Author Topic: Sort in Multiple Columns  (Read 31473 times)

Maleko12

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Hello Steven! I am really liking thus media player. When I did some editing on a few tracks in the player, it didn't mess up any of those tracks within iTunes (like missing album art, lyrics, entire metadata), unlike Songbird did. I have one wish so I would use it more often. I don't like the way the music is organized in the player. Like, it can only read the artist tab, or the year tab. Thus, for the artist, although it shows the artist displayed alphabetically, but not in respect to the year or tracklisting...


???

Here's a picture to help explain myself LOL ::).



Is there a way that this can be fixed? Or, alternatively, like in foobar, you can have more than one tab to organize the music library (the little up arrow in the artist tab would also show up in the year tab as well, even the disc-track number if necessary). Thanks for this great media player! ;D

Last Edit: February 22, 2009, 10:45:38 AM by Maleko12

Steven

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hi, at the moment there isnt anything to do exactly what you want. I guess you are asking to be able to sort by multiple columns - in your case firstly by artist, and then by year. I'll have a think about that - i dont think it would be hard to do.
For now you can change the layout to 'Album Layout' in the icon to the left of the top search box. It will sort and group by artist, album, disc-track no. I know its not exactly what you are asking though.

Maleko12

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^YES. That's exactly what I'm looking for LOL. Sort by multiple columns. Yeah, I have do that, and it'll do for now... thanks for the quick response!

EDIT: Is there a way I can change the topic name to "Sort by Multiple Columns"?

chorpo

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^YES. That's exactly what I'm looking for LOL. Sort by multiple columns. Yeah, I have do that, and it'll do for now... thanks for the quick response!

EDIT: Is there a way I can change the topic name to "Sort by Multiple Columns"?

Go to your first post to this topic and click "Modify". Then change "Subject"...

 :)

Peter

Steven

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I've added a new preference in the Edit/Preferences/System that allows you to specify the sort order (defaults to: Artist/Album/Disk-Track No)

What happens is if you do not explicitly sort by any column, it will use this sort order. If you do sort by a specific column, then it will sort firstly by the column you clicked and then the sort order from the preferences.
For playlists, the default is the natural playlist order but the same as above applies if you click on a column
For auto-playlists, you can specific a sort order in the auto-playlist but the same as above applies if you click on a column
For the 'Album Layout' view, that ordering is always Album Artist/Album/Disc-TrackNo

http://www.mediafire.com/?djcrntjotnz

Maleko12

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Thanks Peter for that info! :)

And Thanks Steven for implementing that into musicbee! It works perfectly, and I appreciate this deeply. Keep up the great work! ;D

chorpo

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Anytime Malenko ;)

According to sorting in multiple columns: Everything seems to be ok but I found some strange behaviour which we have solved already before - sorting by album in album view (Album Layout).
At first, here is printscreen for sorting by album in Detail Layout:



Everything is ok

Here is printscreen for sorting by Year in Album Layout:



Again, everything is ok (I tried also sorting by artist)


When I select sorting by Album or Genre in Album Layout it looks like this:



songs are sorted by track number not by artist...

Sorting by Album or Genre in Detail Layout is working just fine...

Can you reproduce this one???

peter
Last Edit: February 22, 2009, 12:19:06 PM by chorpo

Steven

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with 'album layout' this is how it works at the moment:
- sort by picture or album artist, then sort order is album artist, album, disc-track no
- sort by album, then album, disc-track no (no album artist sorting)
- sort by anything else, then clicked column, album, disc-track no (no album artist sorting)

the reason was so people could group an album together when they hadn't get correctly set the album artist between all the tracks, but in your case its not working well when multiple albums with same name have different album artists.
Perhaps it should always be album artist, album, disc-track no and people will need to fix the album artist to be the same for all tracks in the album

chorpo

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with 'album layout' this is how it works at the moment:
- sort by picture or album artist, then sort order is album artist, album, disc-track no
- sort by album, then album, disc-track no (no album artist sorting)
- sort by anything else, then clicked column, album, disc-track no (no album artist sorting)

the reason was so people could group an album together when they hadn't get correctly set the album artist between all the tracks, but in your case its not working well when multiple albums with same name have different album artists.
Perhaps it should always be album artist, album, disc-track no and people will need to fix the album artist to be the same for all tracks in the album

For some compilations album artist could be determined from Album name (... mixed by DJ Agent, ... miged by Shy FX) but many of them are only best of 90's, Best of dnb, Best of acidjazz... so album artist couldnt be determined. I found tag "Part" in Options>



How about to use this tag and if it is set to 1 when it is a compilation so these albums would be sorted like now in Album layout:
- sort by picture or album artist, then sort order is album artist, album, disc-track no
- sort by album, then album, disc-track no (no album artist sorting)
- sort by anything else, then clicked column, album, disc-track no (no album artist sorting)

and sorting for "normal albums" that would be always:
- album artist, album, disc-track no

Am I right about tag Part?? Is it TCMP tag???

