INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 21 for Windows => Topic started by: cochinada on April 17, 2016, 08:30:28 am
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Hi,
Because I have more than 4000 CD's I've reorganized my entire collection in the following structure:
D:\music\Popular\(Various Artists)\[album]
D:\music\Popular\1-E\[Artist]\[album]
D:\music\Popular\F-O\[Artist]\[album]
D:\music\Popular\P-Z\[Artist]\[album]
and
c\(Various composers)\[album]
D:\music\Classical\A-D\[Composer]\[album]
D:\music\Classical\E-M\[Composer]\[album]
D:\music\Classical\N-Z\[Composer]\[album]
But now after importing and defining two customized views, one for 'Popular' and another for 'Classical' with View as Category and Sort Categories in this order: Location, File Path D:\music\Popular and D:\music\Popular respectively, I see on the tree on the left 'All Locations' and 'Unassigned' on each of my two custom views and on the main window 'Unassigned' but not 'All Locations'. 'Unassigned' is present also on Theater view.
I noticed that on 'Popular' view 'Unassigned' means all my classical albums and on 'Classical' view all the popular albums. This makes no sense at all because after all I have these files on different folder structures and I have explicitly indicate where to get the files from on each group. 'Classical' should not even be aware off the albums from 'Popular' and vice versa.
How can I get rid of this nuisance, both on the three and on the main window, including Theater view?
Thanks in advance
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Being focused on folder based organization is inherently limiting. It also causes these kinds of configuration issues: You have to do special things to force MC into your folder based organization. It can definitely be done. But you should consider that MC doesn't need folders at all to do really great organization. You can simply do categories by Artist then Album. Or Composer then Album. No need to specify folders as a category.
What you would do instead filter your top level views by Genre. Your Classical view would be [Genre]=Classical . Your popular view would be [Genre] "is not" "Classical" . This is easy to set up and it won't rely upon your folders at all; it will use the tags inside each file.
But enough about telling you about a different way to do it. Let me answer your actual question. To filter your top level views so that they only show specific folders:
1. <right click on view> Customize view
2. Settings > Included Files > set rules for file display
3. Go to a blank rule at the top and add:
[filename (path)] "contains" "your folder path name here"
4. click OK several times to get all the way out.
The folder path in step 3 should be your top level folder for Classical or your top level folder for Popular respectively.
Good luck.
Brian.
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Hi Brian,
I'm almost there. I did what you told also on Theater view settings and got rid of this 'Unassigned' once and for all (I hope).
However, 'All locations' is still present on the three. Anyway of getting rid of this as well?
There are several reasons I've divided my collection this way.
1. Classical and Popular music division will allow me quickly and in an organized way to locate any folder on windows explorer for management purposes.
2. As I have many CD's, subdividing each kind of music in 3 groups plus the respective 'various ...' will make it easier and quicker to navigate in Theater view.
3. My Classical music collection contains many different genres, like for instance, chamber, symphony, romantic, Baroque, medieval, contemporary, etc so sorting by genre simply wouldn't work in my case. I also don't want to mix all albums in the same view.
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However, 'All locations' is still present on the three. Anyway of getting rid of this as well?
As far as I know the "All" at the top isn't removable. It shows up for any kind of view. I don't use the tree at all, so I never really noticed it before.
There are several reasons I've divided my collection this way.
If your method works for you, I'm happy. Just know that MC can do a lot more than just display by folder. Folders are really good to have for disk organization. But they are a crutch if that's the only organizational system you have. MC can do much more.
Enjoy. :)
Brian.
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I read this thread with interest and would like to ask for a solution where the media in two folders should be shown rather than from only one folder.
The solution below will show media from one folder. Adding a second rule pointing to a second folder is not working at all. For it to work there would be need for an "or" between the two rules i suppose.
Can't Think of any other solution and would be glad if anyone could help.
Thanks
Andi
1. <right click on view> Customize view
2. Settings > Included Files > set rules for file display
3. Go to a blank rule at the top and add:
[filename (path)] "contains" "your folder path name here"
4. click OK several times to get all the way out.
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The solution below will show media from one folder. Adding a second rule pointing to a second folder is not working at all. For it to work there would be need for an "or" between the two rules i suppose.
You can make an OR rules in the editor by opening the Import/Export tab at the bottom left corner. An OR rule in MC looks like this:
([filename (path)] = "C:\Music" or [filename (path)] = "D:\some\other\music")
Note the outer parenthesis which are necessary to make the OR condition work.
