It seems the following Mantis entry discusses some similar problems: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=6579

PetrCBR wrote:re Album Art + Details: What columns missing in Album Art + Details ? Only "Album" (replaced by artwork) and "Album Artist" (replaced by artist album).

An annoyance due to this has been reported today by a user.
See: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=

Podcast shows with a checkmark, but disabled in the Podcast Collection (column itself is visible). Series is disabled in the Video Collection as well as Album and Album Artist. Artist/Album doesn't exist in Video Collection. Album, Podcast, Series and Album Artist are disabled in the Entire Library Collection as well, which does contain a mix of Music, Video and Podcasts.

The above was all seen with right click on columns in the Art with Details view.

Series and Podcast are available in the Music Collection in the Details view (although Podcasts enables/disables the Series column here).

I think that all these columns should be available for use in all these Collections to give the most freedom to users. Some might see a purpose for Series in their Music Collection. I guess there is one problem though as it seems that it was chosen to have Series and Album be the same field (value).

There are further issues like the ability to tag (Auto-Tag from Filename) and show the Disc# column in the Video Collection, but this field is absent from the Properties dialog.

Lowlander wrote:Album, Podcast, Series and Album Artist are grayed out here.

Podcast and Series are columns related just to Podcasts and Videos so it's correct they're disabled for Music.

Well the way I see it:

At one point it was decided that the nowplaying node should always be sorted in the order it is played. ( except when shuffle is active )

I don't understand the need for this since there is already a # column showing the order. Besides I don't like that sorting columns changes the order.
We discussed this before and it seems that there are two different opinions on how this should work.
Besides what's the use of the Now playing panel if it's identical?

But what really frustrate me is the consequences of that choice.

Like the ones I mentioned in my previous post.

It's frustrating to see panels go away when you change node.

What would be really cool is if the Art browser would simply show the current playing track along with the other ones inside the now playing node.
I don't see the problem with that. MonkeyFlow for example works in nowplaying mode.

I don't see the problem with the Column Browser either. If you use it to filter that will simply change what you see in the node. It should not affect the actual playing queue.

Album, Podcast, Series and Album Artist are grayed out here.

@Dreadlau
The View option would be added to the Collection Options which you are almost forced to use as right click is too long of a list for convenient use. It would merely be a drop down that has it's own column settings per view. I think it's good as the current settings don't necessarily apply to the Tracklistings as you can enable/disable columns that aren't available in the View you're using.

As for the missing Now Playing features, that makes sense to me. The Now Playing is a list of tracks to play. The features would either allow filtering or sorting which would cause the Now Playing to no longer reflect what is going to be played. Because the Now Playing is a different list than the library this omissions make sense to me.

Dreadlau wrote:I.e: -You can't display Artwork in the now playing panel.
-You can't use "Show Art" in the now playing node.
-You can't use "Show Art Browser with Details" in the now playing node.
-You can't use "Show Column browser" in the now playing node.

It have a good reason. Tracks in Now Playing are in some order to play. Modes you've noted will break this order and what they should show ? Correct order as user preset that, or changed order to fit tracks in albums ? Art + Details & Browser - is same problem ... tracks in Now playing panel will be filtered and question is, should it play all tracks as they were before (and ordered as before), or as they currently are (filtered) ?

Hello Petr.

Thanks for the feedback.

I realize I'm seeing this from the wrong perspective.

In fact what I miss is a way to have the illustrations in the Details view.
Like no grouping by artwork. Every entry having his own artwork.
And the possibility to resize the artwork to small thumbnails.

Something like in J.River Media Jukebox


But I have some frustration with how some functionalities are not accessible under certain circumstance.

I.e: -You can't display Artwork in the now playing panel.
-You can't use "Show Art" in the now playing node.
-You can't use "Show Art Browser with Details" in the now playing node.
-You can't use "Show Column browser" in the now playing node.

Dreadlau wrote: Ok here we're touching at something that really bother me in Mediamonkey's interface and that I find rather frustrating.

Why, oh why are there so many columns missing in AA view and in AA + detail compared to detail view?
I wished all these view worked the same: All columns should be enabled and should be usable to sort our tracks.

re Album Art + Details: What columns missing in Album Art + Details ? Only "Album" (replaced by artwork) and "Album Artist" (replaced by artist album).
re Album Art: Just some of the columns makes sense in this view as one item is album which can contain one or more tracks. It not makes sense to sort in this view using Bitrate, Track length etc. Only columns applicable to whole album makes sense to me.

Lowlander wrote:I think this discrepancy is a problem and it seems the only solution would be to add a per View option to the Collection Options.

My impression is that the multiple collections management in MM4 makes the configuration already longer.
To the point that as a side effect it has become a bit tedious to configure.
So add the per view settings to that, it will really became tedious.
So I'm not too sure. There is pros and cons. I'm not really against it but I just wanted to point that issue out.

Lowlander wrote: Even if these columns would be enabled (i'd like to see that as well)

Ok here we're touching at something that really bother me in Mediamonkey's interface and that I find rather frustrating.

Why, oh why are there so many columns missing in AA view and in AA + detail compared to detail view?
I wished all these view worked the same: All columns should be enabled and should be usable to sort our tracks.

In the Art & Details view columns like Album and Album Artist are disabled in the right click menu on the column headers, but are enabled and selected in the Collection Options. This confused me until writing this, but now I understand the problem as Collection Options are global to all Views. I think this discrepancy is a problem and it seems the only solution would be to add a per View option to the Collection Options. Even if these columns would be enabled (i'd like to see that as well) the Collection Options would still be disconnected from the different columns enabled per view.

What do others think?