If yes then It could be 6th custom tag with name "Part of compilation" which couldnt be modified (It would be system) and should be a check box (with values 0 - unchecked,1 - checked)

What do you think??

peter
Last Edit: February 22, 2009, 01:32:26 PM by chorpo

Steven

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the 'Part' tag is actually for classical music and not related to the iTunes 'Part of a Compilation'

regarding your compilation albums, am i correct in saying you have set album artist to be blank? I know some people set it to be 'Various Artists' for compilations but it doesnt matter either way - the only requirement is the album artist is the same for all tracks in the album. Thats how I see the purpose of Album Artist - to group all tracks in an album under a common artist, even in the cases where individual tracks have different artists. The same can be achieved as you say by having an extra 'part of a compilation' flag, but if Album Artist is used the way i describe (even leaving album artist blank) then i think the result should be the same.

Regarding the sorting, if you agree with the above then if i always sort by clicked column, Album Artist, Album, Disc-Track No for the 'Album Layout' then I think it will resolve the problem you described above
Here is a version to try this out and see what you think

http://www.mediafire.com/?1nmdjzhiaie

chorpo

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the 'Part' tag is actually for classical music and not related to the iTunes 'Part of a Compilation'

regarding your compilation albums, am i correct in saying you have set album artist to be blank? I know some people set it to be 'Various Artists' for compilations but it doesnt matter either way - the only requirement is the album artist is the same for all tracks in the album. Thats how I see the purpose of Album Artist - to group all tracks in an album under a common artist, even in the cases where individual tracks have different artists. The same can be achieved as you say by having an extra 'part of a compilation' flag, but if Album Artist is used the way i describe (even leaving album artist blank) then i think the result should be the same.

Regarding the sorting, if you agree with the above then if i always sort by clicked column, Album Artist, Album, Disc-Track No for the 'Album Layout' then I think it will resolve the problem you described above
Here is a version to try this out and see what you think

http://www.mediafire.com/?1nmdjzhiaie



ROFL with that "Part" tag... But I'm happy that I finally know what is it for... I tagged few compilation albums with "Various Artists" and album layout is now ok. Everything is showing correctly.

I added Disc number tag to albums with same name and album layout works for them correctly also...

Will add few words to documentation about this two things ;)

I'm just affraid of retagging my whole collection but I'm happy because there is mess after so many years... So thanx 4 this also... Finally I'm forced to correct some things in it and I'll have proper tagged media library...

peter

Maleko12

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I have an idea for this problem... and i didn't go as far as Chorpo did, so I'm glad that he did. I didn't download the latest change you posted, but I was wondering...



If there's a way the arrows could be on multiple columns (Like a shift + left click command for each column). Then, it depends on what the user wants to place as the most important column to the least important. So in that example, the first arrow would be for artist, then album, then finally title (although for me, it would be artist, then year, then album, then disc-track number).

chorpo

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I have an idea for this problem... and i didn't go as far as Chorpo did, so I'm glad that he did. I didn't download the latest change you posted, but I was wondering...



If there's a way the arrows could be on multiple columns (Like a shift + left click command for each column). Then, it depends on what the user wants to place as the most important column to the least important. So in that example, the first arrow would be for artist, then album, then finally title (although for me, it would be artist, then year, then album, then disc-track number).

I've got another idea to modify Maleko's last post... How about numbering of sorting columns e.g. there would be a number on the right of the triangle for sorting which would represent sorting order of columns... sorting order (sorting number would be changeable via ALT+left mouse button for shifting order up and CTRL+left mouse button to shift order number down for example)...

This would be a next step of sorting, I think a good idea to implement for next version step of MB so maybe a possible request for 0.3 version of MB???

What do you think Steven??? And Maleko of course ;)

Peter
Last Edit: February 22, 2009, 09:24:00 PM by chorpo

Maleko12

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I like that idea. That way, there would be no confusion. ;D I agree that this would make a really good idea for a  possible inclusion for Musicbee 0.3 as well.

Steven

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yes i think so - the preferences can still serve as a default but you can override using the mouse actions and display as suggested
but definitely for 0.3. What i did for now was easy for me to do, but i want to finalise this 0.2 release so people can have a stable version if they prefer