INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows => Topic started by: Matt on October 26, 2012, 01:23:49 pm
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If I promise to make the Theater View caption system lots better, will you promise not to get angry when we have to reset your Theater View File Info templates to do it?
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Reset away.
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I'm on board.
Thanks for warning us though.
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Go for it.
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I'm all for this..
Just do it!!
ken
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What - this mob get all angry? Change away.
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What - this mob get all angry? Change away.
Wait. What was I thinking. You're right.
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_J9m0r9H4Vhg/TRNuynMPNEI/AAAAAAAAAtM/JrhozRGTquo/s1600/mob_440.jpg)
Ima lightin' mah torches!!
/s ;) ;D
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It's okay if templates copied to a file can pasted back into the new version. But if that were possible, why would it not be done programmatically? Surely you wouldn't consider making thousands of users redo their templates just to save you a little time. If it's not possible, why is everyone readily agreeing to this? Obviously it doesn't matter if you're using the defaults or the defaults with only minor modifications. Otherwise, this will be a huge PITA. My templates, cut & paste to file, total 60 KB on over 2000 lines. I don't mind cutting & pasting those back after they're reset. But if I can't do that, it going to take me hours to recreate them.
Yes, I'm the one with the big pitchfork. Be afraid. ;)
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Yes, I'm the one with the big pitchfork. Be afraid. ;)
Cool. We have the same hairstyle.
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Yes, I'm the one with the big pitchfork. Be afraid. ;)
Your leading the pack now eh? ;)
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Your leading the pack now eh?
It could be me or fitbrit. We lead by the reflection of torchlight off our big heads. 8)
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I don't mind cutting & pasting those back after they're reset. But if I can't do that, it going to take me hours to recreate them.
So, can I restore the old template versions from the clipboard or not? ?
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It looks like the Captions are stored in the file:
%appdata%\J River\Media Center 18\Library\theater view file info templates.xml
You should be able to copy your old ones to a file, and then merge those into this file (with MC not running).
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It looks like the Captions are stored in the file:
Good grief. All I had to do was backup the build 63 file, update the version number (from 1.6 to 1.7), then replace the build 64 default with that. I then simply copied my old caption (which, fortunately, I had saved) to the Regular Caption of each template. That puts me back to exactly where I was, only forgoing the new default captions—which are useless to me anyway. I can now update/simplify the individual caption settings at my leisure.
This is exactly what the installation routine should be doing when updating an existing library. It doesn't make sense to blow away all the user's caption and file info panels for such a simple change. The default captions can be posted for those who may want to use them instead of their existing captions. A separate topic could be created for each default template (for which a default caption other than '[Name]' has been provided) for users to contribute their suggestions. Those discussions could be used to decide what defaults would best suit new users and the stock views.
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I had a look at the Captions for "TV Show" and I think the list is too busy. It currently has "Series: Name: Date" that can quickly fill up the list and in many cases I have "Date" missing so it looks uneven. I'd suggest either just "Name" as it was or "Season Episode - Name".
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I had a look at the Captions for "TV Show" and I think the list is too busy. It currently has "Series: Name: Date" that can quickly fill up the list and in many cases I have "Date" missing so it looks uneven. I'd suggest either just "Name" as it was or "Season Episode - Name".
Yes .. If the view is drilled down form Series - Season it seems that the series name is redundant in that I already selected the series.
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I think I forgot to mention how wonderful I think it is that you opened this up for customization.... ;D
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Thanks for adding this.
Not only that it greatly cut down my long previous caption string with a lot of ifs in it, it also syncs from the server to the clients now :)
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Is there a manual?
I do not get it. The file caption option is gone and my custom fields and expressions in the customize file info panel are gone. But what is new and where is it?
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Go for it :)
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Is there a manual?
I do not get it. The file caption option is gone and my custom fields and expressions in the customize file info panel are gone. But what is new and where is it?
Go into the "Customize file info panel" and Then click Manage - edit template.
Ken
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I had a look at the Captions for "TV Show" and I think the list is too busy. It currently has "Series: Name: Date" that can quickly fill up the list and in many cases I have "Date" missing so it looks uneven. I'd suggest either just "Name" as it was or "Season Episode - Name".
