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[robland]

Please see attached image.

I have an Artist - Album view that groups albums by artist. For each artist, those albums are sorted alphabetically.

How can I make the albums for each artist sort chronologically (oldest to newest) instead of alphabetically?

Bonus points if you can tell me how to make the date display separately on a third line, instead of sometimes being truncated off the view by album name.

(This is the typical MC experience for me. I'm certain it can do what I want, but it leaves me feeling not smart enough to figure out how to do it...)

[wer]

This can be done, but it's a bit complicated.

First either change your list style to details view or go to a view that has details.
Make sure the fields you want are available as columns (Year or Date, and Album Artist Auto).
Now first click on the column header for year, then the one for Album Artist Auto.

You will see that Year has an arrow with a 2, and Album Artist Auto has an arrow with a 1.
This means you are sorting first by album artist then by year.

Now for the black magic...
On the drop down arrow for your tab, select Sort By->Custom->Preset->Save...  Give it a name: "Album Artist then Year"
This will allow you to save your current sorting scheme as a new custom sort type.

(You can also do the above by manually constructing a sort by adding things in the Sort By->Custom dialog, but they're equivalent, and this way you can see visually what you're doing as you build the sort.)

Now that that's done, go back to the view you want sorted that way, or just change it back to thumbnails.  Click the down arrow on the tab, select Sort By, and you'll find you can select the new sorting method you just created.

To set the thumbnail text, click on the down arrow on your tab again, and select Thumbnails->Thumbnail Text.
Here you can enter whatever expression you want for the thumbnails in that view.

Don't worry, your experience was the same as mine.  You're right it can do almost anything, but some of it is pretty obscure and undocumented.  But there are people here on the forum who can make it do all sorts of crazy things.

The best thing about these custom sort presets, by far in my opinion, is that you can utilize them in theater view, which has very limited sorting capabilities on its own (because there are no column headers to click!).  Using these custom sort types, you can sort things in theater view any way you can think up in standard view.

[robland]

Thanks! I would never have figured on this approach, creating a custom sort order, instead of trying to use an expression in the view itself.

I tried the custom sort order you recommend, Album Artist then Date, but it yields some unexpected results.

I'm not really sure what the option "sort inside groups" vs. "sort all files... removes grouping temporarily" but at least I know now what to play with.

Any other suggestions on how to refine this custom sort order are welcome!

[robland]

So I don't think a custom sort order will work because it *always* has to start with Artist then Album before Date, which means alphabetical album always precedes chronological date.

I think I need an inside grouping, which groups all the albums by artist. There's a default inside grouping called "Album (by date)" which is ***excruciatingly*** close to what I want, except its newest albums first (so reverse chronological order).

And maddeningly, while you can create a custom sort order, I see no option to create a custom inside grouping!!!

[robland]

Hmm, never mind about inside grouping. That option is available only in the details view, now the thumbnail view.

I think I give up!! I'd prefer chronological albums rather than alphabetical but I don't want it this bad!! haha

[blgentry]

This is actually pretty easy to do.  Here's how:

1.  Create or modify a basic albums view.  This should be a Categories type and should only have one category:  Album .
2.  Now change the sort options by clicking on the header of the view and drilling down into the Sort By > Custom menu.
3.  Once you get there, you want to sort by:  Album Artist (auto), Year, Name .  See the attached screen shot for what it should look like.

For the thumbnail text, I think you already got good instructions on how to do that.  I made mine very simple:

Code: [Select]

[Album Artist (auto)]
[Album]
[Year]

I think this should do pretty much exactly what you asked for.

Brian.

[wer]

blgentry's method is the other way I referred to above.

But unless I misunderstand, you're contradicting yourself robland.

Originally you had albums sorted first by artist, and each artist's albums were alphabetical.  But you said you didn't want alphabetical albums, you wanted chronological.  That's what I gave you.  The name of the album needn't be involved in the sort at all.

But now you seem to be saying you give up and you don't want chronological that bad... Were you not able to get AlbumArtist->Date using the methods either I or blgentry gave you?  They both work.  I have a view in my own library that's exactly what you said you wanted.

[MikeO]

I create an Expression

[Artist] - [Date]- [Album]

Or

[Date] - [Album]

With or without the Artist prefix , the Albums now sort by Release Year

Is tha what you want ?

I have. View Artist then the Date Album Expression works fine you can use in JRemote DLNA too


Mike