Simple Artist Based Album View

Album view View scheme for MEDIA CENTER v12 or higher.

I set this view scheme up primarily so that I could permanently turn off the 'alphabet' links that can line the top of library browser views. Once created, you can view your albums by the artists first letter, then, clicking the roll up 'Artists' link, you will see all artists, beginning with 'B', for example, and then another click to view that artists albums.

Preview

Load the View Scheme Editor

1. Launch the 'Edit View Scheme' dialogue by right-clicking on the default audio node at the top of MEDIA CENTER's tree and then click on 'Edit View Scheme'
2. In 'Step 1' Select each entry in turn and press the delete button.

Add New Panes

1. Click on the 'Add' button and choose 'Advanced Expression'
2. Name it Artists, and paste the following into the expression area:
   if(isequal([album artist (auto)],/(multiple,8),/(various/),if(isequal(mid([album artist (auto)],0,3),the,1),mid([album artist (auto)],4,1),if(isequal(Mid([album artist (auto)],0,1),1,6),0 - 9,Mid([album artist (auto)],0,1)))
   Click the OK button.
3. Click on the 'Add' button and choose 'Advanced Expression' again. Again, name it Artists, but this time, use the following expression:
   if(isequal([album artist (auto)],multiple,8),/(various/),[album artist (auto)])
   Click the OK button.
4. Click on the 'Add' button and choose 'Advanced Expression' again. Name it Albums and use the following expression:
   if(isempty([album]),,[album])
   Click the OK button.
5. Click the OK button again to close the View Scheme editor and load your new view scheme.

Using The View Scheme and other notes

Hover the mouse over the "Artists" text in the left side of the header bar and click on the first Artists entry...

Drop Menu

then use the thumbnail slider in the right hand side of the header bar to adjust the thumbnail size to suit. MEDIA CENTER will remember how you set this. I always use MEDIA CENTER maximised, and set my thumbnail size so that I can see all of the thumbs without a scrollbar.

Understanding the alphabet

• The first Artists level groups All (Multiple Artists) albums together under the first thumb, labelled (various), hover the mouse over the thumbnail and click on Albums to see a thumbnail list of all your 'VA' albums. Use the back command to go back to the top level Artists view.
• The next thumbnail groups all those albums by artists whose names begin with numbers, such as 10CC, 2Pac, 4 Non Blondes, etc. etc.
• all the other thumbnails are alphabetised as you'd expect, except for the fact that you will find "The Beatles" under B, "The Rolling Stones" under R, etc. etc. which prevents 'T' from becoming over congested, and is achieved by the use of expressions, so no need to do that "Beatles, The" thing which I really dislike for some reason.
• If you want a flat list of all albums in your library, then use the drop menu to jump directly to "Albums"

Possible Problems

Unwanted items being listed?

If you have unwanted things appearing in view scheme, reload the "Edit View Scheme" dialogue and use "Step 4" to exclude those things from view.
Mine contains: [Media Type]=[Audio] -g=podcast -al=[online radio] -playlistid==588413271 -fnp=F:
which excludes podcasts, internet radio stations, my recycle bin playlist and any files that are on drive F:\
I then setup up specific view schemes for presenting those excluded items, which keeps things nice and tidy.

The View Scheme is slow to load

I often find that expression laden view schemes can be quite slow to load, presumably because MEDIA CENTER needs to chugg through the entire library building each pane on demand. I've found that significant speed increases can be gained by adding the expression as a library field in it's own right. You do this by opening MEDIA CENTER's options and going to "library and folders" Click on "User Fields", and then on "Add Field" Type the name into the name field on the right, and on the left, choose "Calculated Data" and paste your expression into the template field, then click the OK button. Now, go back and edit the view scheme again, replacing the expression based panes with the "Standard View Item"s you just created. I did this for the first "Artists" pane and the "Albums" pane, keeping the second "Artists" pane expression based, and do not have any load lag.

Hope someone finds this enjoyable. If there are any problems, ambiguities or other questions, click n the "Discuss" tab at the top of this page and leave a comment.

Thanks for reading :)

marko 06:30, 10 January 2007 (CST)