The caption for TV shows is a tricky one.
If you drilled into 'Big Bang Theory', it is a bit unnecessary to show the series name for each file.
But there are also lists like 'Recent' where lots of series are mixed together. In those views, showing the series is really important.
We also toyed with using S4E1, for example, at the front of the caption (you can get this with the new expression TVInfo(SeasonEpisode)), but it looked really noisy.
In your screenshot, all the times are 12:00am. If the time is not valid, we shouldn't show it. What's in the 'Date' field in Standard view for those files?
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Go into the "Customize file info panel" and Then click Manage - edit template.
Ken
Aha, there it was. Thanks!
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The caption for TV shows is a tricky one.
If you drilled into 'Big Bang Theory', it is a bit unnecessary to show the series name for each file.
But there are also lists like 'Recent' where lots of series are mixed together. In those views, showing the series is really important.
I'd mentioned once before that having a IsListMixed() expression would be really handy. It would work like this:
IsListMixed(Field to Check, Result if True, Result if False)
Much like the current If() statement, but the output would change depending on if the currently visible view was uniform or mixed for that particular field. You could easily then do:
IsListMixed([Series],,[Series] - )IsListMixed([Season],[Episode] - ,[Season]e[Episode] - )
(I didn't bother to escape the spaces, but you would have to.)
And get: The Big Bang Theory - 4e17 - Episode Title
For "newly recorded/imported" views where different types are mixed, and just:
17 - Episode Title
Where you're viewing a "folder" of just BBT season 4 episodes. And so on and so forth. I don't know if this would be too difficult to implement, but now seems like the time.
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I'd mentioned once before that having a IsListMixed() expression would be really handy.
The expression engine doesn't have the set of files as part of its context. In other words, it works a file at a time.
However, the caller (the Theater View list) could set some variables like:
[AllSameSeries], [AllSameSeason], etc.
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Re: "Date" - and sorry I forgot to mention that it is showing the time in TheaterView and also not honoring the Country Format for Dates.... though in StdView, where out of my TV Show files:
- 40% have no date at all
- 55% have a date in "(D)D/MM/YYYY" (eg big bang above)
- 5% have a date only in "YYYY"
Thanks
Nathan
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One other issue is for movies. When you Carnac grabs data it fills in the Critic Rating field, but not the RatingStars field. This is another part of what leads to ugly long caption expressions since it is number out of 10. It would be nice if on import it does this automatically.
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One other issue is for movies. When you Carnac grabs data it fills in the Critic Rating field, but not the RatingStars field. This is another part of what leads to ugly long caption expressions since it is number out of 10. It would be nice if on import it does this automatically.
I'm not sure what you mean.
Critic rating is something like the Rotten Tomatoes numbers.
User rating is when you manually give something a number of stars (ie. your rating).
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I did a "Reset!..." to have a look at the default views and how a new users would see it. Overall it looks pretty good but here are some suggestions:
Media Sub Types: As an example,
- Under Video, there only sub types to get a corresponding view is Movies, TV Shows, and Home Videos. The rest are bundled under "Other" but there is not even a "Media Sub Type" on the second roller, the closest being "Genre".
- In particular I add a "Music Video" that is configured just like it's Audio Equivalent using (Album Artist (auto)
View Tweaks: Couple of suggested small tweaks,
- Home Videos: Add a Reverse Date (sort of like Recent but off the date field as the creation of my files are not necessarily in the same order they were recorded)
- Naming Consistently: Most View Names = the Field Name / values but some are a bit different, eg Media Sub Type "TV Show" is inconsistently called just "Shows" in Theater View.
- I move (or remove) the Hulu, Netflick, Youtube from the first level and put them under "Connected Media" as with StdView
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Is there anyway, that (once the T'View Views are setup) that you can move/copy them to also be used in DLNA and S'View?
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I'm not sure what you mean.
Critic rating is something like the Rotten Tomatoes numbers.
User rating is when you manually give something a number of stars (ie. your rating).
