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[DmitryB]

Is there a way to insert a character into multiple lines in a field? Let's say I want to place quotation marks around every entry in the Name field (which is what I'm trying to do.) Any way to do this for every track in the album at once?

[wer]

You could do a search and replace on the field. Replace ;  with ";"
You would then need 1 more step:
Add a leading " to every field, and add a trailing " to every field.
Those two steps can be done with the expression language, acting on all files at once.

[DmitryB]

Hmm...replacing a words to have ; around it would still be replacing them one at a time.

I'm not sure I understand the second part, about adding fields. Don't know how to do that. I know the Find/Replace function.

[wer]

You said "every entry" so I assumed you were talking about a list-style field in MC, where all entries are delimited by a ;

If you don't know the find and replace function, googling for "jriver find and replace" would show you this:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Find_and_Replace

A list field in MC, like Actors, is stored like this:
Robert De Niro;Al Pacino;Val Kilmer

A string field, like Name, is just a string. It doesn't have "lines" or multiple entries. So when you talk about every entry in the Name field, that doesn't make sense. Each Name field as only one entry, by definition.

If you meant you just want to surround the contents of every Name field with quotes, that is easy to do with expressions.

Select all the files you want to change, making sure you click on the Name column to select the last file.  Then hit F2.
You will be editing all the name fields at once.  Just type in the following:
="[Name]"

then hit enter.  Ctrl-Z will undo the change if you goof up.

This will change The Godfather  to "The Godfather"

Be careful making changes to large numbers of files all at once, since you seem new to this.

If all of this is not clear, you had better post and paste in the exact contents that you want to change and what you want to change it to as an example, plus add a screenshot.

[RoderickGI]

Why on earth would you want to put quotes around entries in the [Name] field Dimitry?

It is easy to do, but it seems like a very strange thing to do.

[wer]

I've given up asking those sorts of questions. 

You can end up in the same sort of discussions as with "my speakers sound way better if my listening room is painted green instead of white."

[RoderickGI]

Well, normally I don't, as you know. But this one seems quite strange. Maybe there is a good reason. We shall have to wait and see.

Both Green and White are no good. The walls must be Blue. Any sane person knows that! (I can't believe how many people have views like that.)

[HaWi]

I was convinced it was magenta walls that made the music perfect...

[wer]

I was convinced it was magenta walls that made the music perfect...

Now THAT is crazy talk.  Keep that kind of nonsense to yourself.

The walls must be Blue.

<sigh>  But only in the southern hemisphere, Rod.  The effect is different when the sound waves are upside down.  You're showing your biases again...

[JimH]

I've given up asking those sorts of questions. 

Be strong.

[RoderickGI]

 

Poor Dmitry will be wondering what happened to his thread!

[JimH]

Dmitry,
Be strong.

[DmitryB]

I kind of scrolled past the thread. My walls are purple and sound fantastic.

Let me clarify what I meant in the original question. I want to put quotation marks around song titles in an album. Instead of going through each individual track and putting quotation marks around each individual track title - is there a way to just have the quotation marks inserted into every track title on the album?

[wer]

Yes, I gave it to you. Read my post without scrolling past it.

[DmitryB]

Yep that worked. Thanks!

[DmitryB]

But here's another question: the display there "THRILLER by Various Artists" is set to show the Artist (that's Various because one song also features Paul McCartney). Is there a way to change that to display Album Artist instead so it'll say "Thriller by Michael Jackson?"

[wer]

Yes, change the view so that instead of using [Artist] it uses [Album Artist] or [Album Artist (auto)]

Read Marko's excellent tutorial (who should be paying me a quarter every time I say that) to learn how:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68960.0

[RoderickGI]

Ummm... I would say no.

Now, in the example you used about the "Various Artists" in the Album heading of the Panes View you have hit on a quirk of MC. That "Various Artists" in the heading for an Album does not refer to the [Album Artist (auto)] field, or indeed any field. It is more of an English statement about the Album, and is hard coded into MC. Whenever there is more than one Artist listed in any Track in an Album, MC will display "[Album] by Various Artists".

That is another reason why I never set the [Album Artist] to "Various" or "Various Artists". That just confuses what is going on in MC, and makes it look like MC is using the [Album Artist] field in that Album heading.

The Views in question don't even refer to the [Artist] field Wer, so it isn't possible to change them to refer to [Album Artist] or [Album Artist (auto)].

I would be happy to be proven wrong. 

