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[keefycub]

Is there a way to create a user modified field that will calculate the length of an album?

I organise my albums not only by genre. 

I use the Comments field to denote:

a) Eepees (less than 40 minutes)
b) Single Disc (between and including 40 minutes and 79.59)
c) Doubles (80.00-159.59)
d) Box Sets (160 and above)

I also use numeric keywords to denote length at a glance:

.5 = eepees
1 = Single Disc
2 = Doubles
higher numbers indicate how long box sets are relative to number of CD's that can hold the same amount of music, regardless of how many original CD's are in the set.

I would like a field that can calculate album lengths, so that I may sort by this field, and enter my numeric keywords in a single modification, rather than considering each album (which is time consuming).  Currently I select the album and have to make a list elsewhere (notepad, sheet of paper, etc.)

Thanks in advance.

[zirum]

I use a album view. Maybe you may use this...

It a view with "album" view item. It set to show albums (not pane), and details. In this view i have the following additional columns:
Duration       FormatDuration([Duration,0])
Avg. rating   FormatNumber([Rating],2)
Complete?    FormatBoolean([Complete Album],Yes, No)

Duration has it flaw thou. I cant sort entirely correct on it, since it sorts stringwise, not timewise.

[keefycub]

I tried this, and all it showed was the duration of the individual tracks.  This became redundant.

Ex.

album "Ginger Baker's Air Force" has 8 tracks.  Showing album by itself shows 1:18:13 on the bottom bar.  I need a field that will show 1:18:13 for all 8 tracks, so that I can sort and quickly determine how many new items I have that fall into the time categories.  In this instance, string values would not matter as long as tracks within an album were grouped together when I sorted, and the only issue would be if there were multiple albums with the exact same duration.   

Also, unless I can force an album with one track to be a complete album, I cannot use a complete album string because many of the albums that I have are one album, one piece of music, one track.   Or they are individual radio programs or podcasts.

Also I'm not sure where rating comes into it.  I work without rating tracks.  If I didn't think it were 5-star it wouldn't be in my library, so rating is useless to me, and I normally take it out of every view (I'd like to completely take it out of the program so that it would never show up).

Perhaps a better way to ask the question is:  Can I base a custom duration field on the sum of all matches in a master field? 

But thanks for your input.

[zirum]

Are you sure you marked "album" instead of "pane" at top of view? It should then group by albums, hence showing total time of album...

[keefycub]

Please assume I'm an idiot and describe the exact steps you used to get this.   I could not get it to work.  Don't forget that the complete album field cannot enter into it in any way, because it returns 0 if there is just one item in the album.

[zirum]

Ok, i'll start from top. Hope there's not something general i have done previously to make this happen...

1. "Add view scheme".
2. "Add" (view item) -> "Album"
3. "Ok"

I now have a single pane of all albums in my library, and below a list of all songs. So I do the following:
1. Change "Pane" (on top of pane), into "Album"
2. Make sure "Detail" is marked.

Due to the default view settings, i now have a field "Duration", which show total time of album. But i don't like the "xx:xx:xx total", so therefore the manual expression change.

If i double click an entry, a detail pane shows up lower mid half, showing the containing songs for that album.

[keefycub]

Thank you, this is a suitable workaround.