If you look in Mr. Haugen's thread about captions, there were a great many users using CriticRating to display "number of stars" for a movie. Many users want to use this in their caption and it requires long expressions to do so. I guess we could set up an auto import rule for filling it, or edit the template to do so but I'm sure many users from other software are looking for that to be automatic or at least very simple to achieve out of the box. At the very least the template for movie should use Criticrating and not StarRating by default if you want novices to be happy.
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Is there anyway, that (once the T'View Views are setup) that you can move/copy them to also be used in DLNA and S'View?
Make Standard Views that match and hide them away in an Advanced top level group.
Then you can import them everywhere.
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Make Standard Views that match and hide them away in an Advanced top level group.
Then you can import them everywhere.
Thanks - is there anyway to copy stuff "back" to Std View?
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...actually this brings back memories of the "discussion" around having a single area for the creation and maintenance of Views with the ability then select while ones you want to see in Std, Theater or DLNA (instead of three seperate areas with views).
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I'm prolly being thick, I don't get it.
I've copied the template TV Show to TV Show (Customized). I edit it but no matter where I place the following line (regular or Expanded, or under selected field Name/Value):
If(IsEqual([Media Sub Type], TV Show), If(IsEqual([Last Played], never played), [Episode] - [Name], <font color="888888">[Episode] - [Name]<//font>), [Name])
It's not working. It keeps showing Series name: Episode, date, time.
How do I make this work? ?
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How do I make this work?
The templates are evaluated in order. Place your customized template before the default one.
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Thanks - is there anyway to copy stuff "back" to Std View?
You can use the Import/Export to copy paste the Files to Display rules (which are the hardest part).
You have to recreate the categories, but that's usually less big of a deal.
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How about throwing in a small DD and DTS icon to use !!
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I'm very glad that you look into this. Unfortunately this will be almost as useless for the users as the old [Name] rule.
I really hope you are not done with this yet, and can except some input. I'll explain why this does not work when I get home.
I've not had time to look much into it yet, but the system for separation of the different media types' captions seems like a good idea.
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V65 Feedback.
I'm happy with the overall changes for default "Shows", couple of points (see Pic):
- The watched "Tick" current sits between the "Name" and the "Date" and it gets lost so, it may be better placed to the left or right of the icon (in a dedicated col so you can cast your eye down the list) or at the very end after the "Date"
- The layout in list mode may need some tweaks (eg to my eyes the thumbnail looks oddly small and the spacing between the col does not seem quit right)
- There is some issues in sorting as it seems to be driven by "DATE", I'd recommend it is Season --> Episode --> then Date.
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I'm not sold on the watch marks for movies (they're nice for TV). They're sort of a scatter shot in my library. I think the problem is that sometimes I'll start a movie and seek around a little but not actually watch it, and the program doesn't track how long I've actually watched. I'm also not sure if I'm going to forget what movies I've seen. Thoughts?
Also, the EPG loading isn't putting anything in the season / episode. Since the old numbers from mc2xml never matched the "standard" numbers like S3E4, maybe this is just as well.
Date formatting for movies is different than for TV. I prefer the TV format (ie. Oct 29 2011).
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- The watched "Tick" current sits between the "Name" and the "Date" and it gets lost so, it may be better placed to the left or right of the icon (in a dedicated col so you can cast your eye down the list) or at the very end after the "Date"
We tried them on the left of the name, but they were too strong -- especially in a thumbnail view.
- There is some issues in sorting as it seems to be driven by "DATE", I'd recommend it is Season --> Episode --> then Date.
From what I can tell, the Theater View > Video > Shows > Season view uses default sorting. Maybe we should tweak how default sorting works, so it has Season and Episode at the front of the sort stack (but sorts like it always has if those are empty)?
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Ok. Got some time now. I've not had the time to explore the underlying system much here, but it looks pretty much as usual except that we now have the ability to set the main caption and the advanced/selection caption based on the file info panel templates. This is good. The TV Show captions are very much improved on on the 65 build compared to 64. Nice! I'd still like to add a few suggestions though.
