Selecting a set of tracks

[Pastim]

I'll have to leave this. I'm completely failing to understand, or explain myself, or use the interface. foobar2000 is driving me nuts, since I never know whether it play something or not. I had hoped that if each level had 'n items' (maybe as an option) I could avoid these problems, always having the possibility to click that, but I see you don't like it. Personally I don't mind a bit more clutter if it means I can use the interface more effectively, but its your (very good) product.

I can't justify spending money on a second device to sit on my lap alongside my laptop, which I need, to do a job the laptop should be able to do.

Apologies for wasting your time.

I'll see if I can make any more sense of upplay.

[Pastim]

(06-10-2014 21:09)simoncn Wrote:  To add all the items for an artist (etc.) with no duplicates, you can open the container and add the "n items" subcontainer (if your control point supports this).

I think I've got to the core of some of my confusion, having gone away from my PC away to watch TV.

To avoid duplication you said I need 'n items' to show.

But I it seems can't have 'n items' if all items are on the same Album, so I get duplication instead for items on the same album because they have different tags (Work etc) at lower levels.

Does that make any sense?

This is probably irrelevant, and I don't know how common this is, but I have many albums with over 20 discs, dozens of works and so on.

[simoncn]

(07-10-2014 21:05)Pastim Wrote:  I think I've got to the core of some of my confusion, having gone away from my PC away to watch TV.

To avoid duplication you said I need 'n items' to show.

But I it seems can't have 'n items' if all items are on the same Album, so I get duplication instead for items on the same album because they have different tags (Work etc) at lower levels.

Does that make any sense?

This is probably irrelevant, and I don't know how common this is, but I have many albums with over 20 discs, dozens of works and so on.

It does make sense and there is a setting that will remove these duplicates. On the Server tab of the Properties window, set listViewAlbums to 1 and restart MinimServer. This will eliminate the additional choices for Work etc. when everything in the selection is part of a single album.

[Pastim]

(07-10-2014 21:40)simoncn Wrote:  

(07-10-2014 21:05)Pastim Wrote:  I think I've got to the core of some of my confusion, having gone away from my PC away to watch TV.

To avoid duplication you said I need 'n items' to show.

But I it seems can't have 'n items' if all items are on the same Album, so I get duplication instead for items on the same album because they have different tags (Work etc) at lower levels.

Does that make any sense?

This is probably irrelevant, and I don't know how common this is, but I have many albums with over 20 discs, dozens of works and so on.

It does make sense and there is a setting that will remove these duplicates. On the Server tab of the Properties window, set listViewAlbums to 1 and restart MinimServer. This will eliminate the additional choices for Work etc. when everything in the selection is part of a single album.

Whilst trying and failing to watch TV....

I rejected this some time ago because I sometimes want to find all duets on an opera between two people. I lose the next level of tags with this when I select the first one. Now I know I could go and set it to 2 (or whatever), but I'm not sure if that may recreate the original problem in some situations. The whole beauty of your menu structure is the ability to refine the selection in any way you want, to any level you want, some of which you may have never dreamt of before.

If I want to play all tracks in a performance of an opera with one artist and just select that one artist (having gone composer, work, conductor..), which is what I want, even bubbleupnp on my smartphone goes wobbly and finds all those tracks plus all the others in the album, and duplicates many. I believe that setting 'showExtras' to false might help since the album disappears from the next level, but I have found that useful in some situations. If I had the 'n items' for that artist, I could play exactly what I want.

As an option, for people who want the flexibility I find I seem to need to make sense of it all.

[Pastim]

I have found the setting on bubbleupnp to detect duplicates, and that now works - thanks. I'm hoping your exchange of posts regarding upplay will, in time, allow an option in that CP as well.

One of the other reasons an 'n items' would be helpful at all levels, including the lowest, is that when I have got down to a list of tracks that match my criteria, there is no 'play all' at that level. I have to either select each one, or back up to the previous level and select the album. If I do back up to select the album, I always expect to see the whole album, because that is what I'm selecting. I now know that it will only play the matching tracks when I click on the album, but it seems unnatural.

[simoncn]

(07-10-2014 20:34)Pastim Wrote:  foobar2000 is driving me nuts, since I never know whether it play something or not.

This isn't caused by the type of container. Unlike nearly all other control points, foobar only adds the immediate contents of the selected container and doesn't look in any subcontainers to see if they have contents. This is why selecting "n items" is working for you. If you were using the Group tag, it wouldn't be working because grouped items are in subcontainers of "n items" and therefore wouldn't be selected.

