, or is there something wrong with my install, or am I doing something wrong?
Can anyone else confirm this behaviour?
Version 20.0.63

[thecrow]

As nobody has responded yet maybe I didn't explain it well.
With MC in Standard View (Ctrl + 1) on the left-hand tree click on Audio, then Albums, now right click on Albums and select Customize View, click Edit, change Type from Library field to Expression. In the Expression to group by box enter [Album][Channels] this will separate SACD albums containing a Stereo and Multichannel version into two separate albums.
Now as a test enter [Album] in the Expression to display box this should cause the album text to simply show the album name. In reality I want to display some more informative text but this should illustrate my point.
Click OK to return and choose to save as a copy.
If you check the text under each album you will see all album titles now have a number after their name which is the number of channels the album contains, this is incorrect as we have set this text to display only [Album].
Can anyone else confirm there copy of MC does the same and this is in fact incorrect behaviour.
Thanks

[Arindelle]

Hi

Seems to work for me. This is for a category type View right? Maybe there is a probelem with your expression?

You might want to try this differently too. Set up the view, leaving  the expression to display box empty. Go choose thumbnail text (from the drop down of the tab in the view) set up your expression there. Does it work?

Oh by the way, maybe you should download the newest version (20.0.87), I can't check 63 anymore

[thecrow]

Thanks for replying.

Yes it is for a category type view.

I don't see how it can be a problem with the expression as you can see in my example there is no code I am simply grouping by [album] and [channels] both of which were selected using the drop down as opposed to typing, and the to display expression is simply the [album] field again selected using the drop down not typed.

Trying it using thumbnail text does actually work correctly so I have a way forward thanks for that.

I am now using 20.0.87 but I see the same behaviour and I have tried a new trail on a different computer with a new library and I still see the same behaviour so I am puzzled that it works OK for you.

Thanks again

[Arindelle]

I think I see now what the issue is (I used other fields I only have 2 channels). The thumbnail text defaults to [Name] ... not to be consued with the field for the track name. This takes the highest level group, in your case the expression. So you would have to replace it in anycase ...So you change it to Album .. which of course defeat the purpose of displaying a different expression, if you leave the thumbnail expression blank, nothing will show up.  This is usually used for more complicated functions and pane views, and I would imagine theater veiws too; I'd stick with the thumbnail text for category views

On the other hand, not sure why you want do it this way unless you had a LOT of albums that were in both 2 channel and multichannel. If you have say 1000 CDs and only 80 are multi channel doesn't make sense to me.  I'd drill down from Channel to Album (probably adding Album Artist at the beginning or between the two) rather than using an expression if that were the case. The default [Name] for the thumbnail text would follow the drill down category(ies) and you can embellish with text to make it look better if it just yields a number. But I'm sure you have your reasons

[herr_schneider]

Hello all,

probably documented somewhere, but I can not get it to work nor did I find anything to explain it to me:

I have a custom tag that calculates the album artist sort based on several criteria.
Within a view scheme I have a category where I want this tag to be used as the "Expression to group by" and MCs default "Album artist (auto)" as the "Expression to display".

Example: Michael Jackson has a value of "Jackson, Michael" in my custom tag, The Jackson Five have "The Jackson Five" as value, knowing that MC takes care of the prefixes. What should be shown though in the panes is "Michael Jackson" and "The Jackson Five", but it shows the values from my custom tag.


Thanks.

[glynor]

I've actually bumbled about trying to get this feature working and not had much luck as well.  It would be nice if someone who knows could give us some tips.

On my long-term plan is to update the Media Views pages to have a new comprehensive Media View (aka View Schemes in old terminology) guide, but the stuff there currently is a bit stale.

I've been collecting reference links for this eventual project, and I'd add this one if someone were so kind.

[marko]

I'm not sure about this at all either.

I have managed to get this to work for movie box sets, where I use the album tag to organise them all.
I have been able to successfully set a category to group by of [album] and display "[album] (x films)" to show how many movies are in each box set.

But...

I do not know enough about this to call it a bug, or not, but if you set the sorting (under the "expression to display" field) to anything other than ascending or descending, it breaks the expression to display, causing it to display only the group by expression results.

-marko.

[Arindelle]

I can confirm what the OP is saying .. I thought this was just an issue with multiple entries and the ";" separator, but I just tried this with fields other than genre, album artist and artist and the display expression is not showing up. I remember a long time ago (version 16??) I used this a lot and seemed to work.

PS- Also tried Standard and theater modes. (the standard has something to do with the default use of [Name] which is not the field name, but the root category. The only work around seems to be in standard mode, using thumbnail text display, which of course is not going to work in Theater mode Views.