It's to late on the night for me to figure out how this Watched Expression and Is mixed list or [AllSameSeries] and [AllSameSeason] works. But generally, I think there needs to be something more than this to accommodate for similar situations. For instance, we need to figure out if playlists are of the same artist, or if there is lots of different artists. In cases where there are a mix, the Artist name should be added.
There's also the question of calculating data for several items in a list. For instance counting number of items in seasons or in TV shows. A number watched/not watched counter. This would be especially useful the day we get the ability to show the small file info pane on categories above the file level :) Also, does the Watch expression take into account things like bookmark and number plays? I just think it's very little trustworthy to just base this on number plays.
I ran the 64 build this weekend, and showed it to 8 of my friends during a two day stay. They all asked me to get back my previous caption system :) So, I think I'm at least on to something right. I think the new build would make them less negative though.
Over to some simple suggestions.
Music
There's nothing but [name] tag on these captions today. This kind of works for lists of a single artist and single album. People still expect to see ratings on these tracks though. And it takes a heck of a long time browsing through them all to find the high rated tracks. Hence it needs to be in the caption line one, not line two when you've selected the track.
So, I would suggest the following:
- Mixed lists of music or other media types/sub types: [Name] by [Artist] [Rating Stars expression?]
- Homogeneous list of music [Name] [Rating Stars Expression?]
A subtle tone on the "by" to differentiate between the Name and Artist makes it easy to separate the two. The rating is needed because people often look for the good tracks of for instance an album. Having rating only as part of the second caption line or at the file info panel makes it very time consuming to pick out the favorite songs.
Movies
I would suggest the following:
- [Name] [Rating Stars expression based on theMovieDB ratings]
Most people have a single title for most movies. They usually know what they have. But people often want to know what rating the movie have gotten. So, rating should be added here. Taken from MC's default theMovieDB ratings. Half star rating should be used. 1-5 is just way to little when we're dealing with 10 ratings from the theMovieDB, WITH decimals. Plenty of people want to look at their best movies first, and rating is one of the primary things they look for. that's why this have to be added on the primary caption for Movies.
Also move the Seen icon to the left of the caption, so it's easily spotted.
TV shows
I would suggest that a "E" is placed in front of Episodes and "S" in front of seasons. People are just so incredibly used to this from all internet sources. Especially lists with multiple seasons are not good imo. 5.15 is just so wrong to my eyes.I'm starting to wonder if it's a date or something. Adding S in front of the Season and an E instead of the . would make if much faster to read, and only add one character.
When you have the Season and Episode in place, I do not think that the actual dates are needed as the primary caption. It's just noise imo. People know the order and approximately release time from the episode numbering, and they can easily get the full date from the file info panel. I would drop ratings on episodes. Just as you have. It's just considered as noise for most people. As people usually like a show, or not, and does not skip an episode even if it's rated badly. But this is actually about the only place I would drop it.
Trailers
Trailers need the same caption as Movies.
Music Videos
Those need the same rules as music
Seasons
I would suggest that you add a special caption rule for seasons, so that Season is placed in front of the number for the Season category caption and the roller text. It's so much easier to read and interpret.
Overall very good changes from build 63 to 65. I hope you keep this going some more builds until we nail this caption formula that most people expect to find in such a powerful app.
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Date formatting for movies is different than for TV. I prefer the TV format (ie. Oct 29 2011).
Can the format follow the windows date format setting (most of the world does not use MMM DD YYYY)?
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I'm not sold on the watch marks for movies (they're nice for TV). They're sort of a scatter shot in my library. I think the problem is that sometimes I'll start a movie and seek around a little but not actually watch it, and the program doesn't track how long I've actually watched. I'm also not sure if I'm going to forget what movies I've seen. Thoughts?
Also, the EPG loading isn't putting anything in the season / episode. Since the old numbers from mc2xml never matched the "standard" numbers like S3E4, maybe this is just as well.
I don't mind the Watch Marks but would have them consistent regardless of video type.
I'm not even sure if there is enough consistency around the world to pull Seas/Eps data from recordings, unless you try to match Titles? Dates?
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When you have the Season and Episode in place, I do not think that the actual dates are needed as the primary caption. It's just noise imo.
