Magic Nodes 1.3b (IS OUTDATED SEE NOTE IN FIRST POST)

nojac · Post by **nojac** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:25 pm

ZvezdanD wrote:
Sorry, problem is not in connection with some experience, but with my lack of English language. I thought that you want:
- AlbumArtists MN
--- AlbumArtist1
----- Album1
----- Album2
----- ...
--- AlbumArtist2
----- Album1
----- ...

Yes, that is what I want and what I already have (with year in front of each album)

But I am not able to see Album1 and Album2 before I klick on AlbumArtist1. I want to expand the whole node so I can see every album of all the AlbumArtists without having to kllick on each of them.

emalvick: I tested your mask but it was "not valid".

emalvick · Post by **emalvick** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:58 pm

Why don't you try just sorting by artist (get rid of the "album artist" and just put "artist".

See if that works. Also test it out using other sort criteria, like year, to see if you can at least get a start. I'll test something out this evening and see if I can't come up with something as now you've got me intrigued.

Erik

nojac · Post by **nojac** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 4:17 pm

The question is:

Is it possible to expand a node in 2 levels at once? (Expanding via + only expands the next level)

I don't see that it is relevant whether the node is Artist or an Album Artist. I guess it is not even relevant if it is a Magic Node or a standard node (Artist) So the question should perhaps not be in this thread....

To be sure I have made myself clear: Here is a screenshot of my Album Artist node made with the mask
Album Artist MN|child of:Album\<album artist>\<album|sort by:max(year)|sort order:asc>

By nojac at 2007-07-12
It works just as I want it. But I have to klick on every artist to see their albums, I want to see the complete list of albums of every artist I have.

My main question was about adding the number of tracks after each album. I had hoped that this would be included as standard in MM3 (it is already in WinAmp) Now I guess I will have to hope for Bex to solve this problem.....

emalvick · Post by **emalvick** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:32 pm

Your big problem is probably that you are trying to sort by more than one criteria? You can't include the year if you are trying to include the album artists with node. MN is only capable of sorting by one criteria at any one level. Since you are really only looking for an album node organized by the artist so that each artist is shown with the albums, you are going to have to sacrifice the year sorting (you can't have both).

As for Artist or Album Artist, there is a difference, and if your albums for some reason don't have Album Artist assigned, the possible node I provided wouldn't necessarily work or might give errors.

1. Since you have a node with the artists by year, you should create a duplicate of that node but eliminate the artist level you have. That should give you all your albums by year (without regard for the artist at this point).

2. Now edit this node and change the sort by criteria to "artist" or "album artist"... If it doesn't work, the vbs script can probably be easily modified a bit to add the functionality you want, and Bex might very well help you with that.

Now in terms of expanding all your nodes at once, I believe you can right click on any root node and there is an option to expand all (as well as an option to contract it all). I don't think you can do much else in that regard.

Erik

p.s. check out http://magicnodes.110mb.com/magicnodes.htm. It shows the help file and the limitations of the program.

nojac · Post by **nojac** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 6:15 pm

emalvick wrote:Now in terms of expanding all your nodes at once, I believe you can right click on any root node and there is an option to expand all (as well as an option to contract it all). I don't think you can do much else in that regard.

I can not find this option. Not in MM3 and not in MM2. That's why I'm asking...

(All my tracks have Album Artist. Otherwise they would probably not show in my AlbumArtist Magic Node screenshot. And I am not trying to sort on two criteria. My Magic Node is perfect, except that I have to open each artist's subnode separately (And of course that I miss the number of tracks which I want to show after each album in the left panel, but that is a different story))

emalvick · Post by **emalvick** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:53 am

nojac wrote:I can not find this option. Not in MM3 and not in MM2. That's why I'm asking...

(All my tracks have Album Artist. Otherwise they would probably not show in my AlbumArtist Magic Node screenshot. And I am not trying to sort on two criteria. My Magic Node is perfect, except that I have to open each artist's subnode separately (And of course that I miss the number of tracks which I want to show after each album in the left panel, but that is a different story))

Ok... I was checking on the expand option, and for some reason I'm not finding it now although I thought I did yesterday.

Anyway, in MN, the option <album and year> actually does exactly what you want. If you create a node:

Node\<album and year>

You'll get a list that is sorted like this:

artist - album (year)

I tested that. I was looking at altering the code a bit to get what you were looking for since I think it is a nice idea (that I can't really implement but others probably will). I then noticed that the <album and year> node actually does exactly what you want. It just isn't intuitive by its name.

Hope this works for you.

Erik

nojac · Post by **nojac** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 12:44 pm

emalvick wrote:Ok... I was checking on the expand option, and for some reason I'm not finding it now although I thought I did yesterday.

Anyway, in MN, the option <album and year> actually does exactly what you want. If you create a node:

Node\<album and year>

You'll get a list that is sorted like this:

artist - album (year)

Hmmm , I use MM3, and your suggestion gives

artist - album (year0000)

I do not know why the 4 zeros are added after each year. I guess I shall have to read this whole monster thread to try to figure out what is happening with these Magic Nodes. MAGIC! Thank you for the suggestion!

gtbuzz · Post by **gtbuzz** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:08 pm

Nice work on Magic Nodes for MM3.

