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[gkerber]

I notice I can create a view scheme directly under Media Library, I'm not limited to creating it under Audio ( or video...)

I''d love to be able to create playlists anywhere, not just under "Playlists".

So imagine I have 10 Beatles albums, under  MediaLibrary->Audio->Beatles

It would be great if I could create a play list, named "Best of the Beatles" using tracks from those 10 Beatles albums.  If I could store it under Beatles, it would look just like another Beatles album, but it would really be a play list.

It would be like making virtual albums.  That would be cool.

I don't use playlists now, since they are harder to get to.

[nila]

gkerber - while u cant do exactly that you can in a round about way.... (read on to find out how  )

U create the playlist u want, then simply create a new view scheme with the playlist set as it's search criteria.

U then have this playlist under media library - et viola!
Plus u get the bonus that u can browse the playlist however u want with panes!

Takes an extra step (creating the view scheme) but lets u put the playlist there - not quite as easy as what u had in mind I'm sure but gives a nicer finished result once done!

[gkerber]

gkerber - while u cant do exactly that you can in a round about way.... (read on to find out how  )

U create the playlist u want, then simply create a new view scheme with the playlist set as it's search criteria.

U then have this playlist under media library - et viola!
Plus u get the bonus that u can browse the playlist however u want with panes!

Takes an extra step (creating the view scheme) but lets u put the playlist there - not quite as easy as what u had in mind I'm sure but gives a nicer finished result once done!

I just tried that, cumbersome, but I could live with it,

But MC will not let me store the new view scheme pointing to the playlist inside a view scheme.  I want it to be with all the other Bealtes albums, just like another album, but it's really a compilation of all the other Beatles albums.

Thanks anyway.

[NoCodeUK]

I wasthinking about this exact same thing yesterday.  I have all the Nirvana albums and thought it would be great if I could "recreate" the greatest hits album as an album using my existing tracks...Any chance of someething like this???  It would really rock and would definitely be an MC first and therefore a mighty selling feature...

Adam

[Doof]

gkerber> You could always make copies of the tracks you want and then just give them a different album name.

I'm trying to think of another way to use a custom made field, but so far I haven't come up with anything really good...

[gkerber]

gkerber> You could always make copies of the tracks you want and then just give them a different album name.

I'm trying to think of another way to use a custom made field, but so far I haven't come up with anything really good...

Of course, but that is *exactly* what I am trying to avoid.

I would like to go to one place to find my music, sliced and diced as I want.  The problem with playlists is that I could then find some Beatles in one place and other Beatles in another place.

Virtual Albums (as I'm starting to call it) would solve the problem.  Grab a bunch of tracks, assign it as a virtual album and then from then on in, it looks just like an album, tagging too (which of course would all have to be in the database, not the files themselves).

Or even just allow playlists to be kept anywhere, or maybe let us assign an optional "Artist" to a playlist, so it will show up under Artist in the Media Library.

Any other ideas on this subject so maybe we can come up with a workable proposal to the developers?

[Rands]

I really like the idea of this.

[NoCodeUK]

I think the simplest way is to create a "virtual album" like a playlist, assign an "album" name and let MC show it in Media Library based on the existing tags.  This way if there are multiple artists it appears under various artists and if there is only one it appears under that artist.

Adam

[Doof]

How about creating a list database field called "Virtual Albums" and creating the view scheme around that? That way you could have multiple virtual albums and they should all show up... wouldn't they?

I haven't really done much playing around with list types...

Of course you'd have to somehow copy the current album data into the Virtual Album field.... would Move\Copy Fields work?

[NoCodeUK]

Doof, the problem with doing anything using the database as is and creating a view scheme is that the "albums" would not then appear under the correct artist.  It has to be a playlist of some sort that can appear under an artist for this to work...

I don't think MC (or any other ausio program) can really do anything like this at the moment.  This is new ground

Adam

[rocketsauce]

Can't you do this by using a custom, semicolon-delimited field for album titles in your view schemes instead of the "regular" album field?

Normally the view scheme would be Artist/Album.

Instead you would have to use Artist/Album (custom field) for your view schemes.

