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[Matt]

I also like the SXXEXX instead of s.ee format.

There's a joke in there somewhere about SXXEXX.

But the dot format was Jim's suggestion to clean it up, and I agree with him.

Mrs. jmone will find either cryptic, so less is more.

[MrHaugen]

I think if you download, you have season and episode, and so dates are not important.

If you record, dates are important.

Sometimes if you record you still have season and episode, but they're not meaningful.

So I don't know what rule to use to decide if date should be shown.  Suggestions welcome.

I see the point. Perhaps create another expression or something picking up if the view contains recorded episodes as well? And removing date on lists that not consists of recorded stuff? The other stuff can be left with Episode and Season caption.

We tried them on the left of the name, but they were too strong -- especially in a thumbnail view.

What about making the check mark darker as well? Then it would not be so in your face. I just have to say I do NOT think this is to much. In thumbnail mode or any other mode. I actually had green check marks in my cation, and I think it was very nice. It blended well with my rating star colors.

The most common way of dealing with this is either completely on the left side or the right side. The problem having it on the right side is that this checkmark will often be hidden in for instance the thumbnail mode. Some places there will be to much text. Having it in the middle of text should be a no-no. Because you can't easily spot what you have seen or not, when the position moves. Preferably there shoul dbe a way of adding certain text in the cation to a right alignment, so you can easily separate it form the rest of the caption.

From what I can tell, the Theater View > Video > Shows > Season view uses default sorting.  Maybe we should tweak how default sorting works, so it has Season and Episode at the front of the sort stack (but sorts like it always has if those are empty)?

Yes, please. There are some problems today with sorting. Adding Season and Episode to those would be good. Even Gizmo/webGizmo have some views which have bad sorting rules.

[jmone]

We're building a custom short date for style reasons.

Do you use "16 Nov 2011" instead of "Nov 16 2011"?

Or do you just need a little cheat sheet that lists what Oct, Nov, Dec, etc. stand for

Yanks!  I'm with the Majority of the world, your the 6%!
- 63% of the worlds population use Day Month Year order
- 30% of the worlds population use Year Month Day order
-   6% of the worlds population use Month Day Year order

*** Note: I excluded the #'s from countries that have a mix of formats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

[jmone]

There's a joke in there somewhere about SXXEXX.

But the dot format was Jim's suggestion to clean it up, and I agree with him.

Mrs. jmone will find either cryptic, so less is more.

I'm not going there, one quote with references to "SXXEXX, Clean it Up, and wives wanting less not more".     

[JimH]

Yanks!  I'm with the Majority of the world, your the 6%!
- 63% of the worlds population use Day Month Year order
- 30% of the worlds population use Year Month Day order
-   6% of the worlds population use Month Day Year order

You know, we can edit offensive posts so they conform to our standard of decency.

And which part of the world drives on the right side of the road?  ?  ?

[jmone]

You know, we can edit offensive posts so they conform to our standard of decency.

Matt started it!  ...I got a chuckle but please remove if it offensive it was certainly not my intention.

And which part of the world drives on the right side of the road?  ?  ?

There is of course no right or wrong just the weight of convention that is used.  FYI - Today about 66.1% of the world's people live in right-hand traffic countries and 33.9% in left-hand traffic countries. About 72% of the world's total road distance carries traffic on the right, and 28% on the left. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic

[Matt]

Yanks!  I'm with the Majority of the world, your the 6%!

Next you'll tell us that we shouldn't put "United States of America" at the top of an alphabetically sorted list of countries!



(ps. jmone, double-check your sarcasm detector with regards to Jim's post)

[JimH]

There is of course no right or wrong ...

Ask your wife.  Just to be sure.

[jmone]

Next you'll tell us that we shouldn't put "United States of America" at the top of an alphabetically sorted list of countries!

As Mel Brooks said in History of the World, "It is good to be King".   ....and as "Antipodeans" we have a looooong way to go before we rule the world and are able to enforce our Aussie "sensibilities" (but it does not stop us poking you in the ribs in the meantime!)  

[jmone]

(ps. jmone, double-check your sarcasm detector with regards to Jim's post)

It must have been down, I really thought I'd hit a nerve (I was not sure if it was the innuendo or the Yank reference ... him being all old and grumpy!)

[jmone]

Ask your wife.  Just to be sure.

Ask?  I don't understand (don't you mean Told?)

[Matt]

- There is some issues in sorting as it seems to be driven by "DATE", I'd recommend it is Season --> Episode --> then Date.

A default sort, if all the files are Media Sub Type 'TV Show' uses:
Series
Season
Episode
Name

So my idea above about doing this is actually already in the program.  If you're seeing something other than this, please provide more details.

