JRiver tips and techniques: user experiences repository

[Jim Sylva]

Does anyone know how to remove a missing location from the library of MC18?

I attached an external HDD with music files to my computer for half an hour, MC18 scanned it and now these files appear in the library although the HDD is no longer there.

Here's a link to a discussion on J. River's website that may help you resolve your problem:

Refresh Library: Check For Deleted Files...?

[Jim Sylva]

I have over 1,000 album listings in my JRMC database. I bought my first LP in 1962 and have subsequently been oriented toward playing complete albums, not individual tracks. When I sit down to listen to music, I often do not have a specific album in mind, but usually have some notion as to what genre I feel like exploring. However, I have noticed only a relatively small percentage of the 1,000+ albums come to mind, and they tend to be the same ones at every listening session. Therefore, I have created a series of smartlists to help counter this myopic thinking. The following smartlist example meets my criterion of being album-centric, i.e., not oriented towards individual tracks. For me, satisfying this condition is especially important within the genre of classical music.

 

Here is one example which selects for classical albums composed by Johannes Brahms and not played within the last 20 days. All tracks on a specific album will be grouped together, with tracks sorted in ascending numerical order.

 

Please note: All tracks within an album will be listed every time the smartlist is evoked until all tracks have been played within the last 20 days. I am using a 22" monitor as a display.

 

[Media Type]=[Audio] +[Genre]=[Classical] +[Composer]=[Johannes Brahms] [Last Played]=>21d [Complete Album]=1 ~a

Here are definitions of the keyword 'complete album' and the modifier '~a'

 

[Complete Album]=1

returns complete albums

 

[Complete Album]=0

returns incomplete albums

 

~a

Expands the track selection to include all tracks from the selected albums.

Note: A complete album has sequentially numbered tracks, from 1 to N.

 

For more information, see Smartlist and Search - Rules and Modifiers

[Jim Sylva]

I have over 1,000 album listings in my JRMC database. I bought my first LP in 1962 and have subsequently been oriented toward playing complete albums, not individual tracks. When I sit down to listen to music, I often do not have a specific album in mind, but usually have some notion as to what genre I feel like exploring. However, I have noticed only a relatively small percentage of the 1,000+ albums come to mind, and they tend to be the same ones at every listening session. Therefore, I have created a series of smartlists to help counter this myopic thinking. The following smartlist example meets my criterion of being album-centric, i.e., not oriented towards individual tracks. For me, satisfying this condition is especially important within the genre of classical music.

 

Here is one example which selects for classical albums composed by Johannes Brahms and not played within the last 20 days. All tracks on a specific album will be grouped together, with tracks sorted in ascending numerical order.

 

Please note: All tracks within an album will be listed every time the smartlist is evoked until all tracks have been played within the last 20 days. I am using a 22" monitor as a display.

 

[Media Type]=[Audio] +[Genre]=[Classical] +[Composer]=[Johannes Brahms] [Last Played]=>21d [Complete Album]=1 ~a

Here are definitions of the keyword 'complete album' and the modifier '~a'

 

[Complete Album]=1

returns complete albums

 

[Complete Album]=0

returns incomplete albums

 

~a

Expands the track selection to include all tracks from the selected albums.

Note: A complete album has sequentially numbered tracks, from 1 to N.

 

For more information, see Smartlist and Search - Rules and Modifiers

 

This note is an addendum to item #11 of this thread, as quoted above.

 

If the filtered list of tracks does not display an album header, this grouping can be accomplished by right clicking on the top menu bar (above the track listings and immediately below the moving track time bar), mousing over "Group By", then clicking on "Album."

[Jim Sylva]

Does anyone know whether a smartlist can be evoked from within a pane? If so, can you explain how to implement it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jim Sylva]

If you want to see smartlists in panes then go to panes view, right click on the pane of choice, click the "edit" pulldown, choose playlist group then choose smartlists. Is that what you meant, though? By the way, same can be done when you create a new view.

Thanks, Ted. Your instructions worked flawlessly, but my question lacked needed detail.

 

I have a pane of Type=Library Field and the field specified is Genre, which includes Classical. I would like to evoke a smartlist when clicking on the genre Classical, which would expand the selection to include Period subdivisions. I doubt if this is possible, but J. River is so configurable, I don't know.