[wer]

Well if you're fixated on the bottom pane.  But I interpreted his question more generally, about any view that is using artist.  People are always asking about how to NOT display albums under "Various Artists" just because a couple of tracks have duets, etc.

Our normal roles seem to have reversed!  Usually you are the one trying to answer the question "that he REALLY means".

[RoderickGI]

Well, it would be boring if we didn't switch it up sometimes!

The image in Reply #15 looks like a section of the bottom pane, so I took it as that was what Dmitry meant.

[DmitryB]

I'm including the full screen capture for reference and clarification.

I was really just wondering about that display, to make it clearer that the album is by Michael Jackson, despite one duet with McCartney. I looked through the thread on Views and it doesn't look like there's a way to fix that. I guess it's then a matter of selecting different columns to compensate. Maybe use "Soloists" (which I typically use in classical music) and then having "Michael Jackson; Paul McCartney" and changing Artist and Album Artist to one main performer.

Any other suggestions as a work-around?

Thanks!

[wer]

Ok, I will just go ahead and admit my confusion.  I don't see how you generated that view in the screenshot.

Admittedly the tree is hidden behind the tag window...

But there seems to be only one pane on the right. It does not seem to be a file list, because the controls do not say "File List".
Further, because it says "Thriller" where the tab controls (turned off) ordinarily would be, it would appear he has drilled down into something to get to Thriller, but there are no breadcrumbs. My MC always generates breadcrumbs. But not in a file list style view. But File List views say "File List"; see previous comment.

It can't be the file (bottom) pane made large, because on mine you cannot completely hide the top pane.

Anyway Dmitry, if the only thing you are asking about is specifically the exactly one place on that particular screenshot where it says "Thriller by Various Artists" then no that cannot be fixed. It is unfortunately hard-coded into the program.  If you meant pretty much anywhere else in the app, all the places in the tree and other views that are missing from this screenshot, then yes, per my previous answer.

I would like to see a screenshot of the "Customize View" dialog for that view, to see how it is constructed.

Forget soloist. The fields you are interested in are [Album Artist] or [Album Artist (auto)] as I said before.

[DmitryB]

Here's a screen grab with the Tag gone. I'm creating Groups within Groups. Essentially I found the basic layout of iTunes easy to navigate and customize, so I was trying to recreate it here. Subcategories in categories. In classical, as you can see Composer and then different subcategories. It forces me to create Playlists, but it's the only way I could do what I wanted. None of the other options were allowing me to get the Artwork and the details on performances that I could customize.

I tried the [Album Artist (auto)] option, but it didn't really do what I wanted to do for this specific purpose. (Honestly I wasn't sure what the point of it was at all. It just seemed to reflect what Album Artist was doing. I ended up deleting it from the Tag panel.

[wer]

It's still not clear to me exactly what you're doing, because Thriller does not match anything shown in your tree, and nothing in the tree is selected.  Plus, that does not look like a playlist view. I can't get cover art to span lines in a playlist view.

However, I can say that to do categories and subcategories as you describe, playlists would pretty much be the worst way to do it.  That sort of thing is easily done using standard MC functionality in the audio view.  See the screenshot below, where I have types of compositions broken out.  This is all done automatically based on tags. There is zero manual playlist creation.

You'd need to describe exactly what you are trying to accomplish, but it sounds to me like you have used an Itunes model (which can make playlists and do not much else) and are trying to organize your music using that methodology in MC.  That is hideously perverse, because MC offers all the categorization and organization that itunes lacks, which makes doing that sort of thing in playlists completely unnecessary.  It's like you have access to software like Excel, and you're using it like a paper-tape adding machine.

It pains me to see all those manual playlists you've created. Such an expenditure of time... So unnecessary.  You can still be saved, if you can but recognize you need help.

I'd still like to see how exactly you're making Thriller display like that.

[RoderickGI]

What skin are you using Dmitry, and have you or someone else modified it?

[RoderickGI]

Ah, it's a Panes View of pre-created Playlist Groups and Playlists. https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,126706.0.html

I was also confused because I couldn't see Disclosure Triangles that I expected between the top and bottom Panes. But when you drill down to a level in the Navigation Bar, only the bottom Pane is shown, so no Disclosure Triangles.