Brian.
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How can I go to level albums and sort them by 'Year - Album'? I had this working but must have done something meanwhile and now I cannot do it anymore...
I have for instance these folders:
d:\music\popular\pink floyd\'album a' where 'album a' is from 2000
d:\music\popular\pink floyd\'album b' where 'album b' is from 1990
d:\music\popular\pink floyd\'album c' where 'album c' is from 1995
I've set a view as:
- Location (d:\music\popular)
- Expression to group by [Year - Album]
and set rules for file display as:
Filename (path) starts with D:\music\popular (this will hide the 'unassigned' albums)
At Options/Theater view I set the same things but I still see my albums ordered alphabetically and no information from Year. :-\
I wanted to have these sorted as below:
'1990 - album b' '1995 - album c' '2000 - album a'
but JRiver shows
'album a' 'album b' 'album c'
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if i go into Theatre view and set a view (i called it year-album)
then in the add/edit/remove menu, add location (for example d:\popular) and choose sort by date (oldest first)
then add another library field below
Year - Album
(it's a stock field) and sort ascending
now when i go to theatre view and take a look, i get Genre as the first menu, when i choose a genre i get the albums listed by date then album name (you could do date then artist then album as well i'm sure)
does that go more what you need?
there are quite a few ways of doing this...
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Thanks. I did like you suggested but this created a new issue and I still can't see the Year displayed. :-\
The new issue is that now, I don't have the artists sorted alphabetically anymore on the first 'level' and when I go to next 'level' (e.g. d:\music\popular\artist x) I do see the albums sorted by year but like I said I see only the name of the album instead of year - album.
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ok i tried another
choose album artist (or artist whatever you like) and sort ascending
next add library field [year-album] and sort date (oldest)
in the rules for file display, put your d:\popular
what this gives me is an alphabetical listing of artists, and when i choose an artist i get year-album sorting
edit: i guess i need to ask...are all your albums tagged in [date]?
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Nothing changes...
Yes I have all my albums tagged. I see a 'Date' tag on the standard view and also in the Theater View when I select any album and track.
I even tried to change expression to [Date][Album] but it is useless...
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That's weird...I explained what I did (maybe not well...screenshot below) but I get exactly the results as screenshots
There must be something else going on
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Ok, now we're almost there! It's my fault as I didn't explain one other thing because I was trying to leave this simpler but the truth is I have another level as below:
d:\music\popular\(soundtracks)\album
d:\music\popular\(various artists)\album
d:\music\popular\1-E\artist\album
d:\music\popular\F-O\artist\album
d:\music\popular\P-Z\artist\album
So as you can see I have the albums divided in 5 groups to make it easier to navigate and select. For instance I'll know exactly where to look for soundtracks not needing to know the artist. The same goes for compilations where I look for the album instead of the artist and then album.
Now I've deleted the d:\music\popular from the list and left it only as a rule for file display. I have only these two items on the list as you: Album artist (auto) and Year - Album (oldest first) and it's working!
However... I now don't have my 5 groups anymore nor can I select a soundtrack or compilation in an easy way. ::)
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there's probably a more elegant way to do this, but...
if you make a new custom field (call it [grouping] or whatever)
in that field you could put [complilation] or [soundtrack] or [1-E]...you get the drift. it would be quite easy to mass tag your existing music and even put in auto import rules to fill this field automatically based on which folder the files reside in
now in the theatre view, before [album artist] you'd put [grouping]
so now the top view you should see the groups, then album artists, then year-album
i did a quick test and indeed this works great. the screenshot below is the top view (the grouping tag, mine was called test6...note i tagged 4 albums for the test) and when you drill in, you get album artists alphabetically, and when drilling in there you get the year-album
i don't use theatre view a whole lot, but i just tagged 40,000 files with their "subgenre" directory structure which gave me a very nice view in theatre view that i will be playing with. i used [test6]=filefolder([filename (path)],3) which for my structure gives me the main subgenre directory. took about 5 minutes and looks great
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I apologize but I'm not experienced with JRiver so I'll have to ask some basic questions for sure...
if you make a new custom field (call it [grouping] or whatever)
How do I do that?
in that field you could put [complilation] or [soundtrack] or [1-E]...you get the drift. it would be quite easy to mass tag your existing music and even put in auto import rules to fill this field automatically based on which folder the files reside in
Sounds great. If I understood it is possible for JRiver to automatically tag each track (?) using this custom tag I've created above, based on the folder it resides in. Just don't know how to do it.
i don't use theatre view a whole lot, but i just tagged 40,000 files with their "subgenre" directory structure which gave me a very nice view in theatre view that i will be playing with.
