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Author Topic: questions of a first time user - plz help  (Read 3632 times)

om3ga

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questions of a first time user - plz help
« on: January 01, 2008, 11:24:59 am »

hi,
since yesterday i am proud owner of mc12 and now i have some questions...

1)
i am using the "details" view with three panes: "artist", "year-album" and "genre". however, i would like to customize the "year-album" pane in a way, which makes it look similar to the album-thumbnail-view. i want to choose the artist in the left pane and then see the album's covers and beyond its names in the middle pane (the right pane with "genre" shall remain, as it is). is this possible? i tried to edit the pane, but i didnt find a solution. i guess, it has to do something with "expression". the only problem is: i dont find a list of possible expressions and an explanation how they work. could anyone tell me, where i can find that?

2)
i tried to open "gif"-files with mc12 but noticed, that the animation ist not shown. what to do against that?

3)
how well does yadb work? i tried to request some tag-details and cover-arts but nothing was found. is this database too small and therefore my music too extravagant to be found? or did i do something wrong?


i sure have more questions soon, but at the moment these three are the only ones, which come to my mind. thanks for your help  :)
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John Gateley

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2008, 12:01:18 pm »

3)
how well does yadb work? i tried to request some tag-details and cover-arts but nothing was found. is this database too small and therefore my music too extravagant to be found? or did i do something wrong?

It's working very well for whole CD lookups. It's doesn't have as much data for individual track lookups, though it's constantly improving. (I think you were trying invidivual track lookups)

j

JimH

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2008, 03:40:22 pm »

You can add or edit any view.

Open the tree on the left and right click on Audio, for example.
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om3ga

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2008, 03:42:17 pm »

i tried both ...

anyone any idea concerning 1) and 2)

(i'd really like to have such a thumbnail-album-pane ... i LOVE it in the zune software)
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om3ga

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #4 on: January 02, 2008, 03:05:40 pm »

please tell me where i can find a list of expressions (with their meaning), which can be used to edit panes when using the option "expression" (instead of "library field" etc.)
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gappie

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2008, 03:29:40 pm »

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om3ga

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2008, 04:40:56 pm »

thank you very much!  :)
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Alex B

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2008, 08:19:29 am »

1)
i am using the "details" view with three panes: "artist", "year-album" and "genre". however, i would like to customize the "year-album" pane in a way, which makes it look similar to the album-thumbnail-view. i want to choose the artist in the left pane and then see the album's covers and beyond its names in the middle pane (the right pane with "genre" shall remain, as it is). is this possible? i tried to edit the pane, but i didnt find a solution.

You cannot mix the text based pane mode and thumbnails, but it is easy to configure MC to show the view items as thumbnail images on the top split and the files included in the selection as a detailed list on the bottom.

In the following screenshot I have selected the [Album Artists (auto)] field in the top dropdown menu.  I have clicked the "Björk" thumbnail stack to select it. The bottom list has changed to show only the "Björk" files.


Click to enlarge.



This the same view scheme after I have double-clicked the "Björk" item. It shows all "Björk" albums. I have selected the "Post" album and the bottom list shows only the tracks from this album. I can easily go back to the Album Artist display by pressing the back button.


Click to enlarge.



Here is a special view that I like very much. It shows my albums in the date imported order. Just like a physical CD shelf would contain them if you always just add the new CDs without reordering them.


Click to enlarge.



The following screenshots give some hints about how I created this "CD shelf" view scheme.


I have created a new calculated library field using [Album Artist (auto)] - [Album] as the templete:



-- and added that library field to the view items:




The view scheme is set to display this Album/Artist fleld as thumbnails and the "Always Show Files" option is enabled:




The sort order is set to "Date Imported":




The thumbnail text is customized in "Customize Current View":






The bottom list has separate options:

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Alex B

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #8 on: January 04, 2008, 08:41:40 am »

2)
i tried to open "gif"-files with mc12 but noticed, that the animation ist not shown. what to do against that?

I have noticed the same. MC's display does not support gif animations. I reported about this a couple of years ago, but I don't recall if I got any response back then.
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hit_ny

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #9 on: January 07, 2008, 12:16:56 am »

Here is a special view that I like very much. It shows my albums in the date imported order. Just like a physical CD shelf would contain them if you always just add the new CDs without reordering them.


Click to enlarge.


I have a similar viewscheme that does just that :)

Was curious to know whether you *first* imported a large bunch of un-listened albums and listened after.

Or only imported albums into MC *after* you listened to them ?
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lalittle

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #10 on: May 31, 2008, 06:00:18 pm »

Thanks for the view scheme tips Alex.

I was hoping you could clarify something that's confusing me about the behavior I'm seeing:

When I double click on the last view item in the hierarchy, the details view disappears while the thumbnails (at the top) stay the same.  Double clicking the same item toggles the details view back on.  I don't understand why this is happening, or if there is possibly a way to "not" have this happen.

For example, I'm using "Genre/Album Artist (auto)/Album" for the view items in a scheme, so I double click on a genre thumbnail, then double click an artist thumbnail.  At this point, I now see a row of album thumbs in the upper window and all the songs from these albums below -- so far so good.

If I SINGLE click on an album (i.e. highlight it), the details list below shows the songs on this album.  If I DOUBLE click on the album, however, the details view simply disappears -- I now have a single large main window with the album thumbnails and NO lower window at all.  I double click any other album (including the same one) and the details view comes back.

In other words, the details view toggles on and off when I double click anything at the last "level" of view items -- in my case an album thumb.  Do I have something set wrong?  I would expect it to either "highlight" all the songs on this album in the details view, or to "play" the album, or even to just stay the same, but I'm confused why the details would just toggle on and off in this situation.

Thanks for any feedback on this,

Larry

UPDATE:  On closer examination, the details view is not toggling "off," but minimizing to the bottom bar.  I'm still unclear why this is happening, however.
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marko

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #11 on: May 31, 2008, 06:11:37 pm »

hover in the header till the menu appears, options > always show files?

lalittle

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Re: questions of a first time user - plz help
« Reply #12 on: May 31, 2008, 06:23:11 pm »

hover in the header till the menu appears, options > always show files?

That's already checked.

I seems that it IS "always showing files" -- the problem is that the details view is minimized to the bottom of the window when double clicking at the last view level, which is what I don't understand.  I'm okay to "remember" this, but for other users around here, I fear that this will become confusing at some point (i.e. "where did the file list go!?")

Thanks again,

Larry
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