Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

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lennyb8000
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:20 pm

Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by lennyb8000 »

Finally got fed up with iTunes on Windows and am seriously considering a permanent switch to MediaMonkey. Working great so far, but I have a few nagging questions for some of the veteran users...

1. I got my iTunes playlists to transfer, but one thing I could do in iTunes was to organize them into sub-folders, or categories. Basically, I had a system where, not only were the playlists organized into these folders, but they were synched to my iPod using the same folder structure. Is this possible with MediaMoney? It's something I really got used to, hopefully I'm explaining it well enough.

2. Another iTunes holdover is the "boxed" view, where each artist had their own sub-folder. I didn't see the equivalent in MediaMonkey's views or extensions, unless I'm missing something.

3. One thing that does actually bug me is how whenever I click the "music" tab, it takes me to the very top of my music collection, not to the spot where I left off (which likely contains the currently playing track). Is there any way to lock the position in place until I touch the slider? I know I can use the "next song" tab on the right, but navigating that is clumsy and limited, and I'm not a fan of the column browser, either. I'm not trying to clutter the screen, I'd just like to lock my library view in place so I'm not constantly scrolling through 220+ gigs of music.

I know these are pretty nitpicky, but I stuck with iTunes for 8 years and got used to a lot of what it could do. So if none of these things can work then it's not the end of the world, I'm still glad to be ridding myself of iTunes bloat, with its ridiculous stutter and poor performance. Thanks in advance for the help.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by Lowlander »

1) You can nest Playlists within MediaMonkey (drag & drop them onto a Playlist), but this will not affect the parent Playlist nor be transferable as such to an iOS device.

2) Not sure what you mean by that. You have the Media Tree with the Artist sub-node (folder).

3) If you use the Back button it will remember what position the Filelisting was in.
lennyb8000
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:20 pm

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by lennyb8000 »

1. Perfect... don't know why I didn't think to do that, actually. I'll have to see how this shows up in my iPod.

2. This was just a view option, one that I really liked and stuck with. Basically, each artist had their own graphic tile, you clicked on it, and it took you into a sub-folder with all of their albums. It was one of the few things I really liked about iTunes, and the MediaMonkey equivalents so far will take some getting used to. Not the end of the world, just something I was used to...

...and actually, while looking for an image to demonstrate, I came across a wishlist request for exactly this. So unless it cropped up somewhere, it looks like it's not available for MediaMonkey.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =4&t=45979

3. This didn't work for me, unfortunately. Hitting "back" still took me to the top of my 47,000+ song library.

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by Lowlander »

3) You need to select a file in the view so when you go Back to it, it jumps to the selected file.
lennyb8000
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:20 pm

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by lennyb8000 »

Yeah, still isn't working for me for some reason. Doesn't matter if it's selected, highlighted, currently playing, whatever. Navigating back takes me to the very top every time. It's actually making navigating a huge pain. Maybe I have an option unchecked somewhere?
dannyno
Posts: 70
Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:27 pm

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by dannyno »

Here's what happens for me.

Let's say I am browsing my entire Artist and Album Artist list, and I select a song, then go off and look at playlists or something else. If I click on "Go to Previous View", I go back to the top of the Artist and Album Artist list.

But if I instead use the list of artists on the left to select an artist, so that only that artist is being displayed in the view window, then I can go off and look at playlists and when I click on "Go to Previous View", it takes me back to the artist view that I had selected.

If I had selected a band with many songs or albums, and go and look at something else, then when I "Go to Previous View", I end up at the top of the list of that band's songs/albums.

So what it's doing is taking you back to the top of the list/view you had selected previously, not to a particular point within that view.

Dan
lennyb8000
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:20 pm

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by lennyb8000 »

Yeah... I guess I just have to get used to the artist list on the left rather than the generic "music" tab. It's just a pain when I have to navigate through artist lists with hundreds or thousands of songs in them (The Beatles, Guided by Voices, etc), when I'd like it to just stay in the current position. It's just a little off-putting right now because it shows a huge number of artists, because artists with just one track in my collection, usually do to compilations (I'm looking at you, Nuggets series...), are given their own tab that's just as prominent as an artist where I have dozens of their records.

Speaking of which, is there a way to group compilations together under one tab (again, one of the rare things that iTunes did well) without having to change the album artist of each to "various" or whatever? And even still, wouldn't the artist list still be cluttered with all the one-song-on-a-compilation artists, since the tab says "Artist & Album Artist?" Or is this a feature that I could find with Gold (which I don't mind paying for if it does what I need it to, I downloaded the free version to see how it would work for me first)?