Do you mean you use yet another level of folders called "subgenre"?
i used [test6]=filefolder([filename (path)],3) which for my structure gives me the main subgenre directory. took about 5 minutes and looks great
What does 'filefolder([filename (path)],3)' do?
BTW I really would like to sort my albums according to the folders and not the tags for a very good reason and then being able to display it like 'Year - Album'. Unfortunately I came to the conclusion that once you define as first criteria something like Location file path... it goes all the way to the end and it doesn't matter what criteria you define afterwards. That is, in my case will sort 1st by Artist and then by Album because that's how I've organized my folders. Then it is already too late to try to sort by Year - Album even if I define that as my second criteria.
The reason I would like to sort according to my structure instead of the tags is because many double or triple albums have different titles and/or different artists making it close to impossible to group all as one if I chose to sort by tags but straightforward if I sort by location.
Is there any way to achieve this AND display as Year - Album at the same time?
I understand this thing about the custom group is a different issue and it is independent of my main goal.
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Like blgentry said, sorting by location isn't leveraging the power of the database
However, you can do it by the method I mentioned. I'm not accessible to my PC right now but I'll post a step by step when I have a second. You will need either
A) custom tags
Or
B) change your tagging now to take the odd albums into account
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When you have a question, please try a search. I just searched for JRiver custom field at google and found this link at the top:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Fields
Custom fields are explained there.
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i'll try my best to do it in a short time. what we are doing here is turning the "location" into an actual tag which allows us to use the database
in standard view:
go to tools>options>library&folders>...manage library fields
click "add new field". give it a name (i'm going to call it "file location" since grouping is already a main tag field)
make sure "user data" is clicked and the data type is "string", and that the relational field reads "store one value for each album"
click ok to save
now go into a standard view that shows the location.
pick one locations (let's start with d:\music\popular\(soundtracks))
select ALL the files in this folder, and edit the tags
find the new "file location" tag
type (soundtracks) and push enter. all the files in that folder will now have that tag value
now in tools>options>theatre view, go to that view we made for year-album
on the right side select add, and choose the new library field "file location"
move it to the top, so you should have
file location
album artists
year-album
for the moment, in the "set rules for file display" we will leave the location settings on, although later when all the files are tagged we will be able to get rid of that
now you should see in the theatre view:
top view will have the categories (soundtracks) and (unassigned)
if this is working, go back into another location (for example d:\music\popular\(various artists)\album) and do the same process, but now instead of (soundtrack) enter (various artists), or (1-E)...you get the drift
now each time you check theatre view you will have more categories in the top view
once you select one of those, you'll have an alphabetical album artist
once you select one of those, you'll have the albums by year-album in date order
try it one at a time so you can see what's happening. if this view is close to what you want, then we can start to work on the other stuff like auto-tagging etc.
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Thank you very much for this thorough step by step procedure. :)
I will test it as soon as I get home.
I only anticipate a problem with my rogue albums, so to speak. How will it work with albums as below which are too many?
D:\music\popular\(1-E)\Claude Challle\Buddha-bar X\CD1
D:\music\popular\(1-E)\Claude Challle\Buddha-bar X\CD2
where for instance the first album is called 'Buddha-bar X - Dinner' and the second 'Buddha-bar X - Party'
What I would like to see after navigating into (1-E) and 'Claude Challe' is just one album called 'Buddha-bar X' (defined by it's folder name) that contains two CD's and not two separate albums on 'Claude Challe' level, one called 'Buddha-bar X - Dinner'' and another called 'Buddha-bar X - Party' as if they were independent. Please note that I've tagged disc# 1 and disc# 2 respectively.
I'm afraid this will show two independent albums because we are sorting by 'album artists', or am I wrong? Perhaps we need also to create a second custom tag for album name based on location, but here I think we need to resort to auto-tagging for sure. Then, to make things even more challenging, some albums are a single CD in which case the better name to display on album level would be the actual tag instead of the folder name. This seems close like mission impossible to me... :-\
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If the album name is Buddha bar - disc X there will be a problem
If the album name is Buddha bar it will show correctly
Your discs should not be tagged as separate albums (first case), since they are not separate albums. My multi disc albums are in folders for disc 1/2 but they are tagged correctly (album name the same and disc#nthat changes)
Many things can be accomplished here, just try what I gave you and whatever needs fixing we can work on. MC has a powerful expression language and advanced tagging features that make many crazy things possible
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If the album name is Buddha bar - disc X there will be a problem
If the album name is Buddha bar it will show correctly
Your discs should not be tagged as separate albums (first case), since they are not separate albums. My multi disc albums are in folders for disc 1/2 but they are tagged correctly (album name the same and disc#nthat changes)
Many things can be accomplished here, just try what I gave you and whatever needs fixing we can work on. MC has a powerful expression language and advanced tagging features that make many crazy things possible
I will try in an hour or so.
