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[Matt]

Original thread describing how to use the new file browsing system:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=23608

MC 11.0.86 adds:

• Typed navigation
• Plainly visible change when tabs are showing a subset of files
• Links to jump to any level (can also click the tabs on top after making a multi-selection)
• Works with internal and relative path cover art
• Much faster (note: for now it won't update to reflect changes until MC is restarted)

Thanks for all the feedback so far.  Please let us know if you like (or dislike) this system or have any ideas for how to make it better.

[skeeterfood]

My initial impression is "WOW, this is simple to use!"

Love the colored feedback!

When can we get this into Theater View? :-)

-John

[Doof]

I'm assuming that this will eventually support custom fields, kind of like a replacement for View Schemes?

I'm also hoping that it will somehow allow groupings (A-C, D-F, etc) eventually. I'm guessing that if this replaces View Schemes and that if we can customize it with the same dialog box as the view schemes, then the groupings settings would carry over. So no big worries there.

But tagging mode? What of that? I can't really see any way of moving that into this. Unless this becomes a strictly browsing system and the panes become a strictly tagging system, in which case I really don't get it.

And it's still more clicks to get the same things done that you can do in Pane View. In a way, this is a kind of pane view with the disadvantages of the tree view.

It's got promise, though. I'm just leery about how this will pan out. In all honesty, groupings, customizable view schemes, and tagging mode are the three biggest improvements that MC has over other media players, and I'd really hate to see those go. Could be a deal breaker for me, actually. But like I said, I'm hopeful.

A couple of bugs...

I clicked on the Artists tab and chose Metallica. then clicked the Show Albums link. It showed me the different albums that I have for Metallica, along with an "Unassigned" album for the few files I have that don't belong to an album. But it's not filtering out the non-Metallica files. If I click play on the Unassigned album, it plays all of the songs with no album, rather than the Metallica songs with no album.
 
When I click the View link at the top, the pop-up menu doesn't pop up at the link, but rather off to the left where the tabs are.

Typed navigation doesn't actually work unless you first select something in the Library Browser. It's kind of unintuitive, actually. If I click Library Browser, and then Artists, then type 'M', I wind up at Media Library. I'd think that once I click one of the tabs on the top, that it would assume anything I type is meant to be navigation for the library browser and not the main tree.

[Dragyn]

I have 'Audio' selected...

When it shows the file grouping, it's including Video and Images for Artists/Albums that have the same 'Audio' name. When clicking on this (show files), only Audio files are listed. When clicking on 'Play', audio, video, and images are loaded into 'Playing Now'.

[Doof]

I can't help but think that those tiles would be really nice in Pane View. Like in any view scheme that's showing Album Thumbnails, you could show Album Tiles instead and have those in there.

[Jaguu]

What is the exact purpose behind this Library Browser? What excactly do you want to improve?

[JimH]

We're aiming at World Peace.  What do you think (so far)?

[Jaguu]

So far I like the tile view, although I would prefer one title per line. this 2 columns view is difficult to read.

Well, I am just wondering if you have plans to replace the current pane view interface which I think is excellent and would really dislike to see it go away!

[Dragyn]

I'm really really liking this thing believe it or not!! This is sorta like Theater View inside Standard view.

Is this gonna replace tile view or will that still be part of MC? I haven't seen much development on that part.

The ordering though has me thinking a bit... Shouldn't the columns go alpha down instead of across?

Also want to say it's a lot faster after the initial view. Would be a lot better if it was this fast upon startup (currently takes about a 1/2 minute or so).

[JimH]

Well, I am just wondering if you have plans to replace the current pane view interface which I think is excellent and would really dislike to see it go away!

That's our dilemma.  We're not sure where this goes just yet, but it's worth following.

[Doof]

If panes go away, then this new system better do everything the panes can do. I'm willing to have to click more to get the job done, but I'm not too keen on giving up functionality. Especially when I don't see what we'd be gaining in return. It looks like a prettier, but less functional browsing system. So what would be the point?