I think if you download, you have season and episode, and so dates are not important.
If you record, dates are important.
Sometimes if you record you still have season and episode, but they're not meaningful.
So I don't know what rule to use to decide if date should be shown. Suggestions welcome.
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We tried them on the left of the name, but they were too strong -- especially in a thumbnail view.
How did it look at the very end (eg some of mine don't have dates and the tick is at the end anyway)
From what I can tell, the Theater View > Video > Shows > Season view uses default sorting. Maybe we should tweak how default sorting works, so it has Season and Episode at the front of the sort stack (but sorts like it always has if those are empty)?
Sounds good
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I'm not sold on the watch marks for movies (they're nice for TV). They're sort of a scatter shot in my library. I think the problem is that sometimes I'll start a movie and seek around a little but not actually watch it, and the program doesn't track how long I've actually watched. I'm also not sure if I'm going to forget what movies I've seen. Thoughts?
I think this is a must for all video, except the smaller ones. Especially when you don't have a default "Not Watched" view under Movies (or anywhere else list time I checked). The Not watched Icon have to have more rules than the Number Plays. I've used this for weeks now, and it works very well.
If(!isempty([Number Plays]), if(Math(!formatnumber([Bookmark]) | above(formatnumber([Bookmark]) / [Duration,0], 900)), <font color="C3FFB3">v <//font><font color="888888">S[Season]EPadNumber([Episode], 2) [Name] <font color=" C3FFB3"> [Critic Rating Stars]<//font>
It sets the Watched marker if Number plays is over 0, and there is no bookmarks. For library editing without watching the item. If the bookmark is set, it have to be above 90% of the movie, and the Number plays have to be above 0. This makes it easy to remove number plays to remove the watched mark, even though you have a bookmark.
Can the format follow the windows date format setting (most of the world does not use MMM DD YYYY)?
That sounds good. In Norway and many places in Europe we're more used to DD MMM YYYY.
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Can the format follow the windows date format setting (most of the world does not use MMM DD YYYY)?
We're building a custom short date for style reasons.
Do you use "16 Nov 2011" instead of "Nov 16 2011"?
Or do you just need a little cheat sheet that lists what Oct, Nov, Dec, etc. stand for :P
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I'd not have "Date" as part of the Tile for TV EPS (but had it in the info box instead). I also like the SXXEXX instead of s.ee format.
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I also like the SXXEXX instead of s.ee format.
There's a joke in there somewhere about SXXEXX.
But the dot format was Jim's suggestion to clean it up, and I agree with him.
Mrs. jmone will find either cryptic, so less is more.
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I think if you download, you have season and episode, and so dates are not important.
If you record, dates are important.
Sometimes if you record you still have season and episode, but they're not meaningful.
So I don't know what rule to use to decide if date should be shown. Suggestions welcome.
I see the point. Perhaps create another expression or something picking up if the view contains recorded episodes as well? And removing date on lists that not consists of recorded stuff? The other stuff can be left with Episode and Season caption.
We tried them on the left of the name, but they were too strong -- especially in a thumbnail view.
What about making the check mark darker as well? Then it would not be so in your face. I just have to say I do NOT think this is to much. In thumbnail mode or any other mode. I actually had green check marks in my cation, and I think it was very nice. It blended well with my rating star colors.
The most common way of dealing with this is either completely on the left side or the right side. The problem having it on the right side is that this checkmark will often be hidden in for instance the thumbnail mode. Some places there will be to much text. Having it in the middle of text should be a no-no. Because you can't easily spot what you have seen or not, when the position moves. Preferably there shoul dbe a way of adding certain text in the cation to a right alignment, so you can easily separate it form the rest of the caption.
From what I can tell, the Theater View > Video > Shows > Season view uses default sorting. Maybe we should tweak how default sorting works, so it has Season and Episode at the front of the sort stack (but sorts like it always has if those are empty)?
Yes, please. There are some problems today with sorting. Adding Season and Episode to those would be good. Even Gizmo/webGizmo have some views which have bad sorting rules.
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We're building a custom short date for style reasons.