A similar View can be created as a Panes View, and then drilling into the categories defined in that View. In a Panes View with a List Style of "Details", Cover Art is resizable by expanding the column width. The Cover Art image shown is just the "Image (large thumbnail)" function. For example, I have a Panes View of Genres, and when I drill down to an Album the display looks very much like yours Dmitry. See the first attached image. The second attached image shows the same Panes View without drilling down in the Navigation Bar, and with the top Panes displayed. Sorry they are a bit large, I wanted to show the full Navigation Bar selection.

Dmitry you should probably have another look at just using Panes Views, with drill down in the Navigation bar, as that will allow you to select and drill down through categories as Wer suggests, and should give you the same or a similar View to what you have built. As you can see in my image, you can also sort the resulting Track list as you wish. I'm not sure how you solved your sort issue (Playlist sort not respected in Panes View), but sorting by Track number within an Album would seems to make sense, in most cases, even for Classical music I suspect.


I'm still not sure why you want to put quotes around the "Name". I assume it is just for the aesthetic look. I was concerned that quotes would interfere with online lookups. But I can see now that you actually put them around the [Movement Name] field. Is that just the [Name] field renamed, or a custom field? Regardless, as you have said, you like to do everything manually, so online lookups probably aren't an issue.

[wer]

But when you drill down to a level in the Navigation Bar, only the bottom Pane is shown, so no Disclosure Triangles.

Ah, you mean the tree.  That is called Tree Browsing. Yes I see now.  He hid the tree browsing in his screenshots, probably just to make it as unclear as possible. Kind of an odd way to use a panes view, since you are unnecessarily limited to one strict order of descent, but ok.  There are lots of things that can be done with a Panes view that cannot be done by Tree Browsing.

Considering that Dmitry has gone so far afield with playlists, I'm not sure it's safe to assume he actually has it the way the way he really wants it to look (or would be most happy with) or if he just thinks it's the best than can be done.  I sense a considerable gap exists between what Dmitry thinks MC is limited to doing, and what it can actually do.

Movement Name is obviously a user defined field, but to what end is unclear.

Dmitry, can you describe what you actually WANT to do in MC, aside from these trivial bits about Various Artist?  We're talking about how you really want your music organized, and how you have it tagged.  There is vast room for improvement (and labor reduction) compared to what you have done, but you will need to be specific.

Regardless of whether you want a different visual layout or not, or are interested in seeing what other layouts the app can provide, building playlists is definitely the wrong way to go about any kind of organization.  You could get pretty much exactly the same results in a totally automated fashion with 1% of the effort, if you used the tags and app features to their full extent.

[RoderickGI]

Yep. I call the tree on the left the Navigation Bar. That was what it got called way back, so I have stuck with it. Glynor called it the Tree in the Wiki though. But I do tend to say a user should navigate or browse the tree, so maybe I should call it the "Navigation Tree". I don't like just "Tree". I like people to understand that it isn't just like a folder tree in Windows Explorer, but is a Navigation tool.

I thought Dmitry may have changed the Display Name for the [Name] field, but it is probably a Custom User Field.

Anyway, let's see where this all leads to.

[wer]

Yes, perhaps it used to be called that, I can't recall. But there's an option labeled "Support Tree Browsing" so that's what it's called now.  But I have never used tree browsing in conjunction with a panes view. It's kind of an odd combination.  But yes, let's see...  I'm actually interested in what Dmitry is after.  With all those playlists, at the very least it shows dedication.

[JimH]

We call it the tree or the tree on the left.  Let's not rewrite history.

[DmitryB]

Ok let's see if I can explain!

I am using the Blue Steel skin with modifications to colors and fonts.

The "Movement Name" column is one I created. It's primarily for Classical Music. It essentially functions the same as Name, but for my instinct the wording just makes more sense. I actually forgot to make the change for Pop music to Name, which I did just now in the screenshot below of "Thriller." That's the full screen with the Tree on the left showing the playlist and the panel on top opened. I close it at all times because I don't really find anything there that's useful for me.

For Classical Music, you can see a screengrab below of the typical layout I use for a concerto. (There are different columns in an opera vs. orchestral vs. recital.)

As far as what I am trying to do: I initially made the switch from iTunes to MC because I had collected a huge number of SACDs and DSF files and iTunes can't play them; making iTunes compatible copies was just a waste of SACDs/DSFs. So I switched to MC to play all those files natively. I decided to manually import all the music into MC because I decided to do a major clean-up of my library in the process. Over the years I accumulated/hoarded a lot of junk. The manual transfer allows me to really reevaluate what I want to keep and get rid of the clutter. (Shockingly a lot of clutter.) So thats' why the switch and why I decided to do a manual import one album at a time transfer. And yes, it is very time consuming, but also kind of therapeutic. Even if it does take years to complete the full transfer. (It's already been well over a year.)