[Polonio]

I like how this view looks... It is beautiful. And it is about it: It not better that the panes, it is not more useful that the tree view... but it looks better!!

I think you have to think about how to integrate it into the main browsing system. I think MC has to forget about the actual tree (I know, it have been there since earliest versions...).

I imagine each scheme view could be displayed as the tab you just disgned... I wuold like to see two buttons groups.

Tree/Panes/Tabs

Thumbnails/Detailed list.

With these buttons, 6 powerful and useful views would be easly accesible...

The new file browsing system wuold apper when "Tabs" and "Thumbnails" were selected... And user could drill down doble clicking, or using the right click button (Drill into genre...)... The current point of view should show over the tabs...

I know some thing are on the air, and should be concretized... But this idea is just a draft to think about...

The actual tree is wasting a lot of useful space...

[LonWar]

If panes go away, then this new system better do everything the panes can do. I'm willing to have to click more to get the job done, but I'm not too keen on giving up functionality. Especially when I don't see what we'd be gaining in return. It looks like a prettier, but less functional browsing system. So what would be the point?

I am hoping that JRiver will not go along that path... The main reason I came to MC was the panes....

[crowfan]

*Much* faster this time. Thanks for the typing function, and the "View albums" link.

I love the panes, but I love this too. My favorite aspect of this is the graphical one -- it uses the cover art for the albums, instead of just text, like in the panes. I've always hoped for that aspect to be incorporated. I was alwyas thinking of just having the cover art appear in the "Album" pane, instead of just the text. I like the idea of an "album view," and this is moving in that direction.

I agree with Doof though, I don't really want to lose functionality.

Can't wait to see where this goes!

crow

[Dragyn]

As I see it now, make Media Library (clicked) the browser mode instead of having two things showing and still keep everything the same. Users could still show the same files in the browser just like they do now for 'Media Library' if needed.

Then show the view screen tabs like Polonio suggested based on the media mode used all the way down.

I see this as becoming a big thing but I too wouldn't want to see the panes go away (or the tree).

[RemyJ]

Hmmm.    Really cool but slow on initial load.

The file view comes up quickly but I have to wait up to a minute with MC spinning at 100% to see artists and albums.  It's somewhat faster the next time.

Also, say you narrow down the album list then hit "back" then "forward" again, you go back to the full file list instead of the filtered album list.

Category	Value
Files	43372
Artists	1821
Albums	3313
File Size	297.4 GB
Duration	127.2 days

Media Center Registered 11.0.86 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\

Microsoft Windows 2000 5.0 Service Pack 4 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium 4 2371 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 130 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1400 / Shell32.dll: 5.00.3700.6705 / wnaspi32.dll: 4.57 (1008) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1997 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.57 (1008)

Ripping /   Drive D: SONY    DVD RW DRU-530A   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No  

Burning /  Drive D: SONY     DVD RW DRU-530A    Addr: 1:0:0  Speed:40  MaxSpeed:16  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

[RemyJ]

Just noticed another problem....

If you send an artist with multiple albums to playing now, they're sorted by track number.  I.E.  All track 1's first, all track 2's second, etc.

[TimB]

I'd complained about speed on the new File Browsing system before, I haven't updated that opinion yet as I'm on the road and away (ARGH!) from my music serving PC since Saturday am.



-=Tim=-

[JaredH]

I for one would vote that if you plan to implement this new browsing system, make it optional to chose that, or the pane view. I really really really like the pane view. I went through this same situation when you guys went from v8 - v9 and then v9 to v10. I lost a lot of my favorite things. THen I had to wait a year before the new things were finally tweaked enough to use. I love Media Center and the way the current browsing system is set up with the pane view. Its intuitive. Highly customizable. And it flows very well with the over all explorer style view of my whole system.  I understand that I'm probably one of few who use MC like I do, and if that is so, then none of my words will make a difference anyway. I just hate to lose the fuctionality of a program that does everything I want with very few problems.