[jmone]

Matt, In the screen shot above you can see the sort issue.  I just double checked by doing a "Reset!", then when using the view under "TheaterView --> Video --> Shows --> Series" (which I would presume would be the main view used), the sort order is definatly: "~sort=[Date Recorded]-d" (see Pic)

[jmone]

Sorting with the other options (Recent, Genre, Season) under Show seems to be fine (either blank, or "recent" also has ~sort=[Date Imported]-d)

...., so less is more.

The attached Pic is where I think "less is less".  Would you not rather the "Season 3" (manually added) over just the number?

[Matt]

jmone, next build:
Changed: Revised default Theater View views for television (merged 'Series' and 'Season' views, use 'Season 3' instead of '3' at the season level, sorting is by season, episode, etc.).

The defaults were a little more focused on a TV recording user, but the new defaults should be better for a downloader (and still pretty good for a recorder).

You will only see these changes if you reset views.

[MrHaugen]

Changed: Revised default Theater View views for television (merged 'Series' and 'Season' views, use 'Season 3' instead of '3' at the season level, sorting is by season, episode, etc.).

Thank you so much! And thank you from all the other users coming from other Media Center solutions. This is pretty much the standard, and it's good to see it as default in MC18 as well.

The defaults were a little more focused on a TV recording user, but the new defaults should be better for a downloader (and still pretty good for a recorder).

Thanks for this as well. I think it would be good to generally focus a bit more on downloaders and rippers, as there should be plenty more of them than the tuner users

[MrHaugen]

There's still a few quirks that should be fixed/improved. I'll point out some that I found on my limited testing time today.

- The Recent list for TV shows does not include Episode or Season numbers. I think that is a minus.
- Music in mixed lists with more artists should use [Name] by [Artist] caption. Otherwise, there will be very very hard to spot certain artists in for example playing now.
- The Music Videos should have the same caption rules as Music
- The "Episode" item on the info pane is wrong. It shows Season and Episode. That is confusing and plain wrong. I think a label free "Season X Episode x" would be a lot better. Or SXXEXX if the space is an issue.
- The Shown check mark is really misplaced. The standard of the placement is on the left or right side of the caption. Preferably at a small distance from the rest of the text so it's easily separated and read. A way of aligning a custom graphical element on for example on the far right side of the captions would be very nice. The item would appear next to the caption in case of space issues. I think at the very least this check mark should not be squeezed between other text elements.
- It would be nice if the Watched indicator was based on more than one value. A possible solution is here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=75263.msg510655#msg510655
- Most important of all imo: Movies should have ratings (half stars) based on the Critics rating. These ratings are default in MC now, and they should be used where they are needed. Browsing through all movies just to see the ratings on them is WAY to much trouble. The same goes for Music. Music should have Rating stars as well, to spot the most liked tracks easily.


Other than this, I think these changes are really good. It will help significantly with the first impression for new users, as well as easier management for the picky guys.


A bit of topic, but still a view issue:
- The covers on the "Wall" style of views are still way to small to make it usable. The size are so much smaller than all other covers, so it's kind of hopeless unless you're really close to the screen and have a rather big size setting.

[Matt]

The default 'Series' view should use:

Series: TVInfo(SeriesDisplay)
Season: If(IsEmpty([Series]), , Delimit([Season], , Season/ ))

This way, things with no series will show under the program name and not have a season step.

[fitbrit]

jmone, next build:
Changed: Revised default Theater View views for television (merged 'Series' and 'Season' views, use 'Season 3' instead of '3' at the season level, sorting is by season, episode, etc.).

Can we get the same for other seasons too? e.g. 1, 2, 4 etc.

[jmone]

I'm now tweaking the info to get Theater View to how I like it (eg adding Tack # to the Title for Music, adding a new "Music Video" Item and copying the File Info from Audio etc...)  As an idea is it worth starting a thread where people can post the details so that other users can browse, and copy these customisations.  If so I think we need a way of export/copy the details from "Items to Show" like we can in "Customize file info panel" so others can just paste them into their setup.

[jmone]

1. Changed: Formatting of the short date format (used in Theater View and elsewhere) respects the year, month, day order system setting.

Ahhh .... everthing is now as it should be!  Now about the country listing, "A" comes way before "U" 

[Hendrik]

America, United States of.

[JimH]

I'm now tweaking the info to get Theater View to how I like it (eg adding Tack # to the Title for Music, adding a new "Music Video" Item and copying the File Info from Audio etc...)  As an idea is it worth starting a thread where people can post the details so that other users can browse, and copy these customisations.  If so I think we need a way of export/copy the details from "Items to Show" like we can in "Customize file info panel" so others can just paste them into their setup.

A thread is a very good idea.

[NickF]

The default 'Series' view should use:

Series: TVInfo(SeriesDisplay)
Season: If(IsEmpty([Series]), , Delimit([Season], , Season/ ))

This way, things with no series will show under the program name and not have a season step.

OK, I used these and I now get "Season 3" under the Season 3 Picture but it is not using the proper Season Cover Art from the Cover Art folder!

