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[cochinada]

Hello,

After months of ripping more than 4000 CDs I'm finally trying JRiver and now the time has came to program my remote.

First of all, I've organized my music collection in two separate folders: classical and popular music. Popular music is organized by artist/album and classical by composer/album. After much fiddling I managed to separate both folder structures on JRiver in a way that my Classical albums are sorted by composer and Popular music by artist (I customized both views to show categories in order 'Location', or by File Path in other words). I named these as 'Popular' and 'Classical' and it is working as I expect. The problem is with the remote, or any remote for that matters.

How can I navigate and select one particular CD without a mouse? I programmed all arrow keys on my remote but these don't make the mouse pointer move by no means or imagination. Also I couldn't find any combination of keys that would step over each window of the program.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[blgentry]

Are you running MC under Windows?  If so, you should investigate Theater View.  It's designed exactly for this purpose:  Using an IR remote, on a very large screen, to navigate your collection.

If you're not under Windows, you can still use Standard View, but you'll need a mouse and keyboard.  There are wireless models that work pretty well; some with keyboard and mouse integrated together.

Finally, you might want to look into JRemote, Gizmo, or EOS.  All are programs that run on a tablet or phone and let you pick the music you want, right from the tablet's display.  The tablet (or phone) acts as a remote control and talks to MC over your home network.  It's a very slick presentation that can make choosing music a really nice experience.

Brian.

[cochinada]

Hi Brian,

I'm running windows 7.

I haven't tried Theater View before but although it will apparently allow navigation with remote arrow keys, it doesn't show me my two custom views 'classical' and 'popular' that are available in Standard view. Instead I get the standard 'Artists', 'Genre', 'Composer', etc and as such I get all classical and popular albums mixed up which I don't want. Is there a way to get my custom views also available in this Theater view? I couldn't find a way.

Anyway my remote arrow keys don't have any effect. I've used the Flirc Gui for programming these keys with several different options. Is there a better way?

I don't have wireless in my home nor intend to although it's true that would make things easier and nicer but it's not an option for health reasons.

Thanks.

[blgentry]

I haven't tried Theater View before but although it will indeed allow navigation with remote arrow keys, it doesn't show me my two custom views 'classical' and 'popular' that are available in Standard view. Instead I get the standard 'Artists', 'Genre', 'Composer', etc and as such I get all classical and popular albums mixed up which I don't want. Is there a way to get my custom views also available in this Theater view?

I don't have Theater View, so I can't help you with anything very advanced.  But I'm certain you can customize it to show different views, with different rules.  I think you can change it's rules in a very similar way to how you change rules for views in Standard View.  Look in Tools > Options > Theater View and you should see some options to customize views.

I don't have wireless in my home nor intend to although it's true that would make things easier and nicer but it's not an option for health reasons.

Why would having wifi be a health concern?

Brian.

[cochinada]

I don't have Theater View, so I can't help you with anything very advanced.  But I'm certain you can customize it to show different views, with different rules.  I think you can change it's rules in a very similar way to how you change rules for views in Standard View.  Look in Tools > Options > Theater View and you should see some options to customize views.

I've managed to customize it more or less in the same way so I have my 'classical' and 'popular' views available.

But the problem remains: except for play, pause and stop, my remote arrow keys don't do anything.

[cochinada]

I've installed the latest Flirc FW (3.8 ) and reprogrammed the arrow keys. Now they work sometimes but it is totally erratic.
Not only I profoundly dislike the Theater view, specially when I'm playing a CD because I can't find a way to simply present all the tracks of the album indicating the one being played but with this erratic behavior of the remote I can't even control what I'm doing.
I'm totally disappointed.

[JimH]

In Theater View, move to the top and toggle the list style. 

[Arindelle]

In Theater View, move to the top and toggle the list style. 

you can but what you might prefer is in playing now to move to the  "LIST" in the top menu; all the tracks will be shown. Info is also very good if set-up correctly for Classical btw.  When you are not in playing now, you drill down to the album and the tracks will show up individually.

There is a learning curve for theater mode, but it IS worth it. Much better front-end in my opinion than standard views, especially away from a computer screen. What you might not be aware of is you can totally customize it ... you can also import your standard views. I make Classical and non-Classical separate menu items (rollers). Its quite powerful.  Just don't depend on "panes" type views -- you can't use those. So don't give up hope just yet To modify/import views and menus go Options=>Theater and you'll see the views that you can play with, move around, nest etc.

Unless you have some fancy harmony programmable remote (if so a forum search might help), I'd go back to the defaults from the options and get rid of outside software to reprogram things if possible. Any MCE remote basically works out of the box for Theater View ... nothing erratic. I found that remapping an escape key and having a specific "enter" button helps.  Remotes aren't really much use in Standard Mode, not sure how they work to be honest. But if you are close enough to a computer to see it, not sure why you would need one.  Blowing up standard mode can be done for big monitors and there a couple of tricks (like hiding the tree, going full screen on category views with the little button top right of the main data area in views, setting up menu icons etc.) But I think Theater View (or JRemote) rules as a front end when your not sitting right in front of a computer.

I find that with audio a remote 7 button mouse with a  "free scroll" wheel works best. With 4000cds you have a pretty good size collection going.  It would be much faster. But if you are old school no problem. A remote can work very well indeed (I find it helpful to have multiple grouping levels (like group together all Artists A-C, D-F etc.) when using a handheld remote can speed things up.

Anyway give it a chance, I think Theater mode is one of the best things about JRiver personally.

[cochinada]

Thanks for helping Arindelle

Ok, I'm exploring Theater view and more or less was able to customize it to my taste with a few issues.

At the same time I gave up using my erratic One For All remote and am using the tv remote instead. After all I think it makes more sense because I'm sitting at the couch a couple of meters from the pc trying to control JRiver and I need to turn on the TV screen at the same time for that purpose of course.

There are lots of things that I still don't quite understand.

1)
For instance, what's the purpose of the 'back' key that one programs on the remote? I see there is always (?) a back option on the menu bar. Is it for selecting this option or something else depending on the view we are? I'm asking because when I'm on 'Playing Now' view/menu and I press this key a menu pops up with three options:

Exit Theater View
System Sleep, Shutdown & More...
Cancel

This was a surprise because I was expecting to go back to the previous view or whatever and more than once have accidentally left Theater View (with the remote).

You mentioned "I found that remapping an escape key and having a specific "enter" button helps". If I have an <ESC> programmed and press it here would it mean Cancel?
And when do you need a specific "enter" button?

2)
Again on 'Playing Now' view/menu JRiver displays some images like a screen saver that I have no idea where he got.

3)
On 'Info' view I like the possibility of displaying track info but the problem is that I have nothing more on 'General' tab than what is already displayed on the left side of the screen because I entered all tags myself manually. I have also no information for 'Lyrics' or 'Notes'.
Is it possible to fetch more info, particularly lyrics without jeopardizing or overwrite my manual tags?
Can I also get other kind of info like some background of the band/composer or ...?

4)
Back on I 'Playing Now' view/menu I would like to change the dot on the middle bottom of the screen that moves during playback into a full bar because in my view this doesn't give a good idea of the timing of the track.
Is this possible?