So basically what I'm trying to say in my usual very wordy fashion is... Make it optional, if anything. Panes are perfect as far as I'm concerned, and for some people, this new browsing system will be all theyve ever dreamed and more, im sure. I know it's still early to tell, but thats just my $.02.

[slikvik]

I agree,

Tree/Panes are great.

What is this actually given us? - Thats not a rhetorical question, I'd really like an answer from someone at JRiver.

All I see are panes in pretty colours with less function. IF the answer to my above question is the nice looking list style (Album Thumbs etc,) then surely that can just be added to the existing available list views.

Panes can also have two view styles! Normal and Fancy!

My point is this can be closley replicated by adding some customize view options for File List AND Panes.

Basically I dont think losing Panes will happen. It would mean losing the Media Library and there's no way that should/will happen (No constantly viewable file list!)

Thanks, as usual, for listenening.

Vic

[Doof]

I guess in a way, I'm seeing this as two new things.

1. The tabs across the top.
2. The tiles.

There's really no reason the tiles couldn't be used with the panes, and no reason that any of the other view types (details, thumbnails, album thumbnails) couldn't be used with the tabs. So you could still have the constant list of files, rather than the tiles if you want. So that's not problematic in the least. These tiles are a great addition.

The problem comes in with the tabs (but only if they're intended to replace the panes). When the panes were first introduced, many people were not happy about the idea of losing the tree. Personally, I very quickly realized how much more useful the panes were over the tree and jumped on that idea immediately.

I'm having a harder time seeing the usefulness of the tabs. It is very intuitive, although I'm not sure it's any more intuitive than the panes or the tree. I don't see what we gain with the tabs, and ultimately, I think once it's really tied in to the View Scheme system (ie. customizable tabs, groupings, etc.) it'll behave much the same way that the pane view does. The individual tabs could just replace the individual panes, groupings could still function the way they do now, we can still skip a tab the way we can skip a pane (ie. picking a genre, then skipping past artist and jumping straight to albums). At that point there's really only one thing missing. Tagging Mode.

So anybody have any ideas on how to incorporate Tagging Mode into this?

This assumes, of course, that this new browsing system is meant to replace the panes, rather than just augment them. If it is only meant to be another option on how to browse your library, then it's all really moot.

[Matt]

This is fun

Several people are asking 'what do we gain', so here's what I can think of:

• Much more visual browsing system.  When thinking about artists or albums, I really like seeing pictures.
• You can sort albums or artists by when they were imported, by how often they're played, or by how many files they have.  It was not previously possible to use or see statistics like that for groupings.
• You can quickly get to the files inside an album while looking at the thumbnail. (album thumbnails mode doesn't allow this)
• Cleaner layout since there aren't 4 (or more) seperate lists showing at a time.
• Groupings (like genre, artist, album) can show details about them -- whereas the panes don't have room for this.

And for now, let's focus less on worrying about losing something, and instead focus on how to make the new view as useful as possible.  We're sniffing our way along here.

[Link]

Very nice - I like the layout.... this is how I want my album thumbnails to be used....

Issues:
-The initial load time is prohibative (even on the 2nd version).  I have a library of around 19,000 files, and the first time i click on Albums, I have to sit there and wait for almost a minute. No matter how much I love this feature, that could kill it right there.

-I have a folder (f:\music\American Music Club) containing 5 albums and 8 extra tracks not in album folders.  The album view shows one panel for each album, and one for Unassigned. (So far, so good).  However, the text at the bottom listing the number of files in Unassigned lists a number in the thousands, rather than 8.  However, if I click to view the unassigned files, it shows the corrrect list of 8.