Is what I'm doing efficient? Definitely not. Can it be easier? Probably. Do I know how to make it easier? No. I'm not that old, but I've reached the age where I say: "Damn these kids and their technology! I used to program my parents' VCR and now I can't figure out this new app!"

So why this particular layout: the goal was how each individual album would be displaying all the information I wanted (and could customize each individual album when necessary). But displaying artwork and making that adjustable was very important as well. As I went through the various View options (and this was something I had brought up at the time and discussed on this site with various people, specifically asking about how to be able to display and manually adjust the size of the artwork, this was the solution I arrived at. It's been a while since those conversations, but at the time the people who participated agreed that to be able to adjust artwork, Playlists was the only option. If they were wrong... off with their heads!

In the screenshots Roderick posted, I don't like the bottom one: so much wasted space with the panes on the top half of the screen. I tried using that and rejected it. I like the look of the top one though.

BUT I want to arrange my collection - which is primarily Classical - by specific genre of a specific composer. That's what is clearest to me. If I want to play a Beethoven Piano Concerto I just want to open a list of all the artists who play his Piano Concertos. It's just what makes the most sense to my brain. That's why I have the breakdown of Composer - Genre - Performer. Maybe because I was using iTunes for so long, but the brain is wired to have that kind of list just makes it easiest for me to browse my collection and choose what to play. None of the options in Audio give me that. I have Albums, Artists, Files, etc, but none of those solve the issue of having a clear way to drill into a composer and their works and recordings. If there is a different way to get these results I'm after - I am all ears! It IS tedious to create an individual Group Playlist and then Playlist. But a Playlist will not display the artwork as far as I can tell. (and yes, the artwork is just Image (Large Thumbnail)).

[wer]

... but at the time the people who participated agreed that to be able to adjust artwork, Playlists was the only option. If they were wrong... off with their heads!

In the screenshots Roderick posted, I don't like the bottom one: so much wasted space with the panes on the top half of the screen. I tried using that and rejected it. I like the look of the top one though.

Using Playlists is not the only option. That was a wrong decision. As I said before, it is the worst option.

Getting the look of Rod's top screenshot presents no challenge. Simply create a view, select View as Panes, and ensure "Support Tree Browsing" is checked.  This will give you the style of navigation you currently have, expanding things in the tree on the left, and when you actually select something, it will take on the general layout you see in Rod's screenshot.  You merely have to configure the columns you want, and you know how to do that already.

The key to making it work is to have your music tagged correctly.  Before we get into what specifically you need to do, let's talk about tagging classical music a bit.

First, we need to talk about the [Artist] tag. In popular music, Artist always means the performer. If Sinatra sings it, it's a Sinatra song; no one cares who wrote it.  But Artist is a generic word with ambiguous meaning, so unfortunately there is no universally accepted standard for what it means with regard to classical music:

• Some people use this to hold the individual performer playing the piece. This makes sense for solo piano, but makes no sense for an orchestral work. Soloist is a tag better used for the individual performer, in my opinion.
• Some think Artist is the Conductor, for orchestral works.  (The Conductor tag exists for this purpose)
• Others think Artist is the Orchestra, for orchestral works.  (Use an Orchestra tag for this purpose)
• Some think Artist is the composer, as that is the person most responsible for the piece in classical music. I am one of these.

So you can see, for classical music some of the uses of Artist equate to Performer, and some to Composer.  One might create a tag called Performer, which might be equal to any one of the other 4 tags, if one wanted to avoid any inconsistency.

You are using Artist as Performer, with whatever inconsistencies that forces upon you.

You are also using Composer, in the normal way. This presents no problem.

Finally, you are apparently using "Genre", at least you used that word in your description, but you are using it wrong. I say this because unlike Artist, Genre does have a generally accepted term for tagging.  The Genre for all Classical Music is "Classical".  You should not use that tag to hold words like "Piano Concerto" or "Symphony", as doing so will cause problems later. Automatic tagging software or databases will never put "Piano Concerto" in the Genre field.

Instead, create a user defined field to hold this. I suggest [CompositionType].  [CompositionType] can hold the type of composition it is: Concerto, Violin Sonata, Piano Sonata, Symphony, Fugue, Suite, Choral Work, etc etc etc.

So I would suggest you create this [CompositionType] field, and fill it out correctly for all your classical tracks.  This will be easy and quick if you already have them grouped that way.

