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Tips and Tricks / First letter separator in Album Covers view
« on: March 19, 2018, 03:33:18 AM »
I was split between this section and 'Wishlist', but perhaps before harassing Steven I should post my improvised way of doing this. 
I sometimes like to browse through my library in the album covers view, and trying to discern where one letter begins or ends can be a pain. I know about the "Group By" option, but it just wastes tons of screen estate, so I came up with this and it's been pretty useful:
(Shown here in Jazz genre category around 'unpopular' letters, hence the clustering. Obviously it's more useful with lots of albums, eg. All categories)
The way I've got it set up is:
1. Make a folder, and inside of it 26 subfolders 'A' - 'Z'
2. Inside each folder, there is a #.mp3 file + folder.jpg (picture of a letter on a contrasting background)
3. Add it to the library
4. Since I use <Album Artist> in my Column Browser/Thumbnail browser, to avoid them receiving 26 extra (useless) entries, I tag the 26 files with the same Album Artist, eg. a non-intrusive apostrofe, same Album, but different Sort Album Artist.
(Before a certain update you could have the former fields empty and just set the Sort ones, with very clean visuals, but for now, this hack works fine.)
5. By default, with no genres assigned, it will only show up in "All" Genre category. With a smaller library, that's optimal, but I add "Rock; Jazz; Electronic; etc" to see it in genre-specific views.
6. Have Sort Album Artist in your "Sort By" rule.
I think that's it, it's been a while since I set it up.
I'll provide my folder with the "A-Z", .mp3 and .jpg if anyone wants to go through this hassle.
https://www.sendspace.com/file/j4jw9j
(35 MB)
Naturally, you'll have to manually set the Album/Sort Album Artist tags since they're contained only in the MB database.
I sometimes like to browse through my library in the album covers view, and trying to discern where one letter begins or ends can be a pain. I know about the "Group By" option, but it just wastes tons of screen estate, so I came up with this and it's been pretty useful:
(Shown here in Jazz genre category around 'unpopular' letters, hence the clustering. Obviously it's more useful with lots of albums, eg. All categories)
The way I've got it set up is:
1. Make a folder, and inside of it 26 subfolders 'A' - 'Z'
2. Inside each folder, there is a #.mp3 file + folder.jpg (picture of a letter on a contrasting background)
3. Add it to the library
4. Since I use <Album Artist> in my Column Browser/Thumbnail browser, to avoid them receiving 26 extra (useless) entries, I tag the 26 files with the same Album Artist, eg. a non-intrusive apostrofe, same Album, but different Sort Album Artist.
(Before a certain update you could have the former fields empty and just set the Sort ones, with very clean visuals, but for now, this hack works fine.)
5. By default, with no genres assigned, it will only show up in "All" Genre category. With a smaller library, that's optimal, but I add "Rock; Jazz; Electronic; etc" to see it in genre-specific views.
6. Have Sort Album Artist in your "Sort By" rule.
I think that's it, it's been a while since I set it up.
I'll provide my folder with the "A-Z", .mp3 and .jpg if anyone wants to go through this hassle.
https://www.sendspace.com/file/j4jw9j
(35 MB)
Naturally, you'll have to manually set the Album/Sort Album Artist tags since they're contained only in the MB database.
