getmusicbee.com
Support => Questions => Topic started by: Blackwater_7 on August 01, 2020, 07:25:56 AM
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Hello guys, first of all I want to thank whoever made this amazing app. It looks really good!
However, I have a problem with building my collection here. My english isn't the best so I think its best to just give you one example.
I have one big folder, called "Video Game Soundtracks"
In this folder I have like 1000 folders. They are all just game folders like "Call of Duty", "GTA V", "Resident Evil 5", "FIFA 16" ...
And in each folder, I have their OST. And most of the time these folders have more than 1 folder. Meaning, in each game folder, I might have multiple albums & multiple artists. This is where problem starts.
So when I import my library, I just can't see an option to see my "game folders"
I only have options like "artists" (which is not useful for me)
or some stuff like "album" (also, not useful. Sometimes one game has 50 albums, when others only have 1-2. It looks bad when just one game occupies most of the area)
Then there are other stuff like tracks, composer etc... Once again, they are not useful.
What I want to see is:
I want to see this structure:
I will click OST > There I will see all my game titles/folders > When I click one of them, only then I will see the "albums" related to this game.
Also these "game folders" should have a game cover image. I can add this manually if its necessary.
So yeah, is this possible guys?
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Hi, welcome to the forum!
This is certainly possible, and not even super complicated, but explaining how is hard without knowing what you've tried and where you're at now. I suggest you spend some time with the wiki, and get familiar with at least the following:
Sorting/Grouping preferences
Custom and virtual tags
Different main panel views
Column and/or thumbnail browser
If you can then give us screenshots and specific questions about something you're trying to do, you will be able to get better answers here.
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Also note that support for browsing collections by folder structure is limited. MusicBee is designed around browsing and searching by metadata such as genre, artist and album.
Also also note that someone else asked about this just a few weeks ago, so it shouldn't be hard to find that thread with its more detailed responses.
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Hi, welcome to the forum!
This is certainly possible, and not even super complicated, but explaining how is hard without knowing what you've tried and where you're at now. I suggest you spend some time with the wiki, and get familiar with at least the following:
Sorting/Grouping preferences
Custom and virtual tags
Different main panel views
Column and/or thumbnail browser
If you can then give us screenshots and specific questions about something you're trying to do, you will be able to get better answers here.
I read these but its still super confusing for me. I mean I just don't know how can I get this to work.
Maybe I can add a custom tag for each game folder, but then what? Its still looks same in the panel, and there is no option to show them like in my Windows explorer.
To make it simple, I will share some pics.
This is my folder structure. It's pretty clean.
(https://i.ibb.co/wNYF4hn/1.png)
Lets click one of these folders. When I do this, I just get all albums related to this game/folder. In the following example, GTA V game has 2 different albums.
(https://i.ibb.co/KqFCjVB/2.png)
Okay now this is what I get when I import the main "OST" folder to musicBee. It's currently just in "inbox" folder, but I will move it to my library once I learn what I should do.
See how I get all sub-albums from the GTA V folder. Normally, all these radio-channel albums should be visible ONLY when I click the "GTA V" folder/category/or whatever you call. Because its just a album from GTA V folder.
(https://i.ibb.co/BC9PCwY/3.png)
Now this is how I want it to look. For every folder in /OST/, I want just one title/folder in MusicBee. Like this:
(https://i.ibb.co/MSDhbBK/4.png)
And in the image above, when I click one of these folders (lets say GTA V) I want something like this:
(https://i.ibb.co/By36KfL/5.png)
If this is not something super hard please help me man, these guides are making me even more confused because like I said I just don't know how to implement this feature with the infos on wiki.
This is the only thing I want from this app, so if I can make this work I'd be so grateful. Thanks in advance!
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I said it before, and I'll say it again: Support for browsing collections by folder structure is limited. MusicBee is designed around browsing and searching by metadata such as genre, artist and album.
I also mentioned another recent thread where this was discussed. That thread is here:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=32113
But the only way you can browse folders in MusicBee is via a folder tree control. There is no way to configure MusicBee to browse folders the way you have requested, where it shows the hierarchy of folders in the main panel that you can then drill down into. Soz.
I think the only way you could even get close to what you are requesting would be in a two-level hierarchy by fudging the tag values, where say "Grand Theft Auto V" was saved as the Artist, and "Channel X" and "Rebel Radio" et al. were saved as Album titles. Then you could browse them in Artist view, where selecting "Grand Theft Auto V" would show the individual albums below it. But doing this for all your soundtrack albums would be time-consuming, confusing, break how tags are meant to be used and won't really achieve what you asked for, so don't do that.
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I said it before, and I'll say it again: Support for browsing collections by folder structure is limited. MusicBee is designed around browsing and searching by metadata such as genre, artist and album.
It seems this remains a recurring and a bit difficult to grasp notion for more (starting) MusicBee users.
That's understandable if you are used to using Windows explorer and browsing by path.
But as Zak says, MusicBee is intended, and a perfect match for any user that values the metadata in their music files being present and correct.
At least the most basic and essential tags.
Don't expect MusicBee to combine what it is designed for with stooping down to simple path browsing too much.
For users that fail to recognize that, or are not willing to tag their music collection appropriately there are several Windows 'folder players'.
(I won't make recommendations, but a websearch should result in finding a couple of them)
Surely MusicBee is sophisticated enough that what you want could be accomplished by the use of virtual tags that make use of filepaths (url's), but the time and effort that would require would be better spend in getting your tags right.
But perhaps another user is willing and interested to offer a solution using virtual tags.
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Maybe he can change his Thumbnail Browser to <Sort Artist> and then copy the folder names in ..\OST (the game titles) to <Sort Artist>. Clicking on "Grand Theft Auto V" in the Thumbnail Browser would then show the first, second and so on albums that are 'in the folder' in his main panel. That should all be close enough to what he desires, right?
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I think the only way OP will get anything close to what they want is to post a request in the Wishlist forum and hope to catch Steven in a good mood on a good day. 8)
To be fair, it's not like it would be a crazy request, or super difficult to implement. There will always be people that take a close enough is good enough approach to tagging, and for whom the file structure is the extent of their library management. I think a lot of people would find a Folders view quite useful sometimes, myself included. Hell, I may even post the request myself.