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[stricko]

I've just come back from an extended trip, and was doing a bit of PC maintenance. Without really thinking about it I just downloaded the latest version and applied it. I think I jumped from build 60 to 86.

I run almost exclusively in Theater View, so imagine my surprise when I saw the changes.............

Things I liked

The primary/secondary roller thing. Some great flexibility there.

Display "All" as a choice. Excellent (and long overdue IMHO) option

But er, things I didn't like

All of my many many customisations just disappeared. And yes, I know it's in the release notes of an earlier version. Is there any way of getting them back in some form?

The ability to have different views at different layers of a query seems to have gone. I used to have screenshots at one or more levels of a query, and a list at the bottem level. Now if I toggle the view at one level it changes all the levels back to the roller.

Odd one this. I have a lot of my stuff organised by folder, and don't bother tagging the individual files if I'm not building complex views. So I'll just use add a File Path category, leave the path blank, and this inserts a Location (root) level into the query. This still seems to work OK for the specific view, BUT, if I do it, any subsequent views at the same level cannot be selected when in Theater View. So for example I have in Theater View options; Video (secondary roller) > Television (primary roller) > Programs > and then a series of views, the first of which has my Location (root) query, called Folders. When I go into Theater View, I can select Video > Television > Programs, but all I get at this point is my Folder query, without a name, and without the option to select any other query at the same level.

I thought I might have reached a bottem limit of the number of levels, but the same thing is a happening for my main Images query, which is also a Location (root) type query. Here I just have Images > Folder and a bunch of other queries at the same level, but only the Folder query can be selected.

Is this a feature, and if so can it be configured, or a bug.

keep up the good work

Paul

 

[glynor]

Is there any way of getting them back in some form?

If you roll back to the older build, your old schemes should come back.

I had to do this when I was first setting the new system up.  If you happen to have two machines, it is useful to have the old build installed on one for reference, and the new build installed on another to set up the new schemes.

The new system is much more powerful, once you put in the time to get it set up well.  For example, to solve the "different view styles" at different layers issue, it actually often works out better to just make a second sub-view.  For example, if you have your views set up like this:

Video ->
      TV Shows ->
      Movies ->
      Home Movies ->

With those second-layer views showing up on the "secondary roller" of the main page (like is the new default for Video), then you can easily add this:

Video ->
      TV Shows ->
              View Style 1 (or Sorting Style 1 or both) ->
              View Style 2
              View Style 3

Then you can pick from these "preset" sortings or view styles quickly from inside the TV Shows view.

So, for example, I have:

Video ->
       TV Shows ->
               Series -> (which is a "normal" Series/Season drill-down type of system, in Lineup View style)
               New Shows -> (which shows just episodes with no categories, with the newest stuff on top, in List Style mode)
               (I also have a few others to deal with special things about my library that don't apply to you)

So, instead of picking different "views" using that secondary roller bar once the view is visible, I use those to choose different "sortings", "filterings", or "view styles" of the same subtype of media.  It really worked out well in the end.  I'm very pleased.

[stricko]

Thanks for this. I'll see what I can do to create a rolled back version. To make it more complex, I'm running a server and clients, so I'm not sure how that is going to work with different versions. Ideally I'd like to re-load the older version on my server, and then export the whole server config to a third machine......

I see what you are getting at with the sub-rller stuff, but are you saying that the old flexibility to have different list styles at different levels has been deliberatly removed? Or is it just broken.

Is there a thread somewhere that goes into depth about what has been added AND what (if anything) has been removed?

And any ideas about the Location (root) thingy?

Cheers

Paul

[glynor]

The new system is shared by the server over the network, and is stored as part of your library (unlike the old system).  So for Client/Server setups, this new system is a HUGE win.  You only need to do it once, on the server, and any clients automatically get the changes.

Regarding the Location thing... Something is weird in your setup.  The "Television" view, under Video, shouldn't be able to have a "Type".  The only views with a "Type" setting should be in the root.  Anything below these should work correctly without that setting, and should be added via Add -> Library Item.  That setting should really be called "Show Child Views as:" instead of Type.

