MB4-SSPlus one button Jukebox

[Jaggy]

First off this feature has to be my most used feature with NextPVR....

For those of you that don't know about it: If you are running SSPlus screensaver & MusicBox4 when the screensaver is displaying you can press the Red button (Alt+R) & it will start playing a random playlist of your default MB4 collection..... if you have visitors staying over it is so easy to explain, they pick it up in seconds.

I am just getting everything ready for a clean install of everything on my new server & one of the things is I want is to get my MB4 collections setup the way I want them right from the get go. I am not a fan of having my "whole music collection" as my default collection, I would much rather have a favorites collection as default (I know it is easy to change the default collection in settings so no problem there)

The problem I have is actually making my Favorites Collection because it won't let me drill down far enough to select the actual albums I want to add. I have all my music stored as in the screenshot attached.
As in this example the highlighted Anthology albums I "don't" want to include in my favorites collection but it doesn't allow me to pick individual albums when they are that far down in the tree. I know I can manually copy the albums I want into a different directory & add that instead but that seems it should be unnecessary & adding all the artists individually into the list makes it very hard to navigate. Any suggestions as to the best way to achieve what I am trying to do??

[mvallevand]

To start looking at the tree, it seems like you start it to deep if the only problem is drilling down into the folders. Because of the way that MB4 works you could have a second Beatles folder of another branch and they'd still show up under The Beatles but they could be different folders.

If you only want those folders to be included in the random mix, there is a way to flag the entire The Beatles folder from random play, and then override it for the albums you want.

I guess you could also use the subst command to map a drive letter to the "The Beatles" folder. and then select the favourites you want.

Speaking of The Beatles they just had their 50th anniversary. I'm old enough to remember Beatlemania, yikes.

Martin

[Jaggy]

To start looking at the tree, it seems like you start it to deep if the only problem is drilling down into the folders. Because of the way that MB4 works you could have a second Beatles folder of another branch and they'd still show up under The Beatles but they could be different folders.

I have been testing doing it this way by starting with a clean database (after backing up the old one) & just adding a few paths but I have run into a problem as it is listing the album "The Beatles - 1" multiple times & I can't see why (logs & Db attached)

Code:

2012-09-04 14:31:05.453    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: Down
2012-09-04 14:31:05.468    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "Yellow Submarine"
2012-09-04 14:31:05.484    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Query returned 13
2012-09-04 14:31:05.562    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() done. Took 109.375 ms
2012-09-04 14:31:06.312    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: Down
2012-09-04 14:31:06.343    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "The Beatles - 1"
2012-09-04 14:31:06.343    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Query returned 27
2012-09-04 14:31:06.421    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() done. Took 109.375 ms
2012-09-04 14:31:07.234    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: Down
2012-09-04 14:31:07.250    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "The Beatles - 1"
2012-09-04 14:31:07.265    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Query returned 27
2012-09-04 14:31:07.281    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() done. Took 46.875 ms
2012-09-04 14:31:08.500    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: Up
2012-09-04 14:31:08.515    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "The Beatles - 1"
2012-09-04 14:31:08.531    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Query returned 27
2012-09-04 14:31:08.546    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() done. Took 46.875 ms
2012-09-04 14:31:09.156    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: Down
2012-09-04 14:31:09.171    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "The Beatles - 1"
2012-09-04 14:31:09.171    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Query returned 27
2012-09-04 14:31:09.187    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() done. Took 31.25 ms
2012-09-04 14:31:09.937    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() called: Down
2012-09-04 14:31:09.968    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "A Hard Day's Night"
2012-09-04 14:31:09.968    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Query returned 13
2012-09-04 14:31:10.062    [DEBUG][1]    OnKeyDown() done. Took 125 ms

If you only want those folders to be included in the random mix, there is a way to flag the entire The Beatles folder from random play, and then override it for the albums you want.

How would I do/test this???

Speaking of The Beatles they just had their 50th anniversary. I'm old enough to remember Beatlemania, yikes. Martin

Yep I'm also old enough to remember Beatlemania double yikes...(although I was only a young chap at the time <grin>).... the years just seem to keep rolling by don't they

[mvallevand]

It might be simply a logging issue. When I run it here with insane logging I see the whole title. Does it show up okay in via MB4 in NextPVR?

Code:

2012-09-03 23:30:40.841    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1962-1966 (The Red Album) (Disc 1)"
2012-09-03 23:30:41.505    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1962-1966 (The Red Album) (Disc 1)"
2012-09-03 23:30:42.491    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1962-1966 (The Red Album) (Disc 2)"
2012-09-03 23:30:43.066    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1967-1970 (The Blue Album) (Disc 1)"
2012-09-03 23:30:43.472    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1967-1970 (The Blue Album) (Disc 2)"
2012-09-03 23:30:47.333    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1967-1970 (The Blue Album) (Disc 2)"
2012-09-03 23:30:47.423    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1967-1970 (The Blue Album) (Disc 1)"
2012-09-03 23:30:47.517    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1962-1966 (The Red Album) (Disc 2)"
2012-09-03 23:30:47.595    [DEBUG][1]    MusicBox4: Getting titles from db: primary:"Beatles, The" secondary: "1962-1966 (The Red Album) (Disc 1)"

Martin

[Jaggy]

Nope it displays The Beatles - 1 album at least three times.

[mvallevand]

Ok, I see it now. I suspect that those are coming from the files in this folder

E:\!!!-Audio Tracks-!!!\Music Library\_Main Albums\The Beatles(Fav)\The Beatles - 1\

Perhaps they don't have an album tag, MB4 will fake it with the higher folder name.

Martin

[Jaggy]

Ok, I see it now. I suspect that those are coming from the files in this folder

E:\!!!-Audio Tracks-!!!\Music Library\_Main Albums\The Beatles(Fav)\The Beatles - 1\

Well that is the physical location of that album in question

Perhaps they don't have an album tag, MB4 will fake it with the higher folder name. Martin

Yes it is fully tagged & I even tried changing the tags to be in the exact same format as all the other tracks for all the other albums but it still shows up multiple times........ I have now got it down to only showing twice & not three time like before just by adding a folder.jpg to the directory (I do have some individual tracks that have art)

[Jaggy]

OK so this has been totally driving me nuts with albums listed multiple time & after a lot of testing (getting rid of extra art etc.) it looks like (at least one & hopefully the only one) the problem is I like to have the date of release of the track showing (mainly for SSP use) instead of the album date.....I put the album date in the album name field instead (albumName [2002])

So either I have to a, loose the track date showing in that field & tag edit I don't know how many albums or b, .....????

[mvallevand]

I am not sure I understand your post correctly, but albums are in album year order by the year id3 tag so the years do need to be consistent, and adding a year to the album text would also need to be consistent or you get duplicates.

If you want to see the track year in SSP I'd suggest asking ACTCMS to get it from the id3 tag, that would seem to be more logical.

Martin

[Jaggy]

I have attached a screenshot that (hopefully) you can see how I have been doing it....

Looking at the tag editor it just says "Year" not "Album Year" so it never dawned on me that it was "just for the Album Year" which I assume is what you are saying????..... as there doesn't seem to be any other id3 Year tag available to ask ACTCMS to display??