Hi:
I posted a similar comment like this yesterday for someone new to the forum and MC. Most will tell you that there's a bit of a learning curve with this product. But once you start to experiment with views and, perhaps, the application of the expression language, you will start to appreciate the rich (albeit complex) functionality and start to gain an understanding of how thing work. Right now, I only use MC to manage my audio library but I have experimented with .mkv video files in preparation for video management in the future.
As I stated yesterday, my biggest irritant is the lack of proper documentation for reference purposes. And the forum can be 'hit or miss' some times when you ask questions. Just look at my recent 'Jump Back' / 'Jump Forward' post. But, for the most part, you should get meaningful answers to your queries. The trick is to provide a detailed explanation of your situation in your post. Once I started to understand the basic operation of MC, the forum interaction, and the lack of proper documentation, I started to experiment with options. Whenever I do, I make sure everything is backed up before I head down that path. At this point, I'm comfortable with the basics: view, tagging, custom fields and even custom keystroke combinations so I have personally committed to contributing because I also learn quite a bit from the challenges that others have. Simply stated, I have a vested interest to help because the possibility of learning something new in the process exists. Additionally, I enjoy the synergy and camaraderie even if it is anonymous.
I was right where you are not to long ago. Good luck and don't get discouraged. The bottom line, it is a great media manager but as you said, it is not for everyone. I suspect everyone here has some degree of an engineering mentality with which they operate.
Cheers,
Lawrence