Do you use "16 Nov 2011" instead of "Nov 16 2011"?
Or do you just need a little cheat sheet that lists what Oct, Nov, Dec, etc. stand for :P
Yanks! I'm with the Majority of the world, your the 6%!
- 63% of the worlds population use Day Month Year order
- 30% of the worlds population use Year Month Day order
- 6% of the worlds population use Month Day Year order
*** Note: I excluded the #'s from countries that have a mix of formats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
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There's a joke in there somewhere about SXXEXX.
But the dot format was Jim's suggestion to clean it up, and I agree with him.
Mrs. jmone will find either cryptic, so less is more.
I'm not going there, one quote with references to "SXXEXX, Clean it Up, and wives wanting less not more". :o
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Yanks! I'm with the Majority of the world, your the 6%!
- 63% of the worlds population use Day Month Year order
- 30% of the worlds population use Year Month Day order
- 6% of the worlds population use Month Day Year order
You know, we can edit offensive posts so they conform to our standard of decency.
And which part of the world drives on the right side of the road? ? ?
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You know, we can edit offensive posts so they conform to our standard of decency.
Matt started it! ...I got a chuckle but please remove if it offensive it was certainly not my intention.
And which part of the world drives on the right side of the road? ? ?
There is of course no right or wrong just the weight of convention that is used. FYI - Today about 66.1% of the world's people live in right-hand traffic countries and 33.9% in left-hand traffic countries. About 72% of the world's total road distance carries traffic on the right, and 28% on the left. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic
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Yanks! I'm with the Majority of the world, your the 6%!
Next you'll tell us that we shouldn't put "United States of America" at the top of an alphabetically sorted list of countries!
(ps. jmone, double-check your sarcasm detector with regards to Jim's post)
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There is of course no right or wrong ...
Ask your wife. Just to be sure.
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Next you'll tell us that we shouldn't put "United States of America" at the top of an alphabetically sorted list of countries!
As Mel Brooks said in History of the World, "It is good to be King". ....and as "Antipodeans" we have a looooong way to go before we rule the world and are able to enforce our Aussie "sensibilities" (but it does not stop us poking you in the ribs in the meantime!) ;D
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(ps. jmone, double-check your sarcasm detector with regards to Jim's post)
It must have been down, I really thought I'd hit a nerve (I was not sure if it was the innuendo or the Yank reference ... him being all old and grumpy!)
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Ask your wife. Just to be sure.
Ask? I don't understand (don't you mean Told?)
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- There is some issues in sorting as it seems to be driven by "DATE", I'd recommend it is Season --> Episode --> then Date.
A default sort, if all the files are Media Sub Type 'TV Show' uses:
Series
Season
Episode
Name
So my idea above about doing this is actually already in the program. If you're seeing something other than this, please provide more details.
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Matt, In the screen shot above you can see the sort issue. I just double checked by doing a "Reset!", then when using the view under "TheaterView --> Video --> Shows --> Series" (which I would presume would be the main view used), the sort order is definatly: "~sort=[Date Recorded]-d" (see Pic)
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Sorting with the other options (Recent, Genre, Season) under Show seems to be fine (either blank, or "recent" also has ~sort=[Date Imported]-d)
...., so less is more.
The attached Pic is where I think "less is less". Would you not rather the "Season 3" (manually added) over just the number?
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jmone, next build:
Changed: Revised default Theater View views for television (merged 'Series' and 'Season' views, use 'Season 3' instead of '3' at the season level, sorting is by season, episode, etc.).
The defaults were a little more focused on a TV recording user, but the new defaults should be better for a downloader (and still pretty good for a recorder).
You will only see these changes if you reset views.
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Changed: Revised default Theater View views for television (merged 'Series' and 'Season' views, use 'Season 3' instead of '3' at the season level, sorting is by season, episode, etc.).
Thank you so much! And thank you from all the other users coming from other Media Center solutions. This is pretty much the standard, and it's good to see it as default in MC18 as well.
The defaults were a little more focused on a TV recording user, but the new defaults should be better for a downloader (and still pretty good for a recorder).
