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Messages - Cerberus1972

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I use set subtitle all the time and it works just fine. It's great for classical music and box sets especially, but I also use it to identify bonus tracks at the end of an album and various other things. To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with MusicBee and it's handling for these different scenarios, but for certain situations I really like the idea of the multiple, stackable panels. The artwork issue is the main advantage to it, of course, but there are some others as well. Currently I add the other artwork, the thumbnails of which appear at the top right corner of the expanded panel. You can click on them to view them. It works great. But for me this would be better.

It would also be helpful with a few minor, nitpicky sort of things. For example, sometimes some of the tags for the second disc or part are different from those of the first, and if you have those tags displayed in one of the header fields of the expanded panel, then one of two things will happen. Some fields will only display what is tagged in track 1, while others, like "artist: performer," will simply display nothing if the values aren't identical for all tracks within the album. The fields displayed do no aggregate the sum total of different values within all of the tracks in the album, nor should they as you would get some unwieldy results in many cases. Obviously, you can display these things just fine in the track information panel, but you only see them if you click on a track.

As an example, take "In Your Honor" by the Foo Fighters. It's a double album where the first part is electric and the second part acoustic. The way it works now, if you tag the genre for the first half as Hard Rock or Alternative Rock or whatever, and the second half as Acoustic Rock, if you have the genre tag displayed in one of the header fields it will only show Hard Rock since that is what the first track is tagged as. You could tag the entire album as both Hard Rock and Acoustic Rock, but that isn't ideal. If you had separate panels for each part, and it was implemented the way I'm hoping for, then the fields displayed in the second panel would be based on the tags in those tracks, so Genre would display Acoustic Rock in this instance. Again, it's nitpicking and silly, and only helpful in certain specific instances, but it would be helpful nonetheless.

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Oops, rookie mistake. Let me try that again.

First image:


Second image:

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Hi hiccup, and thanks for the welcome. Thank you very much for all of your work on the enhanced genre hierarchy, by the way. I was always reluctant to go down the genre rabbit hole, but after finding your enhanced hierarchy I decided to take the plunge. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Based on your image I would have to agree with you, but I've created some images that put it in a slightly more realistic perspective, I think. I hope, anyway.

This one shows my entire MusicBee screen in 1080p with a two disc album as it normally looks:


This second image shows what I think it will look like with CritterMan's stackable expanded panels:


In this case, the difference in size between the single panel and the double panel is fairly minimal, only cutting off the last couple of tracks in each column. The more panels you add, especially if you have panels with only one or two tracks as in the previous example, the bigger the difference in size and the more scrolling you have to do to see all of the tracks. With large box sets with large quantities of discs, you already have to do some scrolling, and while this will make it worse, I don't think the difference will be big enough to completely dismiss the idea based on that alone. Maybe there are other flaws in this idea that I'm not seeing yet, but I still really like it.

I don't expect to change your mind, and even if I did it won't change the fact that this request is unlikely to ever be implemented. I know that, and I am at peace with that. I just love the idea and thought I would put it out there for the one in a million chance it has of succeeding.

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I know this is a dead topic at this point, but I didn't know if I should create a new wishlist request when my idea is just a variation on this one. The image that CritterMan created to illustrate his idea is something I've been wanting for a long time, and given how many requests and complaints I've come across here over the years that would be solved by this feature, I can't believe this didn't gain more +1s at the time. What I would like to propose is a much simpler method for achieving the same result. Theoretically it should be far easier for Steven to implement, which hopefully means a better chance of him finding it worth the effort. Unfortunately, it will also mean far more effort for Musicbee users to take advantage of it, and so less likely for anyone to +1 the idea. Oh well.

My idea is this. Instead of basing the multiple expanded panels on album sets or release groups, a concept which is currently not supported in Musicbee so far as I know, perhaps it could be based solely on disc numbers. The previous ideas here would be far more elegant and user friendly, but I'm guessing they would also require a lot more time and effort for Steven to implement. In this case, albums with no disc numbers or tagged as disc one would not change. Tracks tagged as disc 2 would appear in the second expanded panel, tracks tagged as disc 3 would be in the third panel, etc. Obviously, this would have to be an optional feature, turned off by default.

Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult to allow each panel to display different cover art, album titles, years, etc. I imagine the only way to realistically do that would be having tracks grouped to an album by folder in the Sorting/Grouping screen of Preferences and having all tracks you want grouped together in the same folder. If I'm right, then anyone who has different releases of the same album in separate folders, or the discs of a box set organized in sub folders, would have to completely reorganize their files. I know that would be a deal breaker for many people, but I for one think the result would be worth the many, many hours I would need to devote to making the necessary changes.

Anyway, assuming anyone even reads this post, I'm sure someone smarter than me will reveal the fatal flaw I've overlooked with this idea, but for now I can dream. If no one was interested in the far better ideas mentioned above, I know the chances of this one catching on are between slim and none, leaning heavily toward none, but I thought I would try. Thanks.

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