[Jim Sylva]

How about just creating a classical view (panes style) with periods, artists and albums as panes, and with a rule that basically is "genre is classical" or pick multiple classical-like genres like chamber, etc.

 

Sorry but I have like no Period tags.

Good idea. Your smartlist in a pane solution would work too. Would one method be preferable for use with JRemote?

 

Another question: Is there a way of calculating the number of tracks composed by each composer in a library, and subsequently using the count to limit a list of composers to those that dominate the library?

[Jim Sylva]

For Jremote, custom views are simple to import (see video tutorial or just this)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10726[/ATTACH]

 

I'm sure there is a way to do the composer thing. I'd make a simple view that had composer and track as two of the panes. Then list the composers number of tracks (probably a rule). That may take some thinking. Seems a bit over-engineered though....no offense. Why do that?

 

I really appreciate all your help and timely responses. I understand the over-engineering notion. I have been adding the Period field and a Uniform Composer Name field for Classical composers based on the U.S. Library of Congress Name Authority field. The Uniform Composer Name field's significance is, for instance, reflected by the personal name variations one finds for Russian composers, and any name using diacritics. It's been a very tedious and time-consuming process. This task has revealed that about 25% of the classical composers in my library are responsible for over 90% of the tracks, and about 2/3 of the composers penned one track only. With nearly two hundred classical composers in the library, I would be needlessly overwhelmed if all were listed. Ironically, I find myself complicating things in order to simplify.

 

As a classical music neophyte, this project was conceived as a pedagogical tool to help me get a feel for the timeline and development of classical music and its composers.

[Jim Sylva]

Ahh..now i understand. Let me mull it over (composer and track count).

 

Thanks Ted.

[Jim Sylva]

Got it (although composer field will show all spellings, so Rachmaninoff and Rachmaninov will each have track counts):

* create new view, empty view (you can delete this view once your tagging project is done)

* make it a pane view

* add composer and name (track)

* for composer, sort by number of files (pulldown)

 

The number of tracks shows as each composer is highlighted, and the composers are sorted highest track numbers to lowest.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10727[/ATTACH]

The field I created named "Uniform Composer" resolves the issue of separate track counts, since its value will be "Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 1873-1943" for both the Rachmaninoff and Rachmaninov "Composer" value records, and "Uniform Composer" will be used instead of the Composer field when performing operations. The problem I have is I don't want to sort by "Number of Files." I want to sort on the "Uniform Composer" field, but only list the composers with "x or more" number of files (tracks). I thought using a rule within my smartlist involving "Number of Tracks" would give me what I wanted, but it did not. So much fun.

 

I have really benefited from all your help and you showed me there are many ways to "skin a cat" in JRMC.

 

By the way, my wife teaches third grade, and a couple of years ago she used the term "skin a cat" in the classroom, and the students without exception reacted with expressions of horror.

[Jim Sylva]

Jim,

 

The view I showed you was not intended to be a daily use view, but simply one where you could begin to identify those lesser composers.

 

Since your new field (Uniform Composer) works, then simply decide what is the lowest number of tracks you are willing to deal with and then highlight all the composers below that number (say "20") and remove those files from the library (not permanently from the hard drive, of course, just this library). Then once that is done, your pruning of lesser composers is done and set your "Uniform Composer" field sort option back to alphabetical (or whatever).

 

Of course! I misunderstood its purpose.

 

I added my smartlist as a pane, and it is much more convenient to access.

 

Thank you for starting this thread, and your willingness to share your expertise here and via your videos. Given the degree to which one can configure JRMC, the application warrants its own thread.

[Jim Sylva]

I wanted to share a new technique for browsing multi-composer albums that has been a huge improvement in how I browse my classical collection. BIG THANKS TO MrC at JRiver, who developed this solution and many other incredibly useful tools!