I have a Location view under a new Top-Level view in my library called "Advanced" and it works fine.  So, I have:

Advanced (Type: Secondary Roller) ->
          All Files ("type" choice isn't shown for this view, just the name field and the "set rules" button) ->
                    By Media Type (a view that uses [Media Type]/[Media Sub Type]/ and then a fancy sorting scheme)
                    By Location (a view just like you're looking for)
                    By Date Imported (a view of ALL files with the newest files on top)
                    By File Type (a view that uses [File Type] and a few other fields for drill-down)
          (And there are a few other secondary-roller views here too, but they aren't really relevant for you)

You may want to consider abandoning using the File Browser method and actually tagging your files.  A big part of the power of MC lies in it's ability to abstract the view display from the filesystem structure.  So that you can view files in more than one way, and not be locked into the filesystem's "File inside a specific Folder which is inside a specific Folder" structure.  With tags, a file can be in more than one kind of folder, depending on the view you have configured.

If you have a nice folder structure on disk already, you should be able to use the Fill Properties from Filename tool, along with careful selection and tagging in a Location (root) view in Standard View, to fill in the relevant tags with a minimum of pain.

[glynor]

There are threads about these changes, but some of the most useful were on the Beta boards.  Jim, if you're reading this, can you move that "New Theater View Changes" thread from the Beta board over here?

[stricko]

Thanks again. I appreciate the advantages of a fully tag based model, but I had a large proportion of my stuff in a simple to use folder structure a long long time before I joined in with MC (at v13 I think..). I've played with tagging stuff based on the physical structure and sure it works fine, but why should I add an additional step (tagging) when for most stuff the physical structure gives me most of the queries that I (and more importantly the rest of the family) and happy and familiar with. For security, ease of maintenace and just simple logic, I'm going to keep stuff physically organised anyhow. In practise, I'm often using tags that are derived automatically from physical attributes anyway (folder, filename, type etc).

Strangley it's not the pain of the initial tagging of all of my files that troubles me, I can see how to do that resaonably quickly. It's keeping the tags clean on all of the new files that get added, by both me and my kids. We all follow a simple "create a folder called this, and put it here" model, and the system picks it up automatically. I'm not sure that I would want to add a tagging step, and I'm darn sure that my kids wouldn't do it. Just because MC can do wonderful and complex things with tags and views doesn't mean that I have to sacrifise usability and maintainability to achieve it. 

I'd actually got the old query structure working perfectly well using the client server model, and usually maintaining only the server, so there's no real advantage for me there.

I've definitely got a Type on both Video, and Television. They were there from the moment I installed the new version, and the same problem occures under Images wheer there is only 1 level of roller anyway.

My biggest gripe however is still the loss of the variable level list types, I've been playing/viewing a lot of stuff today, and I'm sorry, but for me at least, it's a very significant retrograde step.

[glynor]

Strangley it's not the pain of the initial tagging of all of my files that troubles me, I can see how to do that resaonably quickly. It's keeping the tags clean on all of the new files that get added, by both me and my kids. We all follow a simple "create a folder called this, and put it here" model, and the system picks it up automatically. I'm not sure that I would want to add a tagging step, and I'm ** sure that my kids wouldn't do it.

To each, their own, I suppose.  To me, it is just the opposite.  I have no interest in letting my wife/visitors (and eventually my daughter) need to see the complexity of the actual filesystem.

All new files come into m:\incoming\ and stay there until I clean up the tags, then I use MC to move the files to their final destination in one fell swoop with the Rename, Move, and Copy tool. In the meantime, you can always get to them all using the views I've designed. Since I get most of my music from Amazon, little is typically needed for music, other than reassigning Genre to match my system.  New videos need more, of course, but I minimize that as much as possible by contolling the filenames of things I encode (so it is just a simple Fill Properties from Filename command and done).  For my TV recordings, I have more trouble, but mainly because my recording needs are complex, which keeps me from using MC to record new content (and because SageTV uses weird filenames that are tough to parse).  For that stuff, the New Video views I've designed make it easy to find new content easily by filename as needed.

I'm constantly looking for ways to improve MC's ability to properly tag files at ingest time, as well.

[stricko]

Ingest time, nice turn of phrase.