How do I get a listing to sort on 4 fields?

[arthurb]

I want to sort a file/music list on 4 levels at the same time: 1) Composer; 2) Genre; 3) Album; 4) Album Artist.

That is, I wish to have the 4 items 'nested':

Composer
...........Genre
..................Album
.........................Album Artist

I thought I was able to do this in MM3 but cannot get it to work at all in V4. Can someone tell me how this can be done in V4?

In addition, does anyone know how I can clear the database, so as to start cleanly, but preserve the numerous filters that I have? Defining the filters is a real pain.

So far, I am incredibly disappointed by the move from MM3 to MM4.

[MMFrLife]

Well, you probably know about "column > ctrl + column > ctrl +column".
I never do that with more than 2 or 3 so not sure if there is a limit.

Or, are you talking about some other way to sort?

As far as database, "clrearing" it should "just" wipe out the music/songs from the library.
what kind of filters are you talking about (search, collections, etc.)? It will "not" change your collections data. Now, if you make a change to a collection
after you clear, then rescan, that collection likely wil no longer work until you fix it. But they won't just go away from the tree.

Check out the database structure, scroll down to diagram and click 3x to enhance http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... _structure

[arthurb]

Hello MMFrLife, and thank you for the reply.

1. If you are referring to the process of using the mouse and 'clicking' with the left-button on a listing's column header to sort on it, and then using Ctrl+Left-Click to add more columns to the sort, then, yes, that is what I have done. I have not found mention of a restriction on the number of columns, but I may, of course, have missed it. I cannot go back to MM3, but I believe I had a sort on Composer -> Genre -> Album -> Album Artist working with it.

2. MM may have changed since V3, but certainly with that version if you 'Cleared' the data-base, you lost all of the 'Filters' that had been defined to allow different formats of listing for different elements (e.g. Genre). I am not sure about differences between the old V3 'Filters' and the new V4 'Collections', but I am beginning to think that they are rather similar.

Thank you for pointing me to the data-base description and diagram; however, it does seem to indicate that the MM developers have continued to force a near umbilical connection between Album and Album-Artist, which I think is, once again, both the cause of my difficulties, and the Achilles Heel of Media Monkey. Basically, I just want to sort cumulatively (i.e. as a 'nested' sort in old IT language) on those 4 columns (as above in point 1.), and MM4 appears not to allow it.

Can you or anyone else confirm whether there is a difference between MM3 and MM4 in this regard?

Thank you again MMFrLife for your reply.

[MMFrLife]

the 'Filters' that had been defined

Can you define what that means? Are these filters getting inherently defined by some action or are they settings you go somewhere to set?
I don't remember MM3 intimately enough to recall the differences you speak of.

I mean, anything that is "inherently" part of a tag will get wiped when cleared.

[Lowlander]

1)

Composer -> Genre -> Album -> Album Artist

sort seems to work fine here.

2) Filters and Collections are the same, the difference is that Filters filtered the Library node (thus you'd access to one at a time) and Collections are separate Library nodes in the Media Tree (thus you can easily switch between them).

[arthurb]

Hello Lowlander, thanks for the reply.

I have finally got around to playing with the de-selection or removal of files in combination with additions, and it seems to work better than in v3. Thus I may well be able to avoid the occasional use of 'clear database' that I had to resort to when using v3. It's nice to see that, so far, v4 appears more robust (I have always relied on lots of filters). The separation of Collections is clearly superior to just using Filters in v3. By the way, was the 'media' option in v3? I'm finding that is quite a bonus; using the tabs with collections is really quite nice, even though I don't switch around that much. OK, you've started to remove my disappointment with V4; thank you.

I'm certainly surprised by the 4 column sort working fine for you. I assume you did use the same fields/headings? Did you also have Artwork and Summary fields/headings displayed? As far as I am concerned it does not work in that situation - I have taken a screen-shot and reduced it, but have never tried this before, so who knows....

img https://www.flickr.com/photos/36740095@N07/14775620281/ /img


Well that worked well ........ not.

I will add more as a reply to MMFrLife.

Regards.

[arthurb]

The problem I have seems to be associated with having multiple fields/columns and also having, or needing, to display the Artwork and the Summary fields/columns. There is, as one can see in the database diagram, a basic connection between Album and Album-Artist and when that combination is displayed, as the Summary field, it probably prevents the sorting on Album and Album-Artist separately. Perhaps counter-intuitively, knocking out the 4th field from the sort choice, leaving the first three, works.

So displaying:

Artwk - Composer - Genre - Album - Album Artist - Summary - Track - Title etc.

and sorting on Composer/Genre/Album/Album-Artist does not work.

But sorting on Composer/Genre/Album does, including sorting on Album-Artist last. Presumably the inclusion of Summary forces Album & Album-Artist into the correct order. Ho hum.

So far, I seem to have what I want, but I am still just a bit concerned, as I'm not sure why.
Still as I said above, Collections do seem to offer a much improved feature than was available with V3's Filters. In case you are wondering, and you probably were not, I need this display/listing with the sort for use with Classical music, where for a given Composer, the genre may = 'Symphonies', Album = 'Work' (e.g. Symphony No 2), and Album Artist = the main personnel (e.g. 'Solti - LSO' or 'Wit - Polish NRS Orchestra'). That is to say, for reasonably sized Classical music collection (say 500+ albums), this sort of thing is important.
Hope this continues to work.
Regards to you both.

[Lowlander]

I had checked in the Details view as I didn't see a mention of you using the Art with Details view. However in the latter it all seems alright as well. In the Details view all seems alright, but in the Art with Details it does seem to have a bug: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=12122

[MMFrLife]

So displaying:
Artwk - Composer - Genre - Album - Album Artist - Summary - Track - Title etc.

and sorting on Composer/Genre/Album/Album-Artist does not work.
But sorting on Composer/Genre/Album does, including sorting on Album-Artist last.

I've never really had a need to do what you are talking about (sorting on "several" columns together).
But I tried testing it out and am having some trouble replicating even the three column version.
Is what you have in the image an example of correct or incorrect?

The only visible variance to check is the album column with the Quartet no. 16 changing to 12 as the album artist changes.
I was wondering if you could recreate your column scenario where you have greater variance among all columns
(at least 3 different names/terms in each column)?

I would like to compare against a similar degree of variance of my own doing (only if you can get around to it, and wouldn't expect anytime soon).

[arthurb]

I'm sorry for not replying earlier, but I have been rather busy with other stuff in the last couple of days. I will post again within the next 36 hours.
Regards to you both.