Thanks for this as well. I think it would be good to generally focus a bit more on downloaders and rippers, as there should be plenty more of them than the tuner users :)
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There's still a few quirks that should be fixed/improved. I'll point out some that I found on my limited testing time today.
- The Recent list for TV shows does not include Episode or Season numbers. I think that is a minus.
- Music in mixed lists with more artists should use [Name] by [Artist] caption. Otherwise, there will be very very hard to spot certain artists in for example playing now.
- The Music Videos should have the same caption rules as Music
- The "Episode" item on the info pane is wrong. It shows Season and Episode. That is confusing and plain wrong. I think a label free "Season X Episode x" would be a lot better. Or SXXEXX if the space is an issue.
- The Shown check mark is really misplaced. The standard of the placement is on the left or right side of the caption. Preferably at a small distance from the rest of the text so it's easily separated and read. A way of aligning a custom graphical element on for example on the far right side of the captions would be very nice. The item would appear next to the caption in case of space issues. I think at the very least this check mark should not be squeezed between other text elements.
- It would be nice if the Watched indicator was based on more than one value. A possible solution is here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=75263.msg510655#msg510655
- Most important of all imo: Movies should have ratings (half stars) based on the Critics rating. These ratings are default in MC now, and they should be used where they are needed. Browsing through all movies just to see the ratings on them is WAY to much trouble. The same goes for Music. Music should have Rating stars as well, to spot the most liked tracks easily.
Other than this, I think these changes are really good. It will help significantly with the first impression for new users, as well as easier management for the picky guys.
A bit of topic, but still a view issue:
- The covers on the "Wall" style of views are still way to small to make it usable. The size are so much smaller than all other covers, so it's kind of hopeless unless you're really close to the screen and have a rather big size setting.
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The default 'Series' view should use:
Series: TVInfo(SeriesDisplay)
Season: If(IsEmpty([Series]), , Delimit([Season], , Season/ ))
This way, things with no series will show under the program name and not have a season step.
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jmone, next build:
Changed: Revised default Theater View views for television (merged 'Series' and 'Season' views, use 'Season 3' instead of '3' at the season level, sorting is by season, episode, etc.).
Can we get the same for other seasons too? e.g. 1, 2, 4 etc. ;)
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I'm now tweaking the info to get Theater View to how I like it (eg adding Tack # to the Title for Music, adding a new "Music Video" Item and copying the File Info from Audio etc...) As an idea is it worth starting a thread where people can post the details so that other users can browse, and copy these customisations. If so I think we need a way of export/copy the details from "Items to Show" like we can in "Customize file info panel" so others can just paste them into their setup.
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1. Changed: Formatting of the short date format (used in Theater View and elsewhere) respects the year, month, day order system setting.
Ahhh .... everthing is now as it should be! Now about the country listing, "A" comes way before "U" ;D
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America, United States of.
:D
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I'm now tweaking the info to get Theater View to how I like it (eg adding Tack # to the Title for Music, adding a new "Music Video" Item and copying the File Info from Audio etc...) As an idea is it worth starting a thread where people can post the details so that other users can browse, and copy these customisations. If so I think we need a way of export/copy the details from "Items to Show" like we can in "Customize file info panel" so others can just paste them into their setup.
A thread is a very good idea.
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The default 'Series' view should use:
Series: TVInfo(SeriesDisplay)
Season: If(IsEmpty([Series]), , Delimit([Season], , Season/ ))
This way, things with no series will show under the program name and not have a season step.
OK, I used these and I now get "Season 3" under the Season 3 Picture but it is not using the proper Season Cover Art from the Cover Art folder!
Nick.
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I reported this also. No season cover art.
Ken
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I figured the Season Cover Art out.. I had run into this before. If there is an expression for Season, the cover art will not show. If you set it to Field Season it will.
If you use an expression in a field it messes it up. I did something a while back and used an expression in a field and could not get the cover art to show and it made me a bit frustrated.
I am sure Matt can work this out. ;D
Ken
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I don't use season art, as it's a WAY to big job doing it manually. But if this is the case, I think the cover art should be matched against the actual category set in the view management instead of it relaying on the expressions used?