This would also involve copying the album title from the "regular" album field in to the custom album field for all of your files. It's not the perfect, easy to implement solution, but it does exactly what you want.

Rob

[GHammer]

The only thing Muzicman has going for it is the ability to do this.

They do this through creating 'subtrack' info for the selections. You can manage the subtracks however you like.

[NoCodeUK]

Thanks for the idea Rob.  I hadn't thought of that and it works pretty well.  The only problem now is sorting as track #s are gonna come from the existing files.  Wondering if I need to set up a Virtual Track # field as well...not sure how to do this yet or if it would even work...Ill have a think...

Adam

[rocketsauce]

The only problem now is sorting as track #s are gonna come from the existing files.

Oh, right. I recall now that occurred to me when I came up with this whole idea a couple of weeks ago. It's not so much of an issue for me as I'm not really using "virtual albums" to recreate actual albums, but rather albums of my own ideas. Also, I tend to do most of my listening in shuffle mode anyway. (I really love an aggressive 4 sec crossfade).

I've managed to create some pretty cool view schemes using a combination of smartlist rules and custom semicolon-delimited album and comment fields.

As for virtual track #s, I guess it's really just a question of how much effort you want to put into the whole thing.

Rob

Listening to: '1+1+1=3 (Live)' from 'Xenophobia' by 'Prince & The Npg' on Media Center 9.0

[gkerber]

Oh, right. I recall now that occurred to me when I came up with this whole idea a couple of weeks ago. It's not so much of an issue for me as I'm not really using "virtual albums" to recreate actual albums, but rather albums of my own ideas. Also, I tend to do most of my listening in shuffle mode anyway. (I really love an aggressive 4 sec crossfade).

I've managed to create some pretty cool view schemes using a combination of smartlist rules and custom semicolon-delimited album and comment fields.

As for virtual track #s, I guess it's really just a question of how much effort you want to put into the whole thing.

Rob

Listening to: '1+1+1=3 (Live)' from 'Xenophobia' by 'Prince & The Npg' on Media Center 9.0

Some good ideas to accomplish the goal, quite a bit of work to maintain though...

But if there is enough interest from us users maybe MC development will take up the Virtual Album challenge...  and the value goes way beyond compilations of individual compilations of single artists.

Any place where you use a playlist, imagine if the play list and it's contents showed up just like albums with all the rest of your albums.

Sound off, voice your opinion.

[Doof]

Can't you do this by using a custom, semicolon-delimited field for album titles in your view schemes instead of the "regular" album field?

Normally the view scheme would be Artist/Album.

Instead you would have to use Artist/Album (custom field) for your view schemes.

This would also involve copying the album title from the "regular" album field in to the custom album field for all of your files. It's not the perfect, easy to implement solution, but it does exactly what you want.

Rob

That's what I was trying to say... I was just in a rush when I said it, so it wasn't as detailed.

It is a lot of work to accomplish, that's for sure. Especially when you start dealing with all of the other artists that you don't want to have a virtual album for.

[rocketsauce]

It is a lot of work to accomplish, that's for sure. Especially when you start dealing with all of the other artists that you don't want to have a virtual album for.

That's why I decided to just have my virtual albums in their own view scheme. That way I don't have to copy album titles from the regular album field to the custom field for every track in my library. It's not the ideal situation that gkerber was proposing, but it's good enough.

Rob

[gkerber]

That's why I decided to just have my virtual albums in their own view scheme. That way I don't have to copy album titles from the regular album field to the custom field for every track in my library. It's not the ideal situation that gkerber was proposing, but it's good enough.

Rob

One of my favorite quotes:

"When better is possible, good is not good enough"

[Doof]

Would the Move/Copy fields tool work to do this? At least you could get all of your existing files copied over at once, and then just remember to keep it updated as you add files.

You could even create a smartlist to show you which files had an empty "Vitrual Album".

Problem for me is, if I don't have the entire album, I generally don't bother with putting it in at all.

[gkerber]

Would the Move/Copy fields tool work to do this? At least you could get all of your existing files copied over at once, and then just remember to keep it updated as you add files.

You could even create a smartlist to show you which files had an empty "Vitrual Album".

Having to maintain it all for all albums, vitrual or not is way too much work for the desired goal. too error prone.