Concerning the albums this is just an example among many of how double albums can have different names, not because I decided to be creative but because they really have different names and I wanted to be precise.
See this (https://www.discogs.com/Ravin-Buddha-Bar-X/release/1462363). CD1 is called 'Xiangqi' and CD2 'Weiqi'. Do you say I have to drop these names? :-\
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^ Regarding albums with individual titles for each disc: I don't have many of these, but those names get in the way for me, so I've been discarding them. But what if they are important to you? What do you do with them? If you add them to the album title, then you end up with one album name per disk like "album name (disc name)". Is it one album or is it two? I think we agree that it's one album with individual disc names.
If I were interested in preserving this information, I'd make a new library field called something like [Album sub title] or [Disc name] or [Disc subtitle]. Then I'd tag the individual discs with their disc titles. Finally, I'd figure out where I wanted this information displayed. Probably in the main display up top that shows song name, artist name, etc. I'd put this disc title up there somewhere probably as part of the album area with parenthesis around it like: Buddah-Bar X (Weiqi) . Of course the display would show which disc was playing at any given time and it would not show parenthesis for discs that did not have a [Disc Name] field.
This is another example of why JRiver's library fields (tags) are a more flexible, more consistent way of organizing media, rather than relying upon the file system structure alone.
Brian.
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I will try in an hour or so.
Concerning the albums this is just an example among many of how double albums can have different names, not because I decided to be creative but because they really have different names and I wanted to be precise.
See this (https://www.discogs.com/Ravin-Buddha-Bar-X/release/1462363). CD1 is called 'Xiangqi' and CD2 'Weiqi'. Do you say I have to drop these names? :-\
I have some of those, I use another field to put those in and display them when they are there using "expressions"
So I would have Buddha bar X as the album, and xianqi as another field that would only display if it was not empty (like Brian mentions)
Like I said, try this out and we can get more advanced later! Best to get close to what you desire and move forward from there.
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Ok guys, sorry for the delay but I had to tweek the settings in order to give better results. for instance I defined a category apart 'Soundtracks' as here I don't want to sort by artist nor view the year of the album. I just want to sort by album alone.
Here are my current settings and (anticipated) problems with the respective displays:
Settings for 'Soundtracks'
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1482/26056835533_4573d23675_b.jpg)
And result... (ok)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1444/26387713370_1f14981ea9_b.jpg)
Settings for 'Popular'
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1494/26567594132_18693db11a_b.jpg)
And result... (ok)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1622/26387715640_604aa2e578_b.jpg)
(P-Z) and all is fine...
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1603/26056836063_a3e639d07d_b.jpg)
'Pink Floyd' also fine...
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1529/26567596052_99bc368eb5_b.jpg)
Now comes the problems...
under (0-E)\Claude Challe. As you see several albumns have different names and appear separated like '1997 - Lover Dose - Action/Seduction', '2000 - Buddha Bar II - Dinner/Party', etc.
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1511/26387711060_394be42e55_b.jpg)
same kind of issues with (Various Artists)...
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1509/26567592322_558d31f75b_b.jpg)
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well you're getting closer...
we are at a stage now where to make it exactly as you want, you'll have to change your ideas on the tagging and presentation and do some work. i'm happy to help if you're interested in putting in the work.
your albums aren't tagged super great (buddha bar - amnesty for one, buddah bar presents...amnesty for the other) that's one start point. to show albums they have to be named properly...which in my opinion with any nice collection they should be anyways (but i'm an obsessive tagger :)
this involves (at least one) more custom field and a few small expressions. i have a field called [secondary album info] for remaster information, so i'll use that as an example. you may have one called [disc title] or something...
in the first screenshot you see the albums by "real name", then the second is a drill down showing a breakout for a case where i have two albums with the same name, which is how yours would ideally be structured. is this what you are looking for? mine is designed to allow for remastered versions but it's the same idea (same album name but more than one part to the album...)