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I have an idea for the file info panel.
Could we make some of the fields linkable, for instance actors will have many entries, so when we click on it, it would allow us to select individual actors. Then when clicked it would show all movies with that actor.
This would be neat because I don't have an actor view setup because I don't want the rollers too cluttered and also because I'm not interested in looking through a big list of actors. I think I'd rather want to be able to watch a film, and if I want to be able to see other movies that actor is in, select it right from the file info rather than having to switch view then looking through a huge list.
I'm aware there might be some weird logic to it because when you have filtered down to a single film and select an actor it would only be able to search within that film. That why I think if linkable selections were allowed in the file info panel, mc would operate best if it could make a ghost view on the fly that is separate from the view you just came from i.e. it is not subject to the selection of film you made or any of the sub rollers, only subject to the main roller so that the media sub type and initial rules for file display are the same.
This would allow me to de-clutter many of the sub rollers, for instance I have a publisher view for audio which I would get rid of if I could just select publisher from the file info panel.
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The idea is far from bad. Using the File info for such tasks as for instance filtering was suggested a long time ago in a beta thread. And I'm sure others have also mentioned it here and there. The idea was almost identical to yours. A way of activating the Info Pane, only that the info pane instead was a filtering and configuring pane where you could do exactly what you ask for. Sorting and other stuff could be added here, allowing for a MUCH more dynamic theater view experience. It could declutter the rollers significantly for some. The pane could be activated by going to the right side with the arrows, or with a dedicated setup/config button.
For the reasons you mentioned, when it comes to activating the info pane on the last media level in views, i think it would be more useful to actually using selections on the items to trigger things like movie trailers for movies.
The file info management starts to get really powerful with the last changes for captions. It would be a natural center for more Info pane options and dynamic search options like the one brian mentions.
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Can somebody do me a favour can you post the new theatre view file info templates.xml
I don't know it happened but file is now empty. Resetting it doesn't work. It's weird I didn't have the file open in any editor and I didn't delete any entries from within theatre view I was just looking at it, closed it then opened it again later and everything was gone.
Thanks
Edit
Nevermind, managed to get it out of one of the backups
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A default sort, if all the files are Media Sub Type 'TV Show' uses:
Series
Season
Episode
Name
So my idea above about doing this is actually already in the program. If you're seeing something other than this, please provide more details.
I use date or a custom 'Episode Order' field to sort my TV shows. Not all TV shows sort properly by Season - Episode:
A Couple of examples would be:
Firefly - episodes were aired out of sequence. I sort this by 'episode order'.
Dr. Who (2005) - many of the 'season 0' episodes are specials that are integral to story line and slot in between normal season episodes. I sort this by date.
Sorting logic I use is basically:
Series
Episode Order (usually blank unless specifically needed).
Date
Season
Episode
Name
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I figured the Season Cover Art out.. I had run into this before. If there is an expression for Season, the cover art will not show. If you set it to Field Season it will.
This is the same for Artist images as well. It does feel a bit limiting when making views to have to choose between the desired image and the desired field/text display.
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I use date or a custom 'Episode Order' field to sort my TV shows. Not all TV shows sort properly by Season - Episode:
A Couple of examples would be:
Firefly - episodes were aired out of sequence. I sort this by 'episode order'.
Dr. Who (2005) - many of the 'season 0' episodes are specials that are integral to story line and slot in between normal season episodes. I sort this by date.
Personally I use "floating point" episode numbers when tagging specials. I don't have too many in my collection, so setting it to 0 to get the meta-data, then changing it to an X.5 number afterwards isn't too much of a burden.
i.e. If my special comes between episodes 10 and 11 in story order, I give it an episode value of 10.5 and it sorts as expected. It's not the most automated way to do things obviously, but it is another option to make sorting work out nice.
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I don't use season art, as it's a WAY to big job doing it manually.
I thought you were using Sickbeard?? If you are, it puts (or can be configured so) season art in each directory named folder.jpg. Then it is pretty simple to use BulkRename Utility to filter folder.jpg's, and construct the name from the directory name within the utility. They are then copied to your chosen directory.
Craig