[Arindelle]

this is an old post I know, but I'm having similar issues with the "to display" box not being shown the group field is what you see. This is with expressions or simple field names too.

so friendly **bump** 

[Arindelle]

I'm relooking at this and now I think the OP is on to something as I just bumped another post on something similar ... the expression to display box doesn't appear to be working.

[Matt]

this is an old post I know, but I'm having similar issues with the "to display" box not being shown the group field is what you see. This is with expressions or simple field names too.

so friendly **bump** 

I'm not following what it is that isn't working.  Could you describe it in detail?  Thanks.

[Arindelle]

sure, let's use the Op's example as I use Artist Sort as a field too

so the idea is to group by this field. so instead of choosing the field directly he choose an expression, the wizard opens you put in lets say just  [Artist Sort] to make it easy, and in the expression to display you put in [Artist] (which btw gets converted to [Artist, 1]. see screenshot. The 2nd screen shot is the result.

In the View you get as an example Coltrane, John instead of John Coltrane.  The sort order is correct. But its displaying the "group" expression.  Marco also gave a more detailed  example in the other forum (slightly different though)

Playing with this the only work around I have found is to put an expression in the Thumbnail text display ... like for this example unswap([Name]). This works more or less, but not for theater view. The last screenshot is how it should look, where I messed with the thumbnail text.

Btw seeing [Name] in the thumbnail text is sort of confusing for some people. I've also tried this with other expressions and basically what shows is what is in the top box, not the "display expression".

[glynor]

There have been three or four posts about this recently.  If I get a chance, I'll find them and merge the threads.

[glynor]

Done.

I merged three separate threads on this same topic.  Matt, can you read through this and see if you can make out what is going on, and if not, ask for more detail?

It is a little confusing where people didn't quote since I merged three threads, but there was detail spread all over the place.

[Matt]

If I'm understanding correctly, the expression to display isn't used for thumbnail text.  You need to edit thumbnail text in the "Thumbnail Text..." editor.

[thecrow]

That's a succinct description of my confusion.

[Matt]

I should add that the "Expression to Display" is used in a pane list.  In that case, the text is defined by that.

In the case of thumbnails, the text is the thumbnail text expression.

[Matt]

One more point: there was a bug where the expression to display wouldn't be used if you picked a sorting other than ascending / descending in a pane.

That will be fixed in a coming build.

[Matt]

Just a note that the fix mentioned is public now.

[Arindelle]

I should add that the "Expression to Display" is used in a pane list.  In that case, the text is defined by that.

In the case of thumbnails, the text is the thumbnail text expression.

Well that's the first time that's been confirmed .. it not obvious.

I know this is important to a bunch of people. For database manipulation, creating playlists, tagging and maintenance Pane views are great, but for many people they use category views for playback. And often from Theater View and/or a remote app like JRemote. Thats one of the reason to use JRiver so you don't have to use a list type view.

This can get confusing to new users of course as there are three different configs that people have to do to use all three  modes. Happily you can import standard views into these. Nevertheless, some of the functionality is not available. (the show all for standard view that exists in theater view and the thumbnail text in theater views/Gizmo-type views are good examples). The later is what I'm referring to.

Now the same wizard does open up even though it ONLY works in a Pane view (I wasn't sure about this but it reminded me of how I used to be able to do some things). If I'm understanding how this works the thumbnail expression default to [Name] which is not the field "Name", but is rather a variable linked to the chosen category, right? Well you can't do that in theater view ... but you used to be able to under advanced=>File Caption (http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Theater_View#Advanced which still shows this)

I'm sure there are reasons why Panes do things that the other views can't, but using the wizard box for display for ALL views seems a lot simpler than merging the 3 views you have to make or at least configure for playback when you are not in front of a computer screen. The "expression to display box" is already there for all "modes" and would solve this issue and I believe be less confusing to people.

Otherwise semi-official a work-around where remote, theater and category views can display something other than the grouped expression would be more than welcome. Unfortunately, unless I'm doing something wrong, importing from standard views which can use the thumbnail expression, are not being ported over. Otherwise a quick fix might be to put back the old option "File Caption"??

Thanks in advance for looking at this

[Hendrik]

Category views in standard view and theater view support "Expression to Display" as well, and in Theater View the display name of individual files can be customized in the "Customize File Info Panel.." dialog (use "Manage" -> "Edit Template").
I use both features quite extensively in my Theater View setup.