Here's the Recently Added Node for MM3:

Code: Select all

Album Artist (added)|child of:artist|SQL filter:(julianday('now','start of day') - songs.dateadded - julianday('1900-01-01'))<14|icon:top level\<album artist>\<album>

Or recently modified track:

Code: Select all

Album Artist (added)|child of:artist|SQL filter:(julianday('now','start of day') - songs.trackmodified - julianday('1900-01-01'))<7|icon:top level\<album artist>\<album>

Only problem is that my date added field does not appear to always get populated...guess I'll post that problem the beta forum.

EDIT: A minor tweak to make it behave more like MM2

ZvezdanD · Post by **ZvezdanD** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 2:39 pm

gtbuzz wrote:Only problem is that my date added field does not appear to always get populated...guess I'll post that problem the beta forum.

What do you see under Added column when you choose some node from Library branch?

BTW, how did you got a date value '1900-01-01' for your masks? I calculated that it should be '1899-12-30'. Maybe I should ask developers about this.

emalvick · Post by **emalvick** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 2:45 pm

nojac wrote: Hmmm , I use MM3, and your suggestion gives

artist - album (year0000)

I do not know why the 4 zeros are added after each year. I guess I shall have to read this whole monster thread to try to figure out what is happening with these Magic Nodes. MAGIC! Thank you for the suggestion!

Well, it looks like you are getting closer. I am guessing that the year0000 thing is some bug in the conversion of the script from MM2 to MM3. I have a feeling that is in the script itself, and you may want to contact ZvezdanD about this since he has done that conversion. It might be something related to the MM database itself, which has not been finalized yet for MM3.

As for reading the whole thread... If you've looked at the MN website along with this thread, then you've already learned a lot. I've gotten to the point, where I am trying to make my own modifications to MN to get some functions out of it like you were and in the process learned about some that weren't really documented in the thread or even on the MN website.

As you may have found out. The original MN stopped at v. 1.3b. 1.3c and 1.4 are versions developed by others with the original authors ok. I don't think anything major has really changed, but some features have been added. Anyway, you are getting close.

For me, I actually like the node structure that the <Album and Year> option gives, but I would like to eliminate the year from showing up in the node. I like having the album chronologically, but I don't need to see the year (the music tags will give me that).

Erik

ZvezdanD · Post by **ZvezdanD** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 3:10 pm

nojac wrote:artist - album (year0000)

I do not know why the 4 zeros are added after each year.

Sorry. You found a bug. :)

If you are impatient and don't want to wait for next version of this script, you could change script by yourself replacing line 148:

Code: Select all

& "|| CASE WHEN Songs.Year > 1900 THEN Songs.Year ELSE '????'" _

with:

Code: Select all

& "|| CASE WHEN CAST(substr(Songs.Year, 1, 4) AS integer) > 1900 THEN CAST(substr(Songs.Year, 1, 4) AS integer) ELSE '????'" _

nojac · Post by **nojac** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 5:21 pm

Thank you again, ZvezdanD. Now the zeros are gone!

I like that the year is visible in the node. But I would prefer it to use Album Artist instead of Artist. Now the compilation albums (Various Artists) are listed several times each.

emalvick · Post by **emalvick** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 5:41 pm

nojac wrote:Thank you again, ZvezdanD. Now the zeros are gone!

I like that the year is visible in the node. But I would prefer it to use Album Artist instead of Artist. Now the compilation albums (Various Artists) are listed several times each.

Are they listing as various artists? or are they listing as the track artists?

Erik

ZvezdanD · Post by **ZvezdanD** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 6:10 pm

I like that the year is visible in the node. But I would prefer it to use Album Artist instead of Artist. Now the compilation albums (Various Artists) are listed several times each.

Well, as I said, I am working on more general approach for this, but you should be patient. I could easily modify script to resolve your problem, but this is only patching and messing of the code, if you ask me.

Now, if you really want to know how I am imagined this, let say that I want to construct mask with arbitrarily number of fields displayed on the same level. Something like <Album Artist> - <Album> '(' <Year> ')', where user could decide an order of displayed fields and separator characters. This wouldn't be as easy as this what you want, but will be more flexible.

But, here we have more serious problem with MM 3 and multi-* fields. Some album has two or more artists - how would you want that it will be displayed? Let say, that I want to display album 'Eric Burdon Declares "War"'. It has two artists, Eric Burdon and War. So, it could be displayed with both of them with two item in the list. Currently, it is displayed as one item: Eric Burdon;War - Eric Burdon Declares "War" (1970).

If you know some better solution, please let me know.

gtbuzz · Post by **gtbuzz** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 10:26 pm

ZvezdanD wrote: What do you see under Added column when you choose some node from Library branch?

BTW, how did you got a date value '1900-01-01' for your masks? I calculated that it should be '1899-12-30'. Maybe I should ask developers about this.

Added column is blank. The database has -1 in it. It's not a magic node issue, but a MM3 issue.

As for the mask you're correct, so my computation is off. I've never used that particular epoch before, but appears you are correct for the Microsoft Excel epoch. Also probably need to convert now to localtime. Any idea why dates are stored in this format as opposed to the native sqlite date formats?

Code: Select all

Album Artist (added)|child of:artist|SQL filter:(julianday('now','start of day','localtime') - songs.dateadded - julianday('1899-12-30'))<14|icon:top level\<album artist>\<album>