Thanks again everyone for the helpful replies.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by Lowlander »

I have tried it with the main Music node and the Artist & Album Artist sub-node and it works in both cases if you select a file. Do not that the exact position may differ, but the selected file is in view. I'm doing so with MediaMonkey 4.0.7.1510, but I don't think anything has changed since MediaMonkey 4.0.6.

MediaMonkey does require the use of Various, Various Artists, VA or similar value in the Album Artist field for compilations. However the Artist field remains the Artist that performed the track. You can change the node in the Collection from Artist & Album Artist to Album Artist to only show a list of Album Artists in the Media Tree and thus compilations would all be listed under the same Various Artists entry. Modifying tree nodes in the Media Tree is a Gold feature and can be done under File > Manage Collections.
lennyb8000
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:20 pm

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by lennyb8000 »

Hmm, well I'm on 4.0.6.1501, even though I just downloaded it from the main site yesterday... I'll try to upgrade, maybe that will work. Or maybe it's a computer setting? I don't know, curious.

Again, not to say that I'm not loving the program. It runs much better than iTunes and is already more usable - and the community is much more helpful, thank you again. It looks like Gold will be worth it, I'll probably be upgrading soon.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by Lowlander »

I don't think there is a setting that affects this. The only thing I can think of is that you're not letting the list load prior to selecting the file or that you're not using the Back button (go to previous view (Alt+Left)) on the Shortcuts toolbar.
psychoadept
Posts: 40
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2012 12:31 am

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by psychoadept »

I recently migrated from iTunes, too, and already registered my wish for that return-to-same-position feature. Using the back button *usually* works for me. But sometimes MM randomly forgets my history. Or if I deleted the file I had selected, it goes back to the top anyway.
Lowlander
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Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by Lowlander »

psychoadept wrote:Or if I deleted the file I had selected, it goes back to the top anyway.
As it remembers selected files this would be expected. I presume that due to the dynamic nature of the Library that using selected file is the most viable solution (ie. when going back there is no guarantee the same files will be presented).
lennyb8000
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:20 pm

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by lennyb8000 »

Well, I'm not sure what to say. It doesn't go back to the selected file for me, ever. It takes me to the very top. Which, again, isn't the end of the world.

One thing I did find that was disappointing is that, while I can group playlists together into categories in MediaMonkey (see my first post), it doesn't translate to my iPod. Of all the things, this might actually be a dealbreaker, since I mostly use just playlists and I love being able to categorize them so I'm not just scrolling through hundreds of them. Is anybody aware of a workaround for this? Maybe it's a gold feature? (I did a forum search and came up empty-handed, my guess is that this isn't a feature used by most people)
psychoadept
Posts: 40
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2012 12:31 am

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by psychoadept »

A work-around might be the ability to assign different playlists to different folders on your device, but that's not possible yet either. Should probably be requested.

I'm with you in feeling that playlist organization is a little weak - although I do like the ability to nest playlists. So I can have one playlist for songs I've listened to and decided to keep, and sublists for specific segments of that collection, theme related or mix CDs or whatever.

MM seems to expect you to use collections (a gold feature) for these purposes.

Lowlander, can you tell us whether it's possible to manually add tracks to collections? It sounds like you should at least be able to have tracks in more than one collection, since they'd be in any collection they met the criteria for. Can you have a playlist node within a collection? That would be the only way for collections to replicate what I do with my playlists.

Those features wouldn't solve the problem of organizing playlists on a device, though.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Newbie questions: Playlists, "music" tab

Post by Lowlander »

Support for nested Playlists on iOS has been entered: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5371

Note that in terms of how tracks are added to an Auto-Playlist and Collection works the same. The main difference between the 2 is that a Collection has standard sub-nodes and an Auto-Playlist is just a list of files. Collections and Auto-Playlists both can reference other Playlists (Static or Auto).

Both Collections and Auto-Playlists are criteria based and thus you can't add individual tracks to them. However as both can reference a Static Playlist (to which you can manually add files) you can still manually add files to an Auto-Playlist or Collection (via the Static Playlist).

As Collections are criteria based a single file could be in many Collections (as long as it meets the criteria) or could be in none (other than Entire Library which always includes all the files in the Library).
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