[Arindelle]

Category views in standard view and theater view support "Expression to Display" as well

I'll have to double check this again Hendrik, but I found you actually CAN use the expression to display in theater veiw and was sure something got tweaked in the last couple of days  However, now I understand why this is messing up ... 1st as I posted in a simple screen shot in a category view higher up in the thread, in Standard mode this does not work. Its like Matt said above -- the thumbnail text takes over  - if you put the expression in the thumbnail text, it will work, otherwise it appears like nothing has changed.

What I was doing, however, was importing from Standard mode to theater mode, which I do all the time to save the view .... which in theory you are supposed to able to do

So what I'm getting now, (if I haven't made some crazy error that is):

- the expression to display box does not work in Standard view (this is not so bad, if you know what you are doing as you can use the thumbnail text expression); it will work for a Pane view in Standard mode
- the expression to display box works in Theater Mode only if you make that view for theater view and not if you import the view from standard mode
- At present, short of some Regex magic that I haven't figured out, the expression to display does not seem to observe the ";" as a separator.

Regarding the third observation, I will bring this up in another thread to stay on topic .. but what is also being asked in different posts and PMs is that multiple entries per field be split correctly for the display expression. As they are shown using just the grouped field (for list fields or fields like artist that are treated as lists - eg. John Coltrane; Duke Ellington splits in two --- Coltrane, John; Ellington, Duke does not if using the Artist field to display, even using a separate list field populated from [Artist], btw ).

If I'm missing something, please let me know

and in Theater View the display name of individual files can be customized in the "Customize File Info Panel.." dialog (use "Manage" -> "Edit Template").

ah ha this is good to know, never knew that one existed! thanks very much [/quote]

[Denti]

- At present, short of some Regex magic that I haven't figured out, the expression to display does not seem to observe the ";" as a separator.

Regarding the third observation, I will bring this up in another thread to stay on topic .. but what is also being asked in different posts and PMs is that multiple entries per field be split correctly for the display expression. As they are shown using just the grouped field (for list fields or fields like artist that are treated as lists - eg. John Coltrane; Duke Ellington splits in two --- Coltrane, John; Ellington, Duke does not if using the Artist field to display, even using a separate list field populated from [Artist], btw ).

This is a major issue that I would like addressed.

Though now I'm playing around with the Theater View "Customize File info panel" which I had never used before.

Now the same wizard does open up even though it ONLY works in a Pane view (I wasn't sure about this but it reminded me of how I used to be able to do some things). If I'm understanding how this works the thumbnail expression default to [Name] which is not the field "Name", but is rather a variable linked to the chosen category, right? Well you can't do that in theater view ... but you used to be able to under advanced=>File Caption (http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Theater_View#Advanced which still shows this)

Please please please make this available again. This would solve so many issues!!

[glynor]

Please please please make this available again. This would solve so many issues!!

The Caption settings are still there, and they're much more powerful than they used to be. You can set different captions based on any search, so different types of files can have different captions. Read this thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=85974.0

In particular this post:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=85974.msg591358#msg591358

You want this dialog:


If you haven't used the Customize File Info system in Theater View, then you have no idea what it can do.

[Arindelle]

ha I remember your post now, Glynor! Not too intuitive on how to get there, but hey  (oops I wasn't going to say that  )

Ok getting back to thumbnails and displaying an expression, lets say you want a Category type view in Standard, Theater, and Remote "modes"

in summary :

1- If you want an expression to display in a category view/Standard Mode you have to put it in using the expression box found in thumbnail text from the upper tab of the view itself

2- If you want to have the view in Theater mode you must manually enter it in the expression box in the normal dialogue from customize view; you cannot import it from the Standard View

3- For JRemote you must repeat step 2 under Media Network=>Advanced=>Gizmo Views

4- If one of these three views is changed you must change them all individually. And at this point there is no way to save theater and Gizmo type views. Short of a full restore, you have to repeat this again for remote clients, except for standard views (without expressions to display), where you can just copy the saved views to the proper directory.

Is this right? thanks in advance for a confirm so I don't sow confusion elsewhere

  I suppose it would be bad form to ask the "why" question?

[glynor]

I'm still holding out hope for:

Unified setup for Theater View, Gizmo and JRemote.

Also, still this:

I am way more on board with the change now than I was back then, but I'm still not entirely on-board with the way they decided to separate Theater's views from Standard's views.  It has given them additional flexibility to make changes to Theater View (and eventually Media Network) that don't correspond to Standard View.  And, I've gotten on board with the idea that you usually don't want these two view paradigms to work quite the same: separating Standard View from Theater View allows me to load my Standard Views up with lots of panes and category "tiers" that I'd never want to navigate through with my remote on the TV.

