Feature Request/Idea: Multiple Music Collections

[KoS]

Hi

I very much like your implementation of the folder view with the tag view. i have a specific use-case for it, but at the moment its cumbersome. i have music collections of multiple persons, e.g. the parents have other music then the childern have. so they want to browser "their" music, but still sometimes would like to access the music of the others or the "whole" collection of all of them. on the disk this looks like the following:
-root
-- father
-- mother
-- daughter
-- son
-- common

each one has all his music in their folder, and music that they "share" is in the common folder. so with the help of the folder-tag-view i can go to one of the family members folder and i have the same view on that collection as if it would be a separate instance of minim running for that collection.

what it makes cumbersome to navigate through is that to select the collection of e.g. the father i have the following steps:
choose minim server -> folder view -> father -> tag view -> father

it would be great if there would be a direct path to that, e.g.
minim -> tag view -> father
...or if it even would be configurable to have a top/root view of the upnp server like:

ALL
father
mother
daugther
son
common

so first you always have to select "which collection" you want to browser and then you have the normal view with the items/albums etc...

it's the first upnp server that i found that i could imagine something like that would be possible :-)

and yes, i know that i could just run multiple instances of minim, but this way it would use less ressources and would be "sexier" ;-)

greets
KoS

[simoncn]

I presume what's really wanted is to see a choice of:

• father+common
• mother+common
• daughter+common
• son+common
• all
  

The next release of MinimServer will support multiple content directories, so it will be possible to compose different directory trees in this way when starting MinimServer.

What you're asking for is slightly different. You'd like to start a single instance of MinimServer with all these content directories combined (the "all" view), and then have a quick and easy way to switch between different predefined combinations of the top-level content directories.

What's not clear to me is whether there's a requirement for the father to be browsing his selection at the same time that the mother is browsing her selection, etc. If each family member has their own playback device, this would be necessary, and it would force the use of different MinimServer instances.

If there's only one playback device in the house, shared by all family members, then only one family member would be using the single MinimServer instance at a time. This type of usage could be supported by the concept of multiple user profiles. Selecting a user profile would subset the available content directories and could potentially change other properties (e.g., album sort order, index tags shown).

I'm open to the possibility of adding support for user profiles at some stage if there's significant demand for it. I've got quite a long list of other things to work on at the moment, so this probably wouldn't happen in the near future.

[simoncn]

(26-04-2012 22:40)simoncn Wrote:  What's not clear to me is whether there's a requirement for the father to be browsing his selection at the same time that the mother is browsing her selection, etc. If each family member has their own playback device, this would be necessary, and it would force the use of different MinimServer instances.

I've been thinking some more about this aspect. At the moment, multiple people can browse a single MinimServer instance at the same time, and they can select and play music on different devices. However, there are a couple of places in the MinimServer design where I've assumed a single user, and I'll need to think about what issues (if any) might occur with this scenario of multiple simultaneous users.

It would be quite a small step from this current situation for MinimServer to provide an optional top-level selection to choose from a predefined list of user profiles. This would take the user to a home screen with personalized content and personalized preferences.

I'd need to think carefully about which preferences could be customized on a per-user basis and which preferences would need to be global for implementation efficiency reasons. I could start by just supporting personalization of the top-level selection of content directories.

[KoS]

(26-04-2012 22:40)simoncn Wrote:  I presume what's really wanted is to see a choice of:

• father+common
• mother+common
• daughter+common
• son+common
• all
  

ups, yeah exactly that.

Quote:The next release of MinimServer will support multiple content directories, so it will be possible to compose different directory trees in this way when starting MinimServer.

at the moment then directory that i added to minim is a directory that only contains symlinks to multitple directories containing the music.

Quote:What you're asking for is slightly different. You'd like to start a single instance of MinimServer with all these content directories combined (the "all" view), and then have a quick and easy way to switch between different predefined combinations of the top-level content directories.

What's not clear to me is whether there's a requirement for the father to be browsing his selection at the same time that the mother is browsing her selection, etc. If each family member has their own playback device, this would be necessary, and it would force the use of different MinimServer instances.

If there's only one playback device in the house, shared by all family members, then only one family member would be using the single MinimServer instance at a time. This type of usage could be supported by the concept of multiple user profiles. Selecting a user profile would subset the available content directories and could potentially change other properties (e.g., album sort order, index tags shown).

I'm open to the possibility of adding support for user profiles at some stage if there's significant demand for it. I've got quite a long list of other things to work on at the moment, so this probably wouldn't happen in the near future.

there are multiple playback devices, e.g. each person has one in his room. but still if everybody is in the living room, they would like to choose once from the fathers collection and the other time from the daughters collection. the idea with the specific properties per user is great! hmm... i don't see the point why there is the need for multiple instances if there are multiple playback devices?

[simoncn]

(27-04-2012 10:05)KoS Wrote:  at the moment then directory that i added to minim is a directory that only contains symlinks to multitple directories containing the music.

This works in 0.31 but not in 0.32 (because of a bug). It's a reasonable workaround (for Linux) until MinimServer supports multiple content directories.

Quote:there are multiple playback devices, e.g. each person has one in his room. but still if everybody is in the living room, they would like to choose once from the fathers collection and the other time from the daughters collection. the idea with the specific properties per user is great! hmm... i don't see the point why there is the need for multiple instances if there are multiple playback devices?

See my previous post regarding this. There might be some minor issues with concurrent browsing (which I will investigate and fix if necessary). There aren't any problems with concurrent playback to different devices.

[rb73]

As my girlfriend and I have quite different tastes in music, I added a usertag "Collection", and tagged all her music with her name, and all my music with my name.

It doesn't offer any protection/security, as I could just as easily select her music as my own, but it does shield me from from her music (and speeds up the browsing) when I want to

[simoncn]

(21-06-2012 08:20)rb73 Wrote:  As my girlfriend and I have quite different tastes in music, I added a usertag "Collection", and tagged all her music with her name, and all my music with my name.

It doesn't offer any protection/security, as I could just as easily select her music as my own, but it does shield me from from her music (and speeds up the browsing) when I want to

That's a nice simple solution. What about the music that you both like (if there is any)? Is that tagged with both your names?

[rb73]

(21-06-2012 10:33)simoncn Wrote:  That's a nice simple solution. What about the music that you both like (if there is any)? Is that tagged with both your names?

Yes. Works perfectly