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[ldoodle]

Is there anything like this in Media Center?

I find it annoying (not just J River!) that media cannot be ordered chronologically rather than alphabetically. At the moment you have;

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom
Raiders of the Lost Ark

In this instance the films are in completely the reverse order and the first (properly ordered) film is way down in the list sepeare to it's sequels!

So could the XML files contain another tag called Sort Order which contains non-visible data from a GUI perspetive. You'd have;

Indiana Jones 1
Indiana Jones 2
Indiana Jones 3

Dirty Harry 1
Dirty Harry 2
Dirty Harry 3
Dirty Harry 4
Dirty Harry 5

and so on (the Dirty Harry films are awful for ordering!). The library would then use this for sorting films when the 'Name' option is used.

[Listener]

Some ideas that might help you solve your problem:

1. You can control how MC sorts files.

2. You can sort files using any tags, database only fields or even expressions you choose.  You can sort using a sequence of fields.

3. You can add a custom field if no existing field meets your needs and use that field to select and sort files.

4. You can edit fields so that they contain what you choose.

5. You can have more than one view of your files with different ways to select and sort the files. 

6. You can filter the files that are displayed in a view.

7. It is up to you to decide how you want to select and sort your files.

Bill

[ldoodle]

Wow, thanks Bill.

I will have a play tonight and see what I can come up with.

[CountryBumkin]

You could control the sort order using the episode field. Just make epiosde 1 the first movie to display and so on. Then in Tools>Optioms>Theater View under "set file rules for display" add "episode (a-z)", or it might just sort properly for you if you just add the "date (a-z)" field after the sort by "name" field.
I found using "series", episode, and season" for sorting and grouping Movies works real well and doesnt conflict with Shows since the media sub types are different.

See my post on setting up Movie Box sets: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=69748.0 I think this method will work for you.

[ldoodle]

Thanks CB. I see that you have seperated 'box set' films into their own heading.

I would not want to do it this way, and would prefer them to show under the main Movies heading (as in the OP as one entry). I would want each film to still have it's proper artwork though rather than a master one at the top level.

Is this possible? I suppose Listener's idea is best suited, but I'd lose the single entry in the main list ability?

[ldoodle]

I ended up using Listener's option 3 in his post above.

This actually works very well and oh so simply. I just append the film/disc 'number' in the Sort Name field I created;

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [Disc 1] becomes Lord of the Rings 1
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [Disc 2] becomes Lord of the Rings 2
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers [Disc 1] becomes Lord of the Rings 3
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers [Disc 2] becomes Lord of the Rings 4
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [Disc 1] becomes Lord of the Rings 5
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [Disc 2] becomes Lord of the Rings 6

This gives the benefit of ignoring 'The...', 'A...' when sorting. And films whose names have no relation to each other follow the same numbering system - e.g. Magnum Force is Dirty Harry 2 but it doesn't have 'Dirty Harry' in the title so becomes Dirty Harry 2, and The Dark Knight is really Batman 6 so its sort name is Batman 6.

[CountryBumkin]

Thanks CB. I see that you have seperated 'box set' films into their own heading.

I would not want to do it this way, and would prefer them to show under the main Movies heading (as in the OP as one entry). I would want each film to still have it's proper artwork though rather than a master one at the top level.

Is this possible? I suppose Listener's idea is best suited, but I'd lose the single entry in the main list ability?

The "box set" was just the goal of the post I linked to, but adding a episode number to the movie's tag and then using it as sort field works fine with movies. It doesn't conflict with TV Shows because they are different media syb types, and it doesn't require you to change the title of a movie. BTW - the movies shown in my Box-Sets still show as individual movies with their cover art in the regular/default movie display window. I only created a new view, I didn't change any of the existing views.
Glad you got it working. Enjoy