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[stricko]

Hi there, this is probably a dumb question, but I can't seem to find an answer to it anywhere.

Within Theatre View, for Videos (and possibly other things) when I select an item from a list, say for example Video > Movies > HD, the first thing that happens is that the Cover Art appears, small and growing in the centre of the screen. You then select again and you go the item details etc. Looks great. Seems to work with whatever List Style is used.

If I then create a new Library Item, at the same level, with the same selection criteria etc. the behaviour is different. Selecting an item goes straight to the item, missing the expanding cover art step.

What parameters are controlling this behaviour?

Cheers

Paul

[glynor]

If the "level" to be displayed only contains a single item, it is skipped.

So, in other words...

If I have a View that shows my music with these categories:

[Genre]
[Artist]
[Album]

And I browse through the available Genres and pick a particular artist for which my Library only contains a single album, then Theater View will skip over the Album "level" and go directly to the file listing.  Likewise, if I were instead to pick a Genre that only contained a single artist, and a single album, it will skip both of those categories and go straight to the File view.

So, your filters on that view must already have excluded other possible options.  I can't give specifics without more information on how you are structuring your views, and what filters may be applied.  But that's how it works.

The idea is to not show irrelevant information and make getting to the stuff you want to play as efficient as is possible.  Why show a "level" where there is only one possible choice at all?  That just slows down browsing.  The system is not designed to be "informational" (more than it must be).  If you need to see a particular piece of information, it should be visible at the File Level as a field there.

[stricko]

Sorry, obviously didn't make myself clear. the level skipping things is one (of the many) things I already love about JRiver. I've got views that rely on it all over the place, movies with/without extras, audio albums with/without extra disk and/or bonus tracks, etc.

This is different. Most of my video is single item stuff, so I'm expecting it to drop through to the detail. The additional display that I'm getting is not what you would see if I had multiple items. I wouldn't be so puzzled if it happened all of the time, but it only seems to apply to views which are part of the default set. Add a new view, doing exactly the same thing as a view which started off in the default set (although I may have subsequently modified it) and the additional display is gone.

[stricko]

Sorry to bump this, but I'm no clearer what is going on

[6233638]

The idea is to not show irrelevant information and make getting to the stuff you want to play as efficient as is possible.  Why show a "level" where there is only one possible choice at all?  That just slows down browsing.  The system is not designed to be "informational" (more than it must be).  If you need to see a particular piece of information, it should be visible at the File Level as a field there.

90% of the time I agree that this makes sense. But I hate that it does this on the artist field.
Even if I only have only album by a certain artist, I still want a view which tells me what album I'm looking at, without directly taking me to a list of tracks, and the header for the view is changed to the artist name instead of the album name.
 
I'm not saying this should be a global forced change, but a preference which could be set on a per-item basis. In just about every other area, I like that Media Center will skip certain levels.
And I would like a custom field for the headers to be displayed as well. When I am looking at the track listing, I want the title to be [Year] - Album. Not [Year] as it currently is (because Album is on the second line) or Artist if I only have one album by them and it skips directly to the track listing.
 
If the system is "not supposed to be informational" then I would like an option to bypass the "info" view that I am taken to on a track listing.
Play the track when I select it, don't tell me what type of file it is and when I last played it etc.
This requires an additional press to confirm that I want to play an item, and in my video views, means that I lose my place when I back out of it to the full listing after an item has finished.
 

Sorry to bump this, but I'm no clearer what is going on

I wonder if the default views are "special" and have unique behavior. Can you post a screenshot to illustrate what it is that you're seeing with them?

[stricko]

Series of screen shots attached

[stricko]

Me again, sorry for the bump

[csimon]

90% of the time I agree that this makes sense. But I hate that it does this on the artist field.
Even if I only have only album by a certain artist, I still want a view which tells me what album I'm looking at, without directly taking me to a list of tracks, and the header for the view is changed to the artist name instead of the album name.
 
I'm not saying this should be a global forced change, but a preference which could be set on a per-item basis. In just about every other area, I like that Media Center will skip certain levels.

[Like]!  Requests from me, and my responses to other peoples' problems:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=60725.msg409906;topicseen#msg409906 (2010)
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59648.msg402929;topicseen#msg402929 (2010)
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=64483.msg432126;topicseen#msg432126 (2011)
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=67151.msg451260;topicseen#msg451260 (2011)
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=61724.msg414664;topicseen#msg414664 (2011)
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=73519.msg499459;topicseen#msg499459 (2012)
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=73320.msg497168;topicseen#msg497168 (2012)

[stricko]

Agree entirely, I seem to recall commenting about it in the past, but it still doesn't answer the original question

[csimon]

Are you saying that it's showing you a list or cover art style and you want it to be Cover Flow?  Try changing the List Style for that view - it's one of the rollers somewhere.

