Media Center's Tree is constructed
like a series of folders in your filesystem, but these "folders" aren't just folders. Most of the items, including the Audio, Video, and Images "nodes" and the nodes underneath them, are basically like smart searches, which can filter your media files and display them in different ways. These nodes are called
Media Views, and they include most of the items in Media Center's Tree.
Unfortunately, the documentation on the wiki about customizing the Media Views is quite out of date. Though Marko does have a guide for Standard Media Views here (which is linked from the Wiki), which is mostly still applicable:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68960.0Two other things to note:
Locked Views: Some Media Views can be locked as explained recently here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=95513.msg658855#msg658855The default Views are locked, so that you don't accidentally mess them up. If you want to unlock them to modify them without the prompt, you can do so.
Tree Browsing Views: Views can be set to "Support Tree Browsing". This means that it will have "child nodes" that show up underneath it corresponding to the categories added to the View. The default Genres view is one of these. The [Genre] category is added (of course) to that view, so it shows each of the genres which appear in your Library below it in the Tree.
Since the Genres View also has
[Album Artist (auto)] and [Album] as added categories, then each genre node expands to reveal your imported Artists (via the Album Artist system), and then
their Albums:
So,
those items below Genres in the default setup are
not Media Views, but are "Category nodes" (I'm just making that name up). They are there because the Genres view has
Supports Tree Browsing enabled in its setup. They can be used to browse and filter your files by their properties (metadata tags). So, when you select one of them, it shows only those matching files in the File List on the right.
These Category nodes can
also be used to manage and re-tag your files in groups. So, selecting one of these nodes and renaming it, is the equivalent of selecting all of the individual files within and changing the [Genre] tag (or [Artist] or [Album]) in the Tag Action Window.