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[richard-ec2]

I have a box set of 50 CD albums and I want their thumbnails to display in the main viewing pane in the same order as the CDs appear in the box - CD1, CD2, CD3 and so on. Is there a simple way of achieving this?

By default, of course, the thumbnails appear alphabetically by name. So I tried tagging each album with a Disc# and then I went to the "Sort by" tab at the top of the pane and set up a custom sort by Disc#. But is doesn't seem to have any effect - as far as I can see, they are displaying in order of date added though I may be wrong about that.

[JimH]

You may need to set up a custom view.  Right click on Audio in the tree on the left to begin.  The wiki has more information.

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Views

[richard-ec2]

Many thanks for responding, JimH. It is already a custom view - it's a custom view of all the albums in a 50 CD box set. It's an album view so there are 50 album thumbnails with title of each album under the thumbnail.

If I go the "Albums" tab right at the very top of the window, and click on the dropdown menu, and select "Sort by", I have lots of options for sorting the thumbnails in different orders and they all seem to work - except "Disc #" which is a custom sort. I don't understand why it won't sort by Disc # when all the options work.

Just as an experiment, I right clicked on this view scheme in the tree and went to "Customise view" and replaced "Album" with "Disc #". Very interesting - it did in fact re-sort all the albums by Disc # - BUT it replaced the album titles under the thumbnails with the Disc #! At least that proves that MC can see the Disc # in the tags. But how do I get MC to sort by Disc # while retaining the normal album view?

[richard-ec2]

Please can someone help with this? It seems so simple. I have a box set of 50 CDs by assorted classical artists and all I want MC to do is to sort them by disc number, so the thumbnails display in the same order as the CDs in the box. The option is there in MC - it just doesn't seem to work.

Each ripped CD is tagged in the [Disc #] field with a simple, whole number from 1 to 50.

Here's what I'm trying to do:



See? The option is there. But when you select it, MC just reverts to the Default view.

Why is that, I wonder? If you try to sort by other fields, they seem to work - just not Disc #.

I tried something else. I went into the custom view settings and set a rule telling MC to sort by disc number:



But again, it has no effect. MC disobeys a direct order!

Yet another attempt. This time I tried going into the category settings:



In the lower half of that big pop-up window, where it says Settings, I clicked on the dropdown menu (where it says Ascending). But the option to sort by Disc number is not there and I don't see a way of adding a custom option. Even if I could, my experience with the other two methods suggests it probably wouldn't work.

There are lots of these classical mega boxes around and it would be really helpful to be able to display the contents in the same order as they're presented in the box, without having to put a number in front of every album title. It seems such a simple thing and the option is there in MC but I don't understand why I can't get it to work.

Can anyone help?

PS: it's not a tagging error. I've established that MC can see and work with my Disc # tags.

[BillT]

I just name my albums such that they will appear in the right order if sorted by Name, select sort by Name in the Albums tab drop down list and it seems to work. The sort selection seems to stay across restarts as well.

[richard-ec2]

Thanks BillT - yes, in fact I've already done that as a stop-gap but it's not very pretty and I know MC can do a lot better than this. Any MC folks, please could you look at my post just above BillT's and tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[DJLegba]

Seems like you've found a bug. But when I rip a box set, I do it in order, and I assume you do as well. So wouldn't sorting by date imported do what you want?

[richard-ec2]

Thanks but that would only work if you always rip the discs in numerical order (I don't!) and never, ever, re-rip any of them for any reason (I do!).

There are always workarounds but MC offers a really neat and simple option which is to sort by disc # and I want to know why I can't get it to do that. I wish an MC person would offer some help - it seems such a simple question.

[tiberiuspv]

Sorting thumbnails works in rather mysterious ways. The Sort By option does not seem to behave correctly in many cases. There is one case that works perfectly, which is sort by Name.
In a hierarchical thumbnail view (like the one you're building), Name is very special: it reflects the current category level [see Predefined Library Fields in the wiki]. In your case, Name would contain the Album since this is what the top-level category is. But the sorting by name would then not sort correctly unless the album names were sorted in CD# order. The trick is to use the thing you want to sort by as the category (so sort works), and use the Thumbnail Text option to modify what you see on the screen. The default thumbnail text is [Name], i.e. the current category value.