-When viewing the list of albums, it does not group all albums correctly.   I have the Complete Studio Works 8 disk box set by Led Zeppelin..... the album view goups the files into lists of all the track #1s, all the track #2s, etc.  It may have something to do with characters in the name - I believe the album name has brackets - like "[Complete Studio Recordings Disk 1]".  I will look again tonight when I get home - I just remember seeing that it was noticiably wrong. (And near the top of the album list).

Possible improvements:
-This system is visually impressive, but a bit jarring once you click into a file list after having been in a list of nice graphical album thumbnails.  Is there any way to display the album thumbnail on-screen (Action widow side?) along with the list of files?

[crowfan]

This system is visually impressive, but a bit jarring once you click into a file list after having been in a list of nice graphical album thumbnails.  Is there any way to display the album thumbnail on-screen (Action widow side?) along with the list of files?

Love this idea!!  I'd like Album view if you can't tell.  

crow

[LonWar]

It takes a little bit for all the tiles to load. I haev all my thumbnails, and I keep the album art in the file...

This is cool, but needs to be much faster!

[JiiPee]

Very nice!
Yes, it is slow the first time I use it after launching MC (+20000 files) but for casual browsing of my collection it's very nice.
One album thumbnail and tracks beside it would be killer though.

[Sam]

I don't see tabs and panes as equivalent.  I think tabs can be used to select view schemes, or Playing Now, or Playlists (maybe with a drop-down menu).

Note that the tree/pane debate was about the trees within the view schemes.  I don't remember anyone being passionate about using trees to navigate between view schemes.

The tile view looks to me like an oversized pane - where you can't have multiple panes, and you can't see the file list until after you click again.

I'd like to see a version of the tiles squeezed into the panes - with thumbnails, and addit'l information - but much smaller.  And then continue to show the file list below.

[Berto]

• Works with internal and relative path cover art
• Much faster (note: for now it won't update to reflect changes until MC is restarted)

Thanks for all the feedback so far.  Please let us know if you like (or dislike) this system or have any ideas for how to make it better.

Loading internal cover art is very slow. Why doesn't it load coverart for the files that aren't on screen yet. Only when I scroll down and files become visible the cover art starts to load.  

[JimH]

Please don't worrry about speed.  This hadn't been worked on.  Future builds will be faster.

[Berto]

Please don't worrry about speed.  This hadn't been worked on.  Future builds will be faster.

If it will be as fast as your reaction on my post, I'll be very satisfied!!
Thanks Jim.

[joshhuggins]

I think this new Libary Browser has some real posiblities.  It's perfect listed in the org. tree as an option. Also it does not seem like it is trying over throw the other tree view options, just a new option. I say more is good!

Josh Huggins  

[pank2002]

[...]
One album thumbnail and tracks beside it would be killer though.

YES! That would be the ultimate view, period!

Funny thing is that it has been talked about since at least version 9.1.

Hope it comes one day as it sure would be a killer.

[urlwolf]

[...]
One album thumbnail and tracks beside it would be killer though.

YES! That would be the ultimate view, period!

Funny thing is that it has been talked about since at least version 9.1.

Hope it comes one day as it sure would be a killer.

I agree, that would be very cool.
I like this visualization a lot. it should be a bit more customizable, though. If you can get something as flexible as the panes with this visual, it'll be neat!

[Doof]

The transition effect is neat when you select artists and jump to other tabs, but when you're scrolling, it's really messy and distracting. I'm not actually sure it's an effect I would expect from an app when scrolling, either.

[JustinChase]

Not sure if this is a result of the new browser view or just MC in general, but when i try to limit to Music, i still get lists of pictures and videos also.

this seems wrong to me

[adamsp70]

Love it - very nice indeed. I have it ordered by last import so i can easily see and play recent stuff. It also  showed up a couple of albums that i'd forgot to add cover art to.

However now i've added the covers, the icon still shows the default one, so i guess this view isn't automatically updated like the rest of MC is? Which is fine, but there really needs to be a "refresh" button or similar.

I would definitley use this as my default 'view' on MC....