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Hi,
I'm not afraid of doing some extra work. After all I've being doing that for months now, ripping, tagging and reviewing more than 4000 CD's.
So, the idea of creating yet another custom tag called [CD name] for instance and filling it doesn't scare me too much if it gets the job done.
I know about these buddha-Bar albums, they are a pain in the ass quite frankly. I have more than 20 albums of these and the problem is that not only they are compiled by different album artists like Claude Challe, Ravin, David Visan, etc but I have also these weird cases like you mentioned where they are not compiled by any particular artist. Therefore after putting much thought I've decided to put these in category (Various artists) and the 'normal' ones on the 'Claude Challe', 'Ravin, etc, respective folder. That's why I have several 'Buddha-Bar' in different places but that's unavoidable.
So, my goal here is just to group all double, triple, quadruple, whatever albums under one common name: album.
Then when I dig in I want to see all the individual CD's with their respective names, in the line of what you showed with the Black Sabbath.
That's all. I will not go as far as trying to group different versions of the same album and I do have many MFSL versions for instance, but although I'm a perfectionist, I'm not on obsessive level yet. ;D
So, should I create another custom tag called [CD name] and start filling it manually for all albums that have CD names as well?
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yes, create a custom tag. tag a few files with it (some that have this double naming thing, and a few that don't so we can see the changes).
now, in the theatre view options, first thing is get rid of ALL the location stuff. for the rules for file display, use
[file group location] is not <empty>
(why? because searching by disk is slow, and we are trying to move to a tag based system anyways. this is better in the end)
now, you want to have in the details window
file group location
album artist (or however you want to sort)
year-album
expression
disc # (i added this to my test view for those albums that are simply disc 1, disc 2 etc. you don't have to use it)
the expression will be (copypasta):
=if(!isempty([file group location]),[year]-[album]-[file group location],[year]-[album])
what it says, is IF [file group location] is NOT EMPTY, then make sure we use that tag in the title. IF it IS EMPTY, then just use the normal [year]-[album]
try this out with a group of files (try to vary the files between groups and stuff so we can see how it looks) and let us know what you would like different.
this exact code is what give me the views as in the black sabbath screenshots (the main album name first, then inside that is the split names)
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Thanks! I have just two questions for now:
yes, create a custom tag. tag a few files with it (some that have this double naming thing, and a few that don't so we can see the changes).
For the double albums with no CD names how do I tag it? Shouldn't I leave this empty?
the expression will be (copypasta):
=if(!isempty([file group location]),[year]-[album]-[file group location],[year]-[album])
I believe you made a copy-paste error. Don't you mean this?
=if(!isempty([file group location]),[year]-[album]-[CD name],[year]-[album])
And isn't year-album here redundant?
"file group location
album artist (or however you want to sort)
year-album
expression"
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Thanks! I have just two questions for now:
For the double albums with no CD names how do I tag it? Shouldn't I leave this empty?
yes, leave this one empty! just tag the ones that have the name that you want
I believe you made a copy-paste error. Don't you mean this?
i did make an error, but i meant this (nice catch btW)
=if(!isempty([CD name]),[year]-[album]-[CD name],[year]-[album])
And isn't year-album here redundant?
"file group location
album artist (or however you want to sort)
year-album
expression"
no, it's not redundant. what it means is, as we drill down
level 1 - the grouping (1-E), etc.
level 2 - artist listings
level 3 - year - album
level 4 - ONLY SHOW this level IF CD NAME is NOT EMPTY, otherwise show the track listing
it's working great on my end exactly like this. here's another few screenshot of mine, showing a few different levels
artists
now drill into the artist (metallica) showing a few "main album names"
now drill into one that i only have one album of the same name (track listing)
now drill into one that i have a remastered version (shows two albums)
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How do I create the custom tag [CD name]?
If I do it as my file group location it won't let me define more than one value for the same CD. :-\
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what do you mean by that?
you will now have two custom fields [file group location] and [CD Name]
create CD Name the same way you did the other one....
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what do you mean by that?
you will now have two custom fields [file group location] and [CD Name]
create CD Name the same way you did the other one....
I solved it. I meant the tag cannot be created with relational field "store one value for each album". I went for "Not relational...".
Here are my print screens. Again had to do some tweaking because of Soundtracks.
We have a problem as the double CD's with empty [CD name] don't show like CD1 and CD2 but instead as one CD only. Nevertheless it is a double Cd and not a single and should be displayed accordingly.
Let the images speak for themselves...
