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[Two Wire]

Is there a way of having a particular genere of audio files appear only in their own view scheme in the organization tree.  I have created a view scheme for Old Time Radio. When I import files they also appear in the Audio view scheme, along with my music. I have tried to modify properities in (step 3) and step 4, with no luck. I guess what I'm looking for is something like a "not function" to exclude these files from showing in the Audio view scheme.

[Jaguu]

According to my knowledge there is no way to distinguish one kind of audio file from another except by adding an extra field that makes the distinction. I have the same problem with all 3 media types: I have a view scheme for classical music and one for all other music with many very specific  user defined fields. I have view schemes for my artwork collection, for camera pictures and for landscape images downloaded from the internet. Also I have different view schemes for dvd movies, tv series episodes and any other tv recordings. I also have some audibles that don't fit in the scheme.

Personally I feel that limiting the media types to audio, images and video is far too limiting as people organize more and more very distinguished media stuff with MC and also mix different media types. I proposed a few times to add something like "virtual media types" that we could define on a per view scheme basis.

Right now I am using different fields to make the distinction. It's not done the best way, but you have to bear in mind that it was kind of an evolutionary process that started with music, then images and now movies.  For music I use the genre="Classical" and then subgenres to make further distinctions. For images I use the genre="Arts" for all artworks and many other genres and subgenres for the rest. For video I introduced a field category that distinguishes movies, series and other stuff.

Probably a carefully worked out field named media category (or sub media type) would fit for everything. Than you could filter for media type=audio and media category=radio.

You also have to decide whether you want all media catetories as sub view schemes to audio, image and video or want to place them at the root level. Unfortunately you cannot rename audio, images and video to give more specific names.

Once you start organizing media such as movies you will realize that an artist - album view simply does not work very well! Who is the artist? The director or the actors? What is the album for a movie?

As an example you could organize it that way:

Media Type / Media Category
audio: radio
audio: music
audio: classical
audio: audible
image: photos
image: internet
video: movies
video: series
video: others

Hope that helps! Although in my opininon there are some limitations for organizing more complex media types, bear in mind that the flexibility that MC offers is unparalleled, something that no other software offers to such a degree!

[glynor]

I'm not sure why this is difficult for you...

In the Edit View Scheme dialog, go to Step 4 and click the arrow on the far left of the Search Box.  Choose Genre.  In the dialog that appears, check the box for any Genres you'd like to exclude, and change the "Do what with the selections" option from Include to Exclude.

Or, you can just type it in manually.  Prefixing a "-" to any search term in the search box will act as a NOT (exclude those results) for that term.  Some examples:

Code: [Select]

-[Genre]=[Indie Rock]
-[File Type]=[mp3]
-[Keywords]=[]

(That bottom one excludes items with no keywords assigned.)

Regarding Jaguu's point above... Just find something that works for you, and you can design specific View Schemes to make navigation make more sense.  For example...

For video, I use the Genre field to denote "type" (Movie, TV Show, Music Video, Comedy, etc).  For my Movie files, I use Artist for the movie's director, Album isn't used.  For TV Shows, I use Artist for the series title, and Album for the season.  I then have two  separate View Schemes under Video for viewing these file types...

One is called "Movies/Director" which contains:

Step 1: just Artist
Step 4:

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Video] [Genre]=[Movie] ~sort=[Name]
The other is called "TV Show/Series/Season" and contains:

Step 1: Artist and Album
Step 4:

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Video] [Genre]=[TV Show] ~sort=[Artist],[Album],[Name]
If you don't want to do it this way, you could also define your own fields under Tools --> Options --> Library and actually call them "Director", "Series", "Season", etc.  I don't just because it's easier to just use the existing fields.  Re-using the fields also makes it easier to have "general" view schemes.  I have a Genre/Artist/Album view scheme and a Genre/SubGenre view scheme (I created a SubGenre field which I use for both Audio and Video files) which show all of my video files and helps me when I'm tagging them...

[Two Wire]

glynor, thanks for the reply. That is what I was Looking for. However, I have used that option before and completely forgot about it. I saw genere on the list many times and it did not ring a bell. Thanks for refreshing my memory.


Jaguu's, I like your concepts and will give them a try.

Thanks, guys. Great product, great forum.

[glynor]

No problemo!