In your case, my recommendation would be:
1. Define the View as having a single category which is the CD number (Disc #). Use a search rule (as you do right now) to select a CD boxset (Living Presence 1 in your case). [side note: sorting the search results does not help, as the category viewer resorts anyway]
2. In the Sort By option, use Name
3. In the Thumbnails option, select Thumbnail Text and put [Album] there, so you will see the album name (which is the CD name in your setup)

If, as you picture shows, you use Genre as a field to identify box sets [a bit of an overloaded choice, I use Series which does not have any other meaning]. So you can make your view have 2 categories: Genre (or Series), then Disc #. This will give you a thumbnail view of all your boxsets, and when you go down in boxset, of the CDs in that boxset in CD number order. You need to change Thumbnail Text at each level - top should be [Name] (or [Genre] or [Series]), 2nd level should be [Album] (assuming all tracks in a CD have the same album name). In this example, Name is the boxset name at the top level, and becomes the disk number at the second level.

Good luck...

[MikeO]

If you have the disc number as a tag Disc # then how about using an Expression as the Album name ie [Disc #] [Album] alias Album

That way they will Auto sort OK

I do this with release date to get a bands albums in order ie [Date] - [Album]

Mike

[richard-ec2]

If you have the disc number as a tag Disc # then how about using an Expression as the Album name ie [Disc #] [Album] alias Album

That way they will Auto sort OK

I do this with release date to get a bands albums in order ie [Date] - [Album]

Mike

Interesting - I would like to try this. Where is the Expression entered? In the Category editor, in the tag field or in the thumbnail text editor? And is the wording and spacing exactly as you've written it? I've never tried an Expression before.

Tiberiuspv - huge thanks for your post. I'll reply properly a bit later but your suggestions are a really big improvement on what I have at the moment.

[richard-ec2]

Mike, please ignore last post - I tried putting your Expression in the Category editor and it works beautifully, as is. I'll play around with this a little and tidy up and will post a picture later showing how it looks for anyone else who's interested.

In the thumbnail text, it displays the disc number before the album title. I think I like this and would prefer to keep it that way but is there a way of not having the disc number displaying in the thumbnail text, if someone wanted it that way?

Tiberiuspv, I will still be adopting some of your ideas and will come back later on this.

[richard-ec2]

OK, here’s where I am with this at the moment and I’m very happy with the way it's going but if anyone wants to suggest any tweaks or improvements, I’d be very keen to hear them.

It’s clear that the “Sort by” function simply doesn’t work in MC for many fields, including Disc #. So if you have a box set of, say, 50 classical CDs and you want to display them in the same order as they appear in the box, you have to find a workaround.

The one I’m using is based on the very helpful suggestions put forward by tiberiuspv and MikeO. Here’s an attempt at a beginner’s guide.

1. Tag all the discs in each set with: a) the disc number in the Disc # field and b) the name of the box set, using the Series field.

2. Set up a view scheme in the tree called (for example) Classical Collections. Right click on Customise view and set rules as follows:

View As: Categories.

Show Categories in This Order:
Series
Expression

For Expression, click on Edit and enter the following Expression: [Disc #] [Album]

Click on Set rules for file display. The rule is: “Series” “is” and then choose the names of all the box sets that you want to appear in this view scheme.

4. With any luck, you'll end up with something like this:



The only thing that looks slightly odd is that when you mouse over the collections, the words “Play expression file” appear above the name of the collection instead of “Play albums”.

But the stack looks lovely when you open it. Look:



Again, the only slightly weird thing is that tab at the top, which says Mercury Box 1 Expression instead of Mercury Box 1 albums.

Coupla points:

1. You’re probably thinking, “Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just stick the disc number in front of the album title? Then the discs would sort themselves into the correct order and all of this would be unnecessary.” That’s true. The only problem is that those numbers can look ugly when they appear as part of the album title in other views. Using the technique above, you never see the disc number in any view except the specific view I’ve pictured above.

2. These views display beautifully in JRemote, with none of those references to “Expressions” or other oddities.

3. MikeO, as you may have spotted, I haven’t used exactly the Expression wording you suggested and I may not have done what you intended so please correct me if I’ve done something wrong.