So, there's been a bunch of good.  But I'm not entirely convinced that the way they went about it was the right choice.  I still think having a section of the tree (under Services & Plugins would be my suggestion) where you configure these views would be a better system.  You could drag them around to reorder and nest them, and drag-copy/paste them to and from other sections of the tree like you can elsewhere, and you'd modify them by a mode-specific version of the Customize View dialog (so this would be familiar territory and you wouldn't have to learn a whole different paradigm to deal with the Standard Views versus the others.

[glynor]

I split out the discussion about how to get Artist Name Swapping to work in Theater View:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=97418.0

[Grenache]

Old thread, but while it works as intended in Theater View I still can't get this to work in Standard View.

Example: in the pane I want to have the artists sorted like "Beatles, The" but showing like "The Beatles". I've entered:

Expression to group by:

Code: [Select]

Clean([AlbumArtistSort])&datatype=[list]
Expression to display:

Code: [Select]

[Album Artist, 1]
...but the pane still lists the artists like "Beatles, The". Any ideas?

[Grenache]

I'm still holding out hope for:

Quote from: JimH on 09-07-2014, 17:08:56
Unified setup for Theater View, Gizmo and JRemote.

While I agree that it would be much less confusing and easier to handle, there are som complications. For example, in Theater View I'm using several formatted expressions like this one:

Code: [Select]

<font size="80">[AlbumShort, 1]<//font>
<font size="80" alpha="50">[AlbumReleasetypeYear, 1]<//font>
...while in nMedium Play (which uses the same views as for JRemote etc.) the formatting expressions shows up as text, so I have to simplify it to:

Code: [Select]

[Album, 1]
I really hope this "unified setup" doesn't mean we're losing the ability to format the views differently between Theater View on a big screen and the apps on different devices like tablets and phones.

[Arindelle]

Old thread, but while it works as intended in Theater View I still can't get this to work in Standard View.

...but the pane still lists the artists like "Beatles, The". Any ideas?

this has been fixed in version 37 for panes for info see this post http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102563.msg712224#msg712224 Also look at how you are treating Articles in your options, maybe?

However, this has not IMHO, been fixed to display split expressions (eg. multiple artist and album artist sorts using the semi-colon separator) .. see my screen shot near the bottom of the linked post. This fix apparently would be a difficult one.

[Grenache]

this has been fixed in version 37 for panes

You're right, thanks!

[Arindelle]

I really hope this "unified setup" doesn't mean we're losing the ability to format the views differently between Theater View on a big screen and the apps on different devices like tablets and phones.

What I really hope is that the worry to not break some functionality, does not supercede progress in other areas. In just continuing to add on options/fixes just to make one thing work, arguably leads to bloatware, and could make it more and more complicated to modernize the UI, standardize for cross-platform/universal apps et al.

I think it is one thing to not allow "over-riding" of views between modes, but this Unification IMO should be one of the biggest priorities. If, when you change a view in STandard mode, it automatically gets updated in Theater View, and remote views .. euh that's what I would like to see . Importing and exporting views should also be painless -- both for backups for new installations, when adding new clients to a LAN,  as well as sharing to others (here on the forum and friends and family set-ups).

Options to tweak views by mode, via the options ... sure keep it. But some "functionality" just does not work or does not work in the same way between modes  ... that, again IMO, is not normal and will eventually have to be addressed anyway to keep up with outside development, and I'm guessing to be able to have things like Theater Mode for Mac and Linux versions.

At the very least, with the exception of the "Pane" type view ... functionality should be unified and importable to all three "modes" in some way. If you change a view in one mode, you have to change them, manually, in all of them.

At present, you have the ability to import views from Standard View, but they will not all work (or won't work in the same way). Changes to make this work coherently should supercede eventual issues with external programs. (ok, again my opinion)

Options to tweak views by mode, via the options ... sure keep it. But some "functionality" just does not work or does not work in the same way between modes  ... that, again IMO, is not normal and will eventually have to be addressed anyway to keep up with outside development, and I'm guessing to be able to have things like Theater Mode for Mac and Linux versions.

[Grenache]

I think it is one thing to not allow "over-riding" of views between modes, but this Unification IMO should be one of the biggest priorities. If, when you change a view in STandard mode, it automatically gets updated in Theater View, and remote views .. euh that's what I would like to see . Importing and exporting views should also be painless

I have to agree on this. I just hope it will still be possible in some way to over-ride the unified views, for example adding formatting codes to the expressions where they are useful like in Theater View.

I realize now that I accidentally posted in an old 20 thread. Maybe this should be moved to the 21 forum (after you've deleted your duplicate paragraphs ;-)).

[Arindelle]

(after you've deleted your duplicate paragraphs ;-)).

thanks!! corrected