I agree with you, your observation makes a lot of sense. There are however, many other things that should be considered along with this.
Honestly, as a backup option, this is not a very economic or streamlined solution.
MC makes regular, automatic, library backups, and, you can also make your own in just a few mouse clicks using the "
File > Library > Backup Library" option. All of your library views are included in these backups.
I understand that you may have had a different use case for these saved views other than purely backup, to which end, the quoted text from 2012 below may be of some use to you.
- Saved Views: Right at the start of this exercise, there was the "View Picker" with its little thumbnails and descriptions of predefined views that could be loaded with a double click. The theory here is that if you hit "Load view" that same view picker opens and you would pick a saved view to load. In practice, most often the view you want isn't there because it does not match the media types of the location you want to add it to. Similarly, the "Save view" option is fraught with issues. For example, there is a browse button in the save dialogue, but, if you save the view anywhere other than the default location offered, it will not be presented as a "Load view" option, ever, and there is no way to browse for a saved view from the "Load View" tool. Views are saved as jvi files, but these are not associated with Media Center, and when forced, Media Center does not know what to do with saved view files when opening them from the hard drive. In my experience, best practice is to forego these two altogether and rely on library backups to preserve the view layout, and when you want to have a view copied, just drag and drop it where you want it in tree, and when you drop, you will get a "Move / Copy?" option. Minor tweaking after copying is a breeze compared to fighting with the "Save / Load" views options.