Nick.

[kensn]

I reported this also. No season cover art.

Ken

[kensn]

I figured the Season Cover Art out.. I had run into this before. If there is an expression for Season, the cover art will not show. If you set it to Field Season it will.

If you use an expression in a field it messes it up. I did something a while back and used an expression in a field and could not get the cover art to show and it made me a bit frustrated.

I am sure Matt can work this out.

Ken

[MrHaugen]

I don't use season art, as it's a WAY to big job doing it manually. But if this is the case, I think the cover art should be matched against the actual category set in the view management instead of it relaying on the expressions used?

[locust]

I have an idea for the file info panel.

Could we make some of the fields linkable, for instance actors will have many entries, so when we click on it, it would allow us to select individual actors. Then when clicked it would show all movies with that actor.

This would be neat because I don't have an actor view setup because I don't want the rollers too cluttered and also because I'm not interested in looking through a big list of actors. I think I'd rather want to be able to watch a film, and if I want to be able to see other movies that actor is in, select it right from the file info rather than having to switch view then looking through a huge list.

I'm aware there might be some weird logic to it because when you have filtered down to a single film and select an actor it would only be able to search within that film. That why I think if linkable selections were allowed in the file info panel, mc would operate best if it could make a ghost view on the fly that is separate from the view you just came from i.e. it is not subject to the selection of film you made or any of the sub rollers, only subject to the main roller so that the media sub type and initial rules for file display are the same.

This would allow me to de-clutter many of the sub rollers, for instance I have a publisher view for audio which I would get rid of if I could just select publisher from the file info panel.

[MrHaugen]

The idea is far from bad. Using the File info for such tasks as for instance filtering was suggested a long time ago in a beta thread. And I'm sure others have also mentioned it here and there. The idea was almost identical to yours. A way of activating the Info Pane, only that the info pane instead was a filtering and configuring pane where you could do exactly what you ask for. Sorting and other stuff could be added here, allowing for a MUCH more dynamic theater view experience. It could declutter the rollers significantly for some. The pane could be activated by going to the right side with the arrows, or with a dedicated setup/config button.

For the reasons you mentioned, when it comes to activating the info pane on the last media level in views, i think it would be more useful to actually using selections on the items to trigger things like movie trailers for movies.

The file info management starts to get really powerful with the last changes for captions. It would be a natural center for more Info pane options and dynamic search options like the one brian mentions.

[locust]

Can somebody do me a favour can you post the new theatre view file info templates.xml

I don't know it happened but file is now empty. Resetting it doesn't work. It's weird I didn't have the file open in any editor and I didn't delete any entries from within theatre view I was just looking at it, closed it then opened it again later and everything was gone.

Thanks

Edit

Nevermind, managed to get it out of one of the backups

[BartMan01]

A default sort, if all the files are Media Sub Type 'TV Show' uses:
Series
Season
Episode
Name

So my idea above about doing this is actually already in the program.  If you're seeing something other than this, please provide more details.

I use date or a custom 'Episode Order' field to sort my TV shows.  Not all TV shows sort properly by Season - Episode:

A Couple of examples would be:
Firefly - episodes were aired out of sequence. I sort this by 'episode order'.
Dr. Who (2005) - many of the 'season 0' episodes are specials that are integral to story line and slot in between normal season episodes.  I sort this by date.

Sorting logic I use is basically:

Series
Episode Order (usually blank unless specifically needed).
Date
Season
Episode
Name

[bunglemebaby]

I figured the Season Cover Art out.. I had run into this before. If there is an expression for Season, the cover art will not show. If you set it to Field Season it will.

This is the same for Artist images as well. It does feel a bit limiting when making views to have to choose between the desired image and the desired field/text display.

[bunglemebaby]

I use date or a custom 'Episode Order' field to sort my TV shows.  Not all TV shows sort properly by Season - Episode:

A Couple of examples would be:
Firefly - episodes were aired out of sequence. I sort this by 'episode order'.
Dr. Who (2005) - many of the 'season 0' episodes are specials that are integral to story line and slot in between normal season episodes.  I sort this by date.

Personally I use "floating point" episode numbers when tagging specials. I don't have too many in my collection, so setting it to 0 to get the meta-data, then changing it to an X.5 number afterwards isn't too  much of a burden.

i.e. If my special comes between episodes 10 and 11 in story order, I give it an episode value of 10.5 and it sorts as expected. It's not the most automated way to do things obviously, but it is another option to make sorting work out nice.

[struct]

I don't use season art, as it's a WAY to big job doing it manually.

I thought you were using Sickbeard?? If you are, it puts (or can be configured so) season art in each directory named folder.jpg.  Then it is pretty simple to use BulkRename Utility to filter folder.jpg's, and construct the name from the directory name within the utility.  They are then copied to your chosen directory.

Craig