 

So, we all know the importance of having each track tagged with its respective composer. But, that means when we browse by composer and browse to "Brahms, Johannes" we end up narrowing down our collections exclusively to tracks by Brahms. So, we may end up seeing only tracks 1-3 of our "Brahms/Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos (Heifetz/Reiner)" album. But what about the rest of the album? Of course, you can do a "Library Tools>Locate>Album" in JRiver Media Center, or in JRemote you can fairly easily pull up the rest of the album with a few clicks. But, it's really nice to be able to browse by composer in a way that preserves albums in their original sequence without additional steps. It promotes rediscovering works which you may not have thought to search for deliberately, but the producer or artist deemed worthwhile additions to their album!

 

Here's how to do it: (If anyone has developed other ways of achieving the same goal I'm sure we'd all love to hear about it)

*First things first: before you can execute this, you must have each individual track tagged with its composer.

 

1. You'll want to make sure that each track title ("[name]") has the composer's last name added to it as a prefix. This is important because you'll be viewing an entire album and you'll need to be able to see the difference between "Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major..." and "Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major..." in the track names themselves. IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A SYSTEM FOR ADDING COMPOSER NAME TO THE TRACK TITLE, SKIP THIS STEP.

• Go to Tools>Options>Library & Folders>Manage Library Fields>Add New Fields and build yourself a new field. Call it "Name with Composer." Flag it for Audio (or whatever other media you want it to apply to). Under Data, click "Calculated Data" and paste the following expression:
  

ifelse(!regex([Name], ^listitem([composer], 0, /,)), listitem([Composer], 0, /,) )[name]

 

This expression will not change a track name that already has the composer's last name as the first word of the title, as that would be redundant.

 

• Select/highlight all the tracks you wish to rename with the composer name added (start with one album). Right click the selected tracks and hit Library tools>Move/Copy Fields>Source: "Name with Composer", Destination: "Name", Action: "Copy (Leaves Source)". OK, check.
  

 

2. Follow the same steps as before (first bullet point above) to create a new field called "Composers (Album)"

• Again, make it a calculated data field using this expression:
  

=load(composers_[album])&datatype=

 
3. Now, right click on the "Audio" node (in the left column that displays all your views) and select "customize view."

• Under "Included Files" hit "Set rules for file display", press the Import / Export button and add (via copy/paste) the following:
  

[=1save(,composers_[album])]=1 [=1save(listcombine(load(composers_[album]), [composer]), composers_[album])]=1

 

 

 

• Hit Ok, and go ahead and select "overwrite" (you did back up your library before you started this, right?)
  

4. Now just replace the "Composer" field with "Composers (Album)" everywhere you browse by composer (including in your custom view in the JRemote app) and go back to enjoying full albums!

 

IMPORTANT: The calculated values in your new "Composers (Album)" field will only be valid after you've visited the "Audio" node upon each instance of opening JRiver Media Center. Lest you forget to do so, it's a good idea to go to Tools>Options>Startup and select "Location: Audio" under "Startup Interface."

 

*Also, as always, make sure to back up your library before you get under the hood like this!

 

Finally, shameless self-promotion alert: Ari at Golden Ear Digital (hey, that's me!) does this and more professionally and would love to help you with your music library. Please visit Golden Ear Digital - Home for more info!

 

Post #73 of this thread is another approach to the same or similar concern.

[Jim Sylva]

Is it possible to add/create a smartlist within a pane? It appears only field names can be used in a pane.

 

I am using v. 20.0.62 on a Windows 7 machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jim Sylva]

Yes. Create a view, like empty (audio, right click, create a view, pick empty), then set it as panes, then pick smartlist as your first pane (and add others, of course)

Thanks for the timely reply. Very simple, ONCE someone explains it.

 

I have another question. Is it possible to create nested Smartlists?

 

I have nested Playlist Groups and then added multiple independent Smartlists as the final "pseudo-descendants" of the hierarchy, which gives the appearance of being a nested Smartlist, but is not.

 

I would like to be able to nest Smartlists which display as a hierarchical tree, with each level of Smartlist inheriting the properties of its ancestors. This would greatly simplify the construction of each sibling of the last ancestor. Is this possible?

[Jim Sylva]

Jim,

I would post that on JRiver interact. It would take too long here for you to educate me (maybe not others), describe and define siblings, ancestors, give examples, etc. A screenshot would help, but I'm sure the JRIver guys will know what you mean easier.

Thanks, Ted. I will give JRiver Interact a try.

[Jim Sylva]

Deleted: Posted twice by mistake.