INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: tcman41 on December 29, 2005, 09:58:49 am

Title: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: tcman41 on December 29, 2005, 09:58:49 am
I am running the most current version of media center, my main page view is files with album thumbnails and these 4 columns at the top, genre, artist, album and year. Is there some expression that can be written just to show how many albums each artist has?

Many Thanks

TC
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: zxsix on December 29, 2005, 10:02:42 am
You may not need an expression, try this....

Click "Audio" in the tree > Pick "Artist" from the "Audio" drop list at the top left of the view > Click the "Audio" drop list again and choose Options > Details.

This was introduced in 11.1.90.

Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: tcman41 on December 29, 2005, 10:48:16 am
Thanks for the reply, but say what?

1. i stated that i am running the most current version.

2. i am just trying to add another column to my files/album thumbnails view not change
    to another completely different view.

3. even if i go to artists/details that still doesn't give one a column with the number of
   albums the artist has.

Anyone else, would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks
TC
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: hit_ny on December 29, 2005, 12:13:42 pm
You're looking for an expression called sum.

guess what it's not been invented yet :(

..maybe in v12.
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: Marty3d on December 29, 2005, 01:00:56 pm
The same goes for AVG...would be great to show average ratings for an album based on track ratings :)
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: hit_ny on December 29, 2005, 01:29:13 pm
i do AVG manually atm for album scores. Matt said something about working on this some time back.

I cant imagine how they could do it in real time, and still  have a decent response time, especially with large collections.

Maybe run whatever maths functions and save the results for quicker viewing later.
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: Marty3d on December 29, 2005, 02:35:56 pm
They did it in the old library browser without any noticable lag. But I don't know for sure, and it's getting kind of OT, so sorry for bringing it up...
Let's see what Santa has in store for us with v12 :)
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: tcman41 on December 29, 2005, 03:56:14 pm
yeah, i can see how doing all the calculations on a large collection could take some time, but i think it's worth it, run the search, go get some coffee and come back later, lol.

TC
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: marko on December 29, 2005, 03:58:56 pm
I am running the most current version of media center, my main page view is files with album thumbnails and these 4 columns at the top, genre, artist, album and year. Is there some expression that can be written just to show how many albums each artist has?

Many Thanks

TC
you know that when you select an artist from your artist column, the "All" entry at the top of the album column shows an album count in brackets beside it?
You are looking for something more than this?
Re. details view...
I see that [track #] lists the total number of tracks. It would be nice for [album] to display the number of albums as opposed to <varies>

-marko.
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: hit_ny on December 30, 2005, 02:07:52 am
They did it in the old library browser without any noticable lag.
Yeah, but did you also notice it did not appear unless you moused over the album itself. That's one album at a time not a biggie. But in a view scheme showing all albums, this would take much longer.

yeah, i can see how doing all the calculations on a large collection could take some time, but i think it's worth it, run the search, go get some coffee and come back later, lol.
As long as its once, done explicitly, to save the results someplace.. fine. But every time will get a bit tedious.
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: Marty3d on December 30, 2005, 04:46:03 am
Yeah, but did you also notice it did not appear unless you moused over the album itself. That's one album at a time not a biggie. But in a view scheme showing all albums, this would take much longer.

As I haven't looked at it yet, I can say for sure though that the only thing I used Library browser for was just album ratings.
I used to sort by album rating in order to find the best albums, so I guess the calculations were already done? If the rating showed only when you hovered the album, I can't tell, but if MC could sort the albums in order, perhaps the average function is quite fast (or precalculated in some way).

Well, I haven't used Library browser in along time so I could be wrong about this.
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: hit_ny on December 30, 2005, 08:04:32 am
Heh, you're re right, sorting by ratings is quite snappy. Guess it's possible to do the whole library in real time after all. But these are internally optimised routines, will it be as snappy at the user level with expressions ?

I'd prefer to be able to customise it tho. There was no way to control what appears in the library browser in 11.0 cept for the tabs.. Now they have merged browser & library.

Have to wait another year for any improvements in this :(
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: zxsix on December 30, 2005, 04:17:04 pm
i do AVG manually atm for album scores.

Can you give us details on how you do this, including the syntax for the calculated field or smartlist?

You're talking about average of tracks ratings per album right?  Not a separate album rating field.

Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: hit_ny on December 31, 2005, 01:24:14 am
You're talking about average of tracks ratings per album right?  Not a separate album rating field.
Separate field i'm afraid, that too a custom.

You see library browser having had it in 11.0 is nice. But you could  not use it in view schemes or elsewhere. It was just for show in the browser.
Title: Re: number of albums per artist expression
Post by: datdude on December 31, 2005, 12:35:07 pm
This is done currently with the new 'details' view.  Check the rating column for each album.  It is the average of all the files.