[slikvik]

Hi,

Can we have the ability to assign different thumbnails for different tabs.

I.e. I would like to have a picture of The Go-Go's on the Artist tab and then the Album Covers on the Album tab.

Cheers

Vic

[JaredH]

Once again, I'm probably in the minority here. And yes im speaking about losing something, but this is constructive criticism, so please give it a glance. I think both views are great. However to lose one in favor of the other would hurt my usability of MC. Of course, I know Im one out of thousands. But im not visually oriented when it comes to organizing things. Im structurally oriented. So as for me, and as for the main, top, number 1, numero uno, reason I was attracted to MJ/MC 3 years ago, and the main thing that keeps bringing me back, is tha fact that you guys have to lockdown on max organizing capabilites minues all that WMP/MMJB/W**AMP fluff. All of those programs offer organizational capabilites, but youve gotta wade through all the viz/ablum covers/artists pictures/bios etc to get to what you want.

I think if that is the route you guys are gonna go, that is awesome, perhaps i could use a little bit of fluff in my life. But I do ask that you try your best to make it an option. I remember in the transition between v8 and v9 i developed quite a nervous twitch when I learned I was going to have to make a "skin" if I wanted MJ/MC to conform to my existing windows visual setup. Of course, I eventually got over it. Having recently bought v10, and then soon after snagging the early upgrade to v11, I am of course worrying about losing my favorite features.

The thing with this new browsing system that I'm noticing is the speed thing, but Jim, you said that would be fixed in later trials. I just worry about MC becoming a "front-end" that needs a "front-end". With all of the fancy browsing and direct-x menu systems and what not, it seems like some of those with lesser systems may be losing out. I personally run a rather decent system, and it seems like MC can sometimes stutter when its redrawing after a minimize or restore even on my system.

So, I did it again. I apologize for being wordy. I just worry about MC getting "too big for its britches" so to speak. I'd like to see an un paralleled product remain unparalleled without the trappings of becoming bloated.

Overall, the new browsing system rocks, its just not my style. Too flashy.

One of the many things I can say about you guys is this; You keep me on my toes. Something keeps me coming back for more. I'm gonna take a wild guess and blame it on the same thing I blame everything on here in China...

You guys are putting MSG in your product aren't you?...

[Matt]

I personally run a rather decent system, and it seems like MC can sometimes stutter when its redrawing after a minimize or restore even on my system.

It's stuttering because drawing resources and the library are unloaded when you minimize to make the footprint as small as possible.  So you're really having problems with anti-bloat instead of bloat

And it's not the MSG -- it's the fluoride.

[Jaguu]

One advantage of the new library browser was that I found many audio and image files that were tagged incorrectly (example: many images had a genre tag in the artist field!), something I never realised or never cared about to check with the pane view.

Although I like the tile view, I must admit right now the tiles look rather ugly. The title font is too large and the overall graphic design not really pleasant. Also to me it is not a highlight and ultimate progress of interface design to repeat the commands "Play Files" and "Show Files" on every tile. There must certainly be a more elegant way to do that - even if it is a simple right click or some icon.

I hope there will be some customization and we will be able to create tiles according to different media types and also be able to customize the tabs according to our user defined fields.

I can imagine that the two (pane view and library browser) can live together, one being more a presentation view and the other more of a working/tagging view.

[Doof]

Actually the Show Files and Play links were one of the things I really like about it.

[crowfan]

Yeah, me too. I didn't like having to click the tab, then click the tile, then click the next tab, then click the next tile, etc. I like the quick access to drilling down. Obviously this is a work in progress, but it would be nice to make the tiles a little more attractive in the future.

crow

[Matt]

For anyone that'd like this to look better, send art to matt @ jriver.com and we'll work it in if it looks good. (note that the art needs to be royalty free)

Just a custom tile background would go quite a ways towards making it look nicer.