[stricko]

I don't think that's what I'm saying (but I might be wrong)

Take a look at the screenshots I attached earlier. The same behaviour occurs whatever the initial list style is. I'ce just checked and it does the same when starting from cover flow.

[csimon]

I don't know, but it really looks like Coverflow to me. I've just tried it on mine. Most of my views are set up with a "grid" style of cover art and you can highlight a cover and press Enter and it then displays the Info screen. If, however, I go to More and then Toggle List Style to change to Cover Flow, initially all the covers are shown in a horizontal line and when you move the cursor into that area, the currently selected one sort of zooms in, then you can scroll left and right to bring a new cover into the foreground. It looks to me like your view is only displaying one item, a folder level maybe, so you don't see all the others in a horizontal line, then when you move the cursor over it, it zooms in, and then shows the individual file listing when you select it.  It may be a quirk in how you've got the categories and levels set up - are you sure they are defined exactly the same in the view that works and the one that doesn't, including the categories, sort and grouping order etc?

[csimon]

I could sort of simulate what you're seeing by setting up a new item and putting Name as a category in it then setting Group by 1. Then in Cover Flow I get a long horizontal list as before but when selecting one it then goes to another screen which shows that one only, removes the rest of the list, and then "zooms in" as you're describing.

Have you got any categories and sort orders set up at all in that particular view? Check the Set Rules For File Display dialog as well as the Details box.

[stricko]

I'm pretty sure they are the same. I've attached the requested details.

TitleA is an extra library field which has an expression to use either Title or Name, if Title is blank. Allows for multi-title sets etc. shouldn't make a difference

[csimon]

Could you also provide screenshots of the TitleA dialog, i.e. the screen you get when you press the Edit button, for both the HD view and the new view?

Presumably you've got a rule on the HD view to select only HD videos. What happens if you then put that filter on the new view too?

There is something that's suppressing the skip of the single item. Whether that's a bug in Theater View or a difference in the way items are being grouped and selected I don't know. One clue might be in your original screen shot where the roller bar says "Play All", as though it thinks there is more than one item.

[stricko]

Thanks csimon, but I'm a bit confused about your request for further screenshots.

On the 2 pdfs showing the details of the views, each has the Theater View "Options" panel, with the relevant view selected, and (further down the PDF) for each view, the "Edit" dialog for the only item in the Details list, which in both cases is TitleA, and the "Set rules for file display" dialog (headed "Edit Search") for the view.

And yes they do look as if I've accidentally copied the wrong images. When I said I'd made them identical, I really meant it. the selection criteria are the same, there are no options set, etc. I can't think of any reason why they should behave differently. But equally, I recognise that I'm a mere novice compared with some of you guys.

I see what you are saying about the Play All item on the intermediate screen, and yes it's a good clue about looking for a possible bug (20 years in software development). It's probably stating the obvious but in the example shown, there is only one item. Redoing the test with a movie where I have multiple versions, the intermediate screen is definitely Coverflow.

And now it gets interesting. On the Intermediate screen, as well as Play All, you can also go More > Toggle List Style. All of the usual suspects are there, and if you select any the multi item options (like Coverflow) the behaviour remains the same. But if you select the detailed item style (i.e. what you get at the lowest level of the query, the behaviour changes, and the intermediate screen is no longer shown. The behaviour of the 2 views is then identical. Furthermore, as there is no "More" option on the detailed screen, you cannot go back to reset the List Style.

So (like you) I'm guessing that its an issue with the code that controls whether you drop through a view level if there is only one item. Maybe a flag somewhere is being set differently for a default view than for a manually added one.

In the interest of complete disclosure, although I don't think it's relevant, I'm testing in a client/server setup. It's much easier to test the different behaviours on the client side (especially when they cannot be reversed!) as restarting the client resets the views to the ones on the server. I've just checked the settings and behaviour on the server, and they are identical to what I've described above. The one thing I havn't done is toggle the list style on the intermediate screen on the server. Although this would "fix" the problem, it would also make it much much harder to replicate / test it.     

[csimon]

Sorry, I didn't scroll down the PDF to see the Details dialog!

Well, you have me stumped, they do look exactly the same. I really don't know what it's doing.

[stricko]

Bug then, probably. At least it's non destructive and there is a workaround. The best sort of big....