Request: 11 ML enhancements

[Lich]

Here’s some thoughts about possible ML enhancements. As always, I’m trying to pull my lame English by illustrations’ lever:)

1. New Tree View grouping: by Bitrate, Format and Filesize. Why? It can help to find low-quality or damaged tracks and re-encode them first. Also it is just funny to analyze bitrate statistics:) Any group can be customized (for example, what files should be named ‘Small’ (from 0 to 1Mb), ‘Medium’ (from 1Mb to 10Mb), and ‘Big’ (bigger than 10Mb)). Name of group can also be changed (‘Small’ --> ‘Microscopic’), and new groups can be created (‘Huge’ for tracks bigger than 25Mb, for example).
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/bitrate_grouping.gif

2. Ability to show Album names in Tree View in YEAR – ALBUM form (1997 – Strike the Ground) and sort it by YEAR.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/year_sort.gif

3. New optional columns in all Views: Average Bitrate and File Size/Folder Size. Why? It’s cool to see all information in the left pane, without selecting tracks/albums and looking in the right pane. Folder Size (size of Album folder especially) is helpful for estimating how much music can you send to media device (for example: flash media player). Also there’s still some old portable media players what can’t play music with high bitrate.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/new_columns.gif

4. Little triangle in column’s header, indicating by which criterion data is sorted and in which direction. It’s good practice:) If there will be multiple criteria sorting, colored triangle can be used (from red(cycle1) through yellow (cycle2) to green(cycle3):)) Yeah, this last is madness:)
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/triangle.gif

5. Double-clicking on green horizontal line (it separates Playlists and Devices from main Library) maximizes or minimizes one or another half of Media Library.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/min_max.gif

[Lich]

6. “Send to [device]” item in right-click menu. Can be cool for dudes who hate Drag’n’Drop.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/sent_to.gif

7. Color-indicating of Artist, Album and Track what is now playing. And (maybe) in different color – what Artists/Albums/Tracks are loaded into current playlist.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/now_playing.gif

8: iShuffler style of Rating menu:
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/rate.gif

9. What’s up with video files? Why they can’t be seen in ML? Just imagine: parse video file name as ARTIST – TRACK, then find appropriate Artist, create virtual folder named “Videos” and place video there. Files with names what cannot be parsed going into [Unknown Videos]. There can be popup (tool tip) telling user how to rename his video files for ML parsing them correctly.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/videos.gif

10. Why Byte Size field shows size in Megabytes? I think internal QMP calculations should be in Bytes (I believe they already are:), because it can be useful for exporting album sizes, but field name rather be shortened to Size.

11. Fast keyboard search based on word’s first characters. Just hit them quickly and QMP will scroll Artists list to corresponding item. See how this feature works in Windows Explorer.
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/img/l/lich_d_w/gektor/legenda.gif

While this text was in sketches, ‘Open source folder’ was implemented as ‘Locate file on Disk’, and I’ve found what dragging Artist from one Genre to another re-tags it… Really glad to see how thoughts flows parallel:)

Also I want to request data exporting abilities, but it is a very BIG theme. Later!:)

[dd01]

Great ideas man!
I like that Year-Album sorting.
And yes, the search engine must have some rewritten code.
Only Paul :