[RemyJ]

It seems that the cover art rotation on mouse-over includes an empty image.  If the artist has 2 albums, it goes album1, album2, blank, album1, album2, blank, etc.  If you hover over the image for an artist that has only 1 album, the image flashes.  

If you're in the albums tab,  you can't tell who the artist is.

Sometimes, in an artist or album list, the entries display in a single column with no scroll bar.  If you hover over one of the images, the whole list flashes very quickly as though it were trying to draw the scrollbar and/or the second column.   Seems to happen when there are more than 1 page of entries but less than 2.

On a related note,  I just found a genre with 8 artists.  When I select the artists tab, 7 show vertically in 1 column in the display and the 8th is hidden.  If i use the down arrow key, I can get to the last artist, but once that happens, the arrow keys skip every other artist.

Oh wait, its worse than I thought.  It seems there are invisible artists in the second column.

The back and forward buttons should work "inside" the new browser.  I.E.  If you go from artists to albums, pressing back should take you back to artists instead of Start or Playing Now, etc.

I'm actually kinda liking this view.

[Doof]

I have 11 albums for Metallica. If I hover over Metallica in the list, all I get is a flashing And Justice For All album cover. None of the other images appear. All files are assigned their cover art through external files (folder.jpg).

Actually I get that flashing for all of my artists, it doesn't matter how many albums by each I have.

[Doof]

Also, I get a lot of the same album art image for a whole bunch of different artists. For instance, for some reason a whole bunch of files are showing up using the same cover art as some Eric Clapton song I have, even though those files don't have any album or cover art assigned to them.

[Doof]

Um... scratch that. For some reason all of these songs really do have this Eric Clapton cover art assigned to them... Don't ask me how, though. I know I didn't do it.

[Matt]

From Jaguu:

1) The 2-columns display is not easy to read. My eyes are simply used to read lists top-down and not left-right-down-left-right-down. So there should be an option to have either 1 or 2 column display.
 
2) Personally I feel there is too much space taken up for a single tile. With a 1-column display everything could be placed on a single line and tiles would become smaller, so I would see more tiles on a screen. Also the title font could be smaller.

Agreed that one column is easier to scan.  The issue is that shrinking the tiles vertically makes the art really small.  Not shrinking the tiles and only using one column would make it so not many fit on a screen.  Any good solutions?

3) As I already said, having all those commands displayed on every tile seems to be an overkill. Once you have selected a tile you can simply press the Play button, or click the appropriate tab, so I do not see the necessity to have those commands repeated over and over.

It's an issue of reducing mouse movement.  The further you have to move your mouse, the less usable something becomes.  The flipside is that it adds visual clutter.  Again, any good solutions?

4) I hope you will be able to add some more customization. I have built my image library with totally different user defined fields and would like to reflect that in such a new library browser structure. It would be very difficult to squeeze it into the current image scheme, combined with a lot of work to retagging everything.

Absolutely.

5) In any case I would not want the pane view being replaced. My first impression is that you can work with both simultaneously switching from one to the other easily.

Again, we don't know what we'll do with this view.  Right now, it just feels like something worth following.  It's hard to say where we'll end up.

[Matt]

It seems that the cover art rotation on mouse-over includes an empty image.  If the artist has 2 albums, it goes album1, album2, blank, album1, album2, blank, etc.  If you hover over the image for an artist that has only 1 album, the image flashes.

This is by design so something always happens when you mouse over the image.  Without that, I kept waiting at files with only one image.  Also, the blank lets you know you've seen all the images.  Is there a better solution?

[Jaguu]

It's an issue of reducing mouse movement.  The further you have to move your mouse, the less usable something becomes.  The flipside is that it adds visual clutter.  Again, any good solutions?

Well, in this case the right-click is still the nearest. We have been used to that for years now and I think that every dummy user with as little Windows experience as one can imagine would know about the right click menu, especially the very young ones. The right-click menu for me is still one of the best UI elements ever invented.