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1453/26679351665_1d6f788b07_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1591/26679351485_aface36cd3_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1659/26679351305_204d2c20d0_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1452/26679351805_3abdd5c66f_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1707/26075254723_55f57406ab_b.jpg)
ok
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1623/26679352005_fc7f131298_b.jpg)
Not ok
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1715/26075257673_90ee7c5d64_b.jpg)
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this is where the disc # comes into play
file group location
album artist (or however you want to sort)
year-album
expression
disc #
when this is in there, i get as per the screenshot
you could also use an expression - disc # gives us literally the disc #. for the expression you could write =CD[disc #] or however you would want that displayed
you could also do this by tagging all of your double discs (that don't have a name) with "disc 1" "disc 2" etc. which would then display them with the [CD Name] rule
otherwise it's looking pretty good to me :) but you're the one who knows what you want in the end. once you've tagged enough files that you're satisfied it's time to work on automating some of the tagging and stuff!
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Great! I've used the expression with CD[Disk #] and worked like a charm. ;D
Now I have to review all my CD's to fill this new custom tag. Hopefully there might be only a few dozens or a couple of hundreds at most... ::)
Do you think there might be any way to do this automatically?
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Not for cd's with the same name
You could fill [cd name] with disc # tags automatically but there no way for MC to know if an album has the same name and is supposed to have a different disc name
You can narrow your search by looking only for albums that have a disc # but that assumes your multi-named albums have disc #'s
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Not for cd's with the same name
You could fill [cd name] with disc # tags automatically but there no way for MC to know if an album has the same name and is supposed to have a different disc name
You can narrow your search by looking only for albums that have a disc # but that assumes your multi-named albums have disc #'s
Actually the only albums that don't have a disc# are the single CD's because all the others have indeed disc# so perhaps I can take advantage of that at least for listing and see which ones do I need to edit.
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In playlists, right click > add smartlist
For the rules, put disc # is not <empty>
Now all your multi disc albums show up. At least you'll have to sort through less stuff
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Thanks for the tip! It helped a lot. I've finished tagging all multiple CD's and everything seems to be ok.
Now I have the Classical albums. Here my goal is simpler as I don't want to see them sorted by Year-Album but just by composer/albums or (various composers)/albums.
I have a similar structure as bellow:
d:\music\classical\(Various Composers)\Albums
d:\music\classical\(A-E)\composer\Albums
d:\music\classical\(F-O)\composer\Albums
d:\music\classical\(P-Z)\composer\Albums
So far I've been using my not so efficient Location with D:\music\classical and it works fine.
Should I change this as well? Bear in mind that all classical files have tag Location Group empty.
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if you like how it's working, i'd leave it alone. the "speed gain" is measured in computer time, not real time
now...how is your import set up? do you have auto import on any folders?
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OK. What do you mean? Import of what? Tags? I didn't import any on JRiver. I used EAC to rip and imported via freedb or something like that. Unfortunately I had to edit almost all.
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no i mean how did you get the files into JRiver?
do you use a "watched folder" tools>import>configure auto import?
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Ah yes I do. D:\music
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ok
well...if you split that out, so you watch each individual folder (popular, 1-e, etc) you can have MC automatically assign the [file group location] tag
you could do it without splitting the folders out as well, that would take quite the expression (maybe i can figure it out...)
so, when you put a file into that folder, it fills out that tag for you right away.
edit: leave your import as it is (d:\music)
go to any view that shows all your files. right click in the columns and add expression column, then in the window paste this
=ifelse(isequal([filename (path)],soundtrack,7),soundtrack,isequal([filename (path)],1-E,7),1-E,isequal([filename (path)],F-O,7),F-O,isequal([filename (path)],P-Z,7),P-Z,isequal([filename (path)],Various,7),Various Aritists)
we do this in a view first to make sure the code is working :)
what you should see is in this new column, the file path should make it show what you want in the file group field. if it's working, we'll modify it to go into your import rules, and then you'll never have to tag this yourself again
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I don't know but I think it didn't work or has it?