Hopefully "they" will like the idea and implement it.  The problem is, "they" are already working on too many good ideas....

[Doof]

I agree. However I kind of look at it this way. Every time I add a new file to my library I do the following..

1. Make sure the tags I care about are all filled in correctly.
2. Clean File Properties (Title Case).
3. Rename File From Properties : [ARTIST] - [NAME]
4. Audio Analysis
5. Move the disk file to where I want it.

So in this case, if Move\Copy Fields worked to do this, you could just use it on all of your audio files all at once. Copy Album to Virtual Album. Bam, it's done. Then for a new file, I would do all of the above, but I would add one more step, which would be to Copy the ALBUM tag to the VIRTUAL ALBUM tag. I woud just make it part of my import routine.

And then you'd be free to define whatever Virtual Albums you wanted just by adding their name to the list-type field...

[rocketsauce]

One of my favorite quotes:

"When better is possible, good is not good enough"

Ok. How about this? It's good enough until a better solution is implemented.

Rob

[NoCodeUK]

Craeting a virtual album field WOULD work, using move and copy WOULD work but you are still limited to the track numbers the files had in the orignal album.  If you are doing a "virtual" greatest hits this would mean having track #s repeating depending on which albums they came from.  You might then end up with an album that had track#s like 1,1,3,6,7,7,7,8,10.  This would be no good as an album.  I think for this to work properly it would have to be implemented as some sort of playlist that would show as an album.  Thats the only way that the order could be decided.

Adam

[Doof]

Unless of course you then created a Virtual Track # field and went from there.

But then we're getting REALLY kludgey.

I agree that a right click menu item off of playlists to "Make This a Virtual Album" would be the best solution. It wouldn't matter if it had mixed artists or not. It would just show up as a mixed album.

I would also like to see just a general "Properties" item for playlists as well that would show you

1. Playlist ID
2.# of files
3. Duration of playlist
4. Date created
5. Date modified
6. Last time it was sent to Playing Now
7. Maybe even allow a playlist rating of some sort.

But that gives me another idea. Make Albums an actual object in MC. In any kind of view scheme that uses Album, allow us to right click on the Album name and choose Properties. From there we would have most of the options I listed above, album rating (which would show up in the file list columns as well) and we could set certain album-wide properties for all of the files in that album like Year, Cover Art, and some sort of Notes field. Again, these would all be stored in the file tags themselves, but it would be one place to edit all of these properties for an album.

They could even take it one step further and store that all seperately and just have any file that has the same artist as that album and is assigned to that album automatically link back to those properties, thus saving disk space.

[gkerber]

Craeting a virtual album field WOULD work, using move and copy WOULD work but you are still limited to the track numbers the files had in the orignal album.  If you are doing a "virtual" greatest hits this would mean having track #s repeating depending on which albums they came from.  You might then end up with an album that had track#s like 1,1,3,6,7,7,7,8,10.  This would be no good as an album.  I think for this to work properly it would have to be implemented as some sort of playlist that would show as an album.  Thats the only way that the order could be decided.

Yes, Virtual albums are really just playlists, with the ability to set an Artist and Album name for, which show up in the main Media Library tree and panes, just like actual albums.

Tagging could not be done in the original music files (since that would overwrite the orginal data), but could be database storage only, just like playlists today, database storage.

Virtual Albums would fix all the reasons I don't use playlists now.

[rocketsauce]

The thing I've thought of, but don't know if it would be possible or feasible, would be for MC to be able to create some kind of an alias or shortcut file that points to an existing file (ie., right-click on a file and choose Make Alias). The alias file would only be a few kb in size, but MC would treat it as if it was a "normal" audio file so that it could be used in view schemes and tagged.

Or, maybe another way to look at it would be for MC to somehow treat the list of tracks in a single playlist file (.m3u) as separate objects so that they can be individually tagged.

Hmm, sounds very complicated. ?

Rob

[rocketsauce]

The alias file would only be a few kb in size, but MC would treat it as if it was a "normal" audio file so that it could be used in view schemes and tagged.

I guess the drawback to this would be that it essentially would be like having a bunch of duplicate files in your library, which would be really annoying for a lot of different reasons.

Rob