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[Ancient_Audiophile]

Background - I don't own an iPod and own hundreds of albums.   I don't play individual tracks, I play albums. I don't play "Street Fighting Man", I play "Beggars Banquet".   Even when I create a sequence of 20 tracks for a party, I want to play "PartyPlaylist.m3u" and not any of the individual tracks.

But no matter what pre-defined view I have tried in Media Center, I still end up with a big list of tracks.  They may end up being sorted by album, but then the screen is filled with all the tracks from one or two albums - even when I use an "Album" view.

The array of album covers view is of no use to me personally, because I have too many albums to be able to recognize them by cover.   The Panes view is great, I like the idea of being able to select a Genre, Artist and/or Year in the top half, but then the bottom half is tracks, not albums.

Is there a way to get Genre, Artist, Year across the top, and then Albums as the list ?

Thanks !

[AoXoMoXoA]

I too work exclusively with ALBUMS. I consider an ALBUM to be an entity, not a group of tracks.

The best I have come up with is using Album Thumbnails view below the Panes.

I did find one album-centric player (think it was called 'Album Player' . . .  go figure) but it was nowhere near as good as MC for other aspects like file management and tagging.

At one time I tried using MC to manage and the other to play, but it insisted on effecting my tags and adding image files to my folders which I did not like.

So, I have reverted to using only MC and relying on Album Thumbnails view below the Panes as the next best alternative.

[BryanC]

Background - I don't own an iPod and own hundreds of albums.   I don't play individual tracks, I play albums. I don't play "Street Fighting Man", I play "Beggars Banquet".   Even when I create a sequence of 20 tracks for a party, I want to play "PartyPlaylist.m3u" and not any of the individual tracks.

But no matter what pre-defined view I have tried in Media Center, I still end up with a big list of tracks.  They may end up being sorted by album, but then the screen is filled with all the tracks from one or two albums - even when I use an "Album" view.

The array of album covers view is of no use to me personally, because I have too many albums to be able to recognize them by cover.   The Panes view is great, I like the idea of being able to select a Genre, Artist and/or Year in the top half, but then the bottom half is tracks, not albums.

Is there a way to get Genre, Artist, Year across the top, and then Albums as the list ?

Thanks !

You can definitely get pretty much any view you'd like but I don't think your goal is explained well enough to help.

Is this what you're going for?:  http://i.imgur.com/moxP8.jpg

[Ancient_Audiophile]

You can definitely get pretty much any view you'd like but I don't think your goal is explained well enough to help.

Is this what you're going for?:  http://i.imgur.com/moxP8.jpg

Yes, but without the album covers.

Instead of 10 lines for 10 tracks, 1 line for the album, but with artist, album, year or other columns as selected.

[BryanC]

Yes, but without the album covers.

Instead of 10 lines for 10 tracks, 1 line for the album, but with artist, album, year or other columns as selected.

OK, I understand now.

The only thing I can think of would be to join the files in a cue sheet. Take a look here. You'd have to be using lossless files so you could convert to WAV before joining them.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

OK, I understand now.

The only thing I can think of would be to join the files in a cue sheet. Take a look here. You'd have to be using lossless files so you could convert to WAV before joining them.

I'm just talking about viewing one line per album, not writing files or joining anything together.

[BryanC]

The problem is that MC is file-based. So you'd have to merge multiple files into one file to get just one line. Cuesheets can do this.

You could also try stacking the files in the order of the album. That might work.

[DoubtingThomas]

Glad to hear I'm not alone in listening to "albums"... and not tracks.

I never use random....

[Ancient_Audiophile]

So this has never come up before ?

[BryanC]

I think that if you were purely after albums, you would rip to a single file, correct?

[marko]

Yup, it keeps cropping up every so often.

Would this do for you?

Right click > Play sends all tracks of the album to playing now

[Ancient_Audiophile]

That looks fine Marko - how is it done ?

[marko]

If you like that, You can set up your album view like so in "Customise View"



And then, use the menu in the view header to switch from thumbs to details.

The important part that makes the magic is setting the view to "Category" in the top left.

These detailed category lists can be interesting. Things to note:

• "Name" is actually the name of the album as that is the category chosen.
• "Track #" is actually the total number of tracks on that album.
• It's not exactly what you want as there are no panes to filter by

[Ancient_Audiophile]

Thanks for your help, Marko !

( The column customization is excellent, one can include whatever tag is desired. )

And since it now spelled out in this thread, it will be available to future users of similar bent.

By the way, I do like Random sometimes - but then one has no need of seeing either tracks or albums, because you are not choosing at all. 

And all this is different from Playing Now, where I do want to see the tracks and their details.

[AoXoMoXoA]

yes, thank you Mr Marco   

That works pretty well, and does add the entire album to Playing Now in proper order!

[wig]

By the way, I do like Random sometimes - but then one has no need of seeing either tracks or albums, because you are not choosing at all.  :

If you want to randomly select an entire album, there's a great smartlist option to facilitate that (see the attached image).

[MrC]

Trivia Challenge.  Can you create a view like the attached image?

[BryanC]

Yup, it keeps cropping up every so often.

Would this do for you?

Right click > Play sends all tracks of the album to playing now

Is that an album-specific rating scheme?