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1644/26700137195_c99c0649d1_b.jpg)
I've entered this expression (with or without '=' the result is the same):
=ifelse(isequal([filename (path)],(Soundtracks),7),(Soundtracks),isequal([filename (path)],0-E,7),0-E,isequal([filename (path)],F-O,7),F-O,isequal([filename (path)],P-Z,7),P-Z,isequal([filename (path)],Various,7),(Various Artists))
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you didn't copypasta ;)
you can't have the brackets around (soundtracks) or (various artists)
the code is already accounting for brackets and/or capitals, etc. so it's just looking for the path
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I was playing the smart ass ;D
Now I copypasta and... Success!!! ;D
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1689/26700486545_2ca14be63c_b.jpg)
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ok cool
now, go in to tools>import>configure auto import
select your drive, and edit
select add for "apply these tags"
for field, select your [file group location] field
then paste the expression into the box
now, all your files will self tag when you put them into the correct folders!
edit: i know you had some brackets in there...try this code for some exactness i think it should work
=ifelse(isequal([filename (path)],soundtrack,7),(soundtrack),isequal([filename (path)],1-E,7),1-E,isequal([filename (path)],F-O,7),F-O,isequal([filename (path)],P-Z,7),P-Z,isequal([filename (path)],Various,7),(Various Artists))
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Now playing the smart ass payed off. 8)
I've changed the expression to this:
=ifelse(isequal([filename (path)], Soundtracks,7), /(Soundtracks/), isequal([filename (path)],0-E,7),0-E, isequal([filename (path)],F-O,7),F-O, isequal([filename (path)],P-Z,7),P-Z, isequal([filename (path)],Various,7), /(Various Artists/))
but I need to change it further and add '(' also to '0-E', etc...
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1717/26634925311_87c7b147f2_b.jpg)
But now I hesitate before applying what you said because of my d:\musica\classical folder
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1654/26607910652_7d66d10643_b.jpg)
Remember I didn't tag File Group Location except under d:\musica\popular\..., so all files under d:\musica\classical don't have any value and the problem is that they have the same structure as Popular. I don't want to end up tagging a classical album with (F-O) or something...
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in your first post, you posted some locations
D:\music\Popular\(Various Artists)\[album]
D:\music\Popular\1-E\[Artist]\[album]
D:\music\Popular\F-O\[Artist]\[album]
D:\music\Popular\P-Z\[Artist]\[album]
and
c\(Various composers)\[album]
D:\music\Classical\A-D\[Composer]\[album]
D:\music\Classical\E-M\[Composer]\[album]
D:\music\Classical\N-Z\[Composer]\[album]
there didn't seem to be overlap (1-E, versus A-D for example)
if a file doesn't have a place in the expression, that tag will simply remain blank
of course, if you chose you could easily expand the expression to include the classical stuff
if you were not entirely truthful about your file paths :) we can deal with that as well, just let me know
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You are right! I came to the same conclusion but had to change 'various' to 'various artists' because otherwise it would match with 'various composers'.
Here is the final expression:
=ifelse(isequal([filename (path)], Soundtracks,7), /(Soundtracks/), isequal([filename (path)],0-E,7),0-E, isequal([filename (path)],F-O,7),F-O, isequal([filename (path)],P-Z,7),P-Z, isequal([filename (path)],Various Artists,7), /(Various Artists/))
and the setting on the import:
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1474/26095451664_26a742ca37_b.jpg)
Looks cool. 8)
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glad it's working out!
i've never been a fan of graphic views for audio (i have too many CD's) but this thread finally got me to make a few test views and i ended up really liking the idea of a "fake directory structure", so now i have my own really nice theatre view and i'm quite enjoying it.
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Glad that you have also gained from my so many questions and doubts!
I too at the beginning didn't like how the theater view looked but it grows on you, particularly when it is well organized. I have a little over 4000 CD's but with this kind of sorting and also 'Genre classical' and 'Genre Popular' that I still need to review it is real easy to find any particular album. For me it isn't very useful to have a main view sorted by Album at first level and surely not for classical music where I see myself navigating primarily through 'Classical' which uses Location and it happens to be organized by Composers as I want.
Then eventually I might be looking for a particular genre, let's say 'Symphonies', on which case I would filter by Genre and then by Composer and Album. Here I might have a problem because I cant use Location anymore for sorting. Instead I have to resort to 'Album' and because I have lots of multiple CD's that don't have [CD name] I expect some issues...
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I'm about to make a change in what concerns how my Soundtracks are organized. I noticed by 'accident' that I have one album from Pink Floyd that also happens to be a Soundtrack. I Never saw or heard anything about this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_%28soundtrack%29) movie but nevertheless it is still a soundtrack.
So, after much pondering I decided that it makes much more sense not to have a specific Soundtrack folder but keep those on the respective Artist folder or (Various Artists), whichever applies. So, first immediate change is that I won't be having File Group Location = (Soundtracks) any more and need to change wherever that appears. I will also need to physically move the folders under (Soundtracks) to their respective Artist folder (fortunately I have already set this auto import tagging so it is a good time to test it).