So this brings us to how you construct your view.

Show Categories in this order:
Composer
CompositionType
Artist
Album

Using this view structure, if you have your tags filled out for all your files, will instantly and automatically generate the tree structure you desire, for all your albums.  You would browse through Bach->Suite->Andras Schiff->French Suites

(I would strongly urge you to use a separate view for classical music than for popular/rock music. For obvious reasons, imposing the above structure on albums like Thriller would be exceedingly clumsy.)

You could add another level, Composition, under album (or even replacing it), if you give MC an understanding of classical compositions.  Read my tutorial here for information on that:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=122114.0

The biggest benefit given to you by this approach, other than automatic generation (so that you no longer need create playlists) is that you can create new views, or reorganize instantly.  Nothing is to stop you from creating another view with a hierarchy of:
Artist
CompositionType
Composer
Album

In that example, you could browse Andras Schiff->Suites->Bach->French Suites
More to the point, the top level would show everything Schiff played by type of composition. Then it would show by composer. Or you could reverse it, so that directly under Schiff, it showed all the different composers he played.

All this reorganization can be done in seconds, whereas for you it is a manual process of moving and reorganizing playlists and playlist groups.

I hope all this makes sense.

[RoderickGI]

All the above sounds good. Carry on with that.

Dmitry the two images I posted are actually the same View. To make the bottom image look like the top one, all you need to do is click on one of the "Disclosure Triangles" in the divider between the top and bottom Panes.

I asked which skin you were using because I couldn't see the "Disclosure Triangles" in the divider. But they may be there, and you may be able to see them on screen. I haven't checked if there is a MC Core Command or keyboard shortcut to close the top Pane, but if you can't see the "Disclosure Triangles" you should be able to double-click on the divider and that will close or reopen the top Pane, as long as those features are in the Blue Steel skin.

I've snipped a little section out of the bottom image in that post and circled the "Disclosure Triangles". They are small and grey. A bit hard to see. That is the first image below.

The second image below is the same as the bottom image in my earlier post, but with the top Pane closed by clicking on the "Disclosure Triangles". As you can see, it is consistent with what you want, I think. If you close the top Pane it will stay closed. But having it there provides another way to view and find your music, that might be of value to you, once you implement Wer's ideas.

[DmitryB]

Ok wow, there's a lot of great stuff there. I'm experimenting now with Beethoven, to see how things work out.

My only question right now (still early stages of this) is: When I change List Style (Details vs. Album Thumbnails) in one place, it changes it across every entry. In the Group/Playlist model, I set to view Album Thumbnails under a composer's name - which gives me a full view of all albums there. And then Details in individual albums, so once I click on an album, I immediately see the individual tracks. and if I choose columns for an Orchestral album - where it's just a conductor and orchestra - it also applies to Opera, where I can no longer see Soloists and Chorus, etc. Is there to tell a change made in one category should not be applied to all?

See screenshot below: I set the Opera setting for Beethoven's "Fidelio." And it applied it to the Cello Sonatas, which is giving me info I do not need. If I set the settings for Cello Sonatas, it will apply them to opera and everything else.

[wer]

The columns are set at the view level.  So if I'm understanding you correctly, what you describe is normal if both things are part of the same view.  I'm unsure why you need different column settings. If you're going to post screenshots, don't just show what you don't want, also show what you do want. 

I have an extensive classical collection. I'm not telling you what you should do with your collection, but I find one well-chosen set of columns suits adequately for all types of classical music.  As long as you can fit it to the width of your monitor without scrolling. This makes things easier on me, and I suspect on you too if you give it a chance.  However....

If you insist on having totally different sets of columns for different types of classical music, you can do that: simply create another view.  You can copy a view by drag and drop. Just drag/drop the view itself in the tree, and a little menu will pop up asking if you want to move or copy. Select copy. The newly copied view will be identical to the old, except the name, and then you can mess with the columns.

You can nest one view under another (select move from that menu after you drag and drop).  Using this method, you can simulate having different column sets in the same view, as they will appear under the same parent item in the tree.

You might choose to combine the above approach with excluding certain composition types from certain views. For example, if you don't ever want opera tracks to appear in the same view as Concerto tracks (because of columns), simply add a rule to the Concerto view that CompositionType is not Opera.

Make sense?

[DmitryB]

Thanks wer, that does make sense. I'll need to play around with it all a bit. Thanks for all this help guys!