Another problem with using the "n items" container for this purpose is its alphabetical sort order. This is unlikely to be what most users want when listening to music. At a minimum, all tracks from the same album should appear together and be sorted in order of track number.

To solve these problems when using foobar, it would be necessary to add a new subcontainer named something like ">> Show Tracks". Because of the problem of duplicates with control points that recursively browse subcontainers, the ">> Show Tracks" container would need to be part of showExtras and work in the same way as other showExtras selections with an extra level of indirection to the actual track list to protect against unwanted duplicates.

This would be a major change to MinimServer and I don't think it's a good idea to add this in order to solve a problem that is specific to foobar. For almost all other control points, selecting either the container itself or its "n albums" or "n items" subcontainer already provides a list of the container's complete contents without duplicates. (Note that selecting "n albums" is preferable to selecting "n items" because it uses a more natural sort order for listening to music.) In the case of containers that contain a single album with additional tag choices, the single album can be selected.

[simoncn]

(08-10-2014 08:13)Pastim Wrote:  I have found the setting on bubbleupnp to detect duplicates, and that now works - thanks. I'm hoping your exchange of posts regarding upplay will, in time, allow an option in that CP as well.

One of the other reasons an 'n items' would be helpful at all levels, including the lowest, is that when I have got down to a list of tracks that match my criteria, there is no 'play all' at that level. I have to either select each one, or back up to the previous level and select the album. If I do back up to select the album, I always expect to see the whole album, because that is what I'm selecting. I now know that it will only play the matching tracks when I click on the album, but it seems unnatural.

In most control points, there are visual differences between viewing a complete album (a musicAlbum UPnP container) and viewing a partial album (a generic UPnP container).

[Pastim]

There's no visual difference I can detect on my CPs.

However, I get your message. No 'n items' at all levels, even as an option for fools such as myself. I'll have to see if I can live without, but frankly the CP interfaces, with their many duplicates and extra tracks I didn't select (unless I lose other functionality that I need as previously mentioned), is too confusing and difficult to use. A shame that the CPs let you down, seeing as the main server and menu arrangement is so good.

[Pastim]

Please let me know how to play the 'work' as shown on the attached 1st shot without having to select every track (and if it's an oratorio or opera it could be 50 or more tracks on a collection album containing other works that I don't want to play, so I cannot select the Album)

BubbleUPnP has the same problem. I can play the whole album but absolutely don't want to. The listViewAlbums setting has no effect in this case.

If I add back Movement to IndexTags, with listViewAlbums = 1 I get the same result.

If I then remove listViewAlbums = 1, then I get shots 2 and 3. I go to movement to check it's what I want, but cannot play the 'work'. So I have to reselect Abbado, then select the full Album Name and play that, even though it's not the whole album. BubbleUpnP is similar, except that if I select it and then go back to it again I now see a number of tracks against it.

Is this what you expect and intend for users of all CPs? Is there some other way of doing what I need? I've tried ever so many combinations of parameters.

[simoncn]

(08-10-2014 18:09)Pastim Wrote:  Please let me know how to play the 'work' as shown on the attached 1st shot without having to select every track (and if it's an oratorio or opera it could be 50 or more tracks on a collection album containing other works that I don't want to play, so I cannot select the Album)

BubbleUPnP has the same problem. I can play the whole album but absolutely don't want to. The listViewAlbums setting has no effect in this case.

If I add back Movement to IndexTags, with listViewAlbums = 1 I get the same result.

The best way to handle this is to tag this set of four tracks as a Group. This is what many MinimServer users with classical collections are doing.

Without Group tagging, you would need to back up one level from shot 1 and select Abbado Claudio. This isn't ideal because you don't know that this will be necessary until you have selected Abbado Claudio and seen there is only one album containing this work with this conductor.

Quote:If I then remove listViewAlbums = 1, then I get shots 2 and 3. I go to movement to check it's what I want, but cannot play the 'work'. So I have to reselect Abbado, then select the full Album Name and play that, even though it's not the whole album. BubbleUpnP is similar, except that if I select it and then go back to it again I now see a number of tracks against it.

Is this what you expect and intend for users of all CPs? Is there some other way of doing what I need? I've tried ever so many combinations of parameters.

From shot 3, you should be able to select the Movement container and get all four movements in the correct order. What happens when you do this?