Hi all
To a new user, the File Organiser has some missing things and others that aren't intuitive. Here are my thoughts after having used it for a a few album reorganizations.
1:
- After opening the File Organiser, it's unclear how I can have more than one "template". I vainly tried to edit the "file template presets" field and/or looked for a "New Template" button.
- After a few uses and changes, I have several templates with no idea of what they contain, as the description is hardly readable. I have to open every one to know what they do.
2:
- The "Add Exception" button is not descriptive of what happens, I thought it was used to exclude tracks from being reorganized (ok, after trying it I see what it does, but...).
- IMHO, these entries are really RULES for organizing the files.
So, here go my suggestions:
1. Let the user name the templates (Classical music, Latin music, ...)
- Make the "file template presets" field editable, and if the user changes the content of the field just create a new template with the specified name.
- Add a button for deleting the currently chosen template.
- Optional: add a "template history" feature: when a user changes an existing template without changing the template name, rename/reindex all the templates in history with the same name (Classical #1, Classical #2, ...), so that the user can go back to a previous version if the current one doesn't work.
2. Rename Exception to Rule (much more clear)
- The button now becomes "Add Rule"
- Instead of "except when" each rule shows: [when <condition>] [<Album>\<whatever>]
- The "file naming template" becomes the default rule: [Default] [<Album>\<whatever>], and is always the -LAST- rule (on the bottom).
- Add a move up/down so that rules can be ordered -> the first applicable rule is the one used.
- Optional [More work] change the Rules to a table instead of adding the components to the form as it's done now. The add, remove and reorder buttons could be on the left side of the table.
And some more features just for completion:
-> Allow the condition "is any of" to be filled with a text list: "Name;Other Name;...". Many times it´s much quicker than looking in long lists for s specific entry. Warn when an entry in the text list is not valid.
- Open the organiser dialog, change exceptions/rules/..., verify that something is wrong [the table with the filenames doesn't show the desired result].
- Now I can't look at the selected tracks tags to see what is wrong without closing the dialog and losing the changes.
- UPDATE: the dialog isn't modal [good work] so I can open the track editor at the same time after all. The only "problem" is that non modal dialogs are very unusual so most users will not notice that this is possible and lose their changes.
-> Add a Save button to the dialog to save the current changes in the dialog.
(Minor)
-> The music library program (MediaMonkey) from which I changed to MusicBee uses "<Artist:1>" instead of "<Artist>:1" for choosing part of a tag. For me, "<Artist:1>" makes more sense and is more readable. "<Artist>:1" looks like the artist tag followed by ":1"...
-- Does anyone know what other programs do (foobar2000, ...) with tag parts?
-- If so, MusicBee imho "<Artist:1>" could be used (while maintaining backward support for the older usage
Thanks for a great program, I'm liking MusicBee a lot. Power versus simplicity in the right amount for me
Carlos
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