However... I'm wondering how this will work when I select 'Popular' View or 'Soundtracks'. I'm also considering excluding Genre Soundtrack from my 'Genre Popular' custom view so I have three different views to make it work.
Desired behavior and possible implementation:
1) 'Popular' - See all albums including soundtracks organized by Artists and sorted by Year excluding classical music. For instance I will be able to see this soundtrack under 'pink Floyd'.
sort by:
File Group Location
Album Artist (Auto)
Expression =if(!isempty([CD name]),[year]-[album]-[CD name],[year]-[album])
Expression =CD[disc #]
Set rules for file display...
[file group location] is not <empty> (this will exclude classical music)
2) 'Soundtracks' - See only Soundtracks, sorted by Album. Here I could also sort first by Artist but since the main thing here is the movie I won't do it.
Album
Set rules for file display...
Genre is soundtrack
3) 'Genre Popular' - See and sort all genres alphabetically excluding Soundtracks and classical music and then sort by Album Artist and Year - Album
Genre
Album Artist (Auto)
Expression =if(!isempty([CD name]),[year]-[album]-[CD name],[year]-[album])
Expression =CD[disc #]
Set rules for file display...
[file group location] is not <empty> (this will exclude classical music)
Genre is not soundtrack
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hmm...that could make things tough. we could sneak around the soundtracks "auto tagging" with an expression, but because they would have a different [file group location] it could be hard to get them into the view for "popular" and for "soundtracks" simultaneously without re-thinking our whole strategy
i think we could leverage a list field (so make file group location able to have more than one value) but it'll take some thinking on how to achieve that
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Well... changes done but there is something I don't like. Aside from that it seems everything is working fine.
These are my settings and views:
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1468/26691849276_e4ba1f5dc9_b.jpg)
1st Expression
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1665/26624549222_10c6a32c85_b.jpg)
2nd Expression
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1580/26691849486_a49aef6459_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1485/26691848466_3b60162d95_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1693/26624548832_c7caf68fe0_b.jpg)
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1673/26691848706_526c8b7543_b.jpg)
And here is what I don't like...
'Nirvana Lounge' is a double album and since I already saw the Year on the previous view, now I would like to see only [CD name] or CD[disc #].
There is also the problem that I can't see the whole CD name...
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1521/26624547702_cb58024a39_b.jpg)
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to fix the display problem, try replacing the first expression with
=if(!isempty([CD name]),[CD name],[year]-[album])
as to the text under the thumbnail...i haven't used theatre view enough to have an immediate answer, but i'd also like to know the answer (especially if i don't have to figure it out myself :) )
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Not only it worked but also and because of eliminating the name of the Album has freed more characters, now I can see the complete name of [CD name]. 8)
So in what concerns Popular music everything seems to be smooth and working perfectly! This includes 'Popular', 'Genre Popular', 'Soundtrack' and... 'Albums'.
I decided after all to create a simple view for sorting all my Popular albums alphabetically. This will allow me to quickly view all Buddha-Bar CD's, etc.
Now classical music is a though one...
Like I said, I'm using Location D:\musica\Classical for 'Classical' view. As my folders are organized by composers this works more or less just fine. The issues begin when I use 'Genre classical'.
Here I thought about using first 'Genre' and then 'composer' and finally Location again with D:\musica\Classical.
However, and I can see the logical behind it, for all those albums with several composers we have strange things happening.
For instance I have the Harmonia Mundi: The 50th Anniversary Boxed Set (http://www.amazon.com/Harmonia-Mundi-50th-Anniversary-Boxed/dp/B000VIFM1S) and I've entered Genre = Symphony on CD24.
It happens that the first 9 tracks of this CD are from Rameau and the last 4 from Beethoven. In truth only these are a Symphony but nevertheless I decided to tag the whole album as Symphony because I'm more interested in Symphonies anyway.
Now you can see the picture... when I navigate through 'Genre classical' and select Symphony, I now have several composers, amongst which are Rameau and Beethoven. So if I select Beethoven then I will see only the last 4 tracks of this CD and if I select Rameau I see only the first 9. Confused? Like I said, I see the logical here because I'm previously selecting a composer but this still feels awkward as I'm not showing the complete CD.
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I suggest you start here
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102633.0
It may help you decide what you want to do...I have a large collection but maybe 1% is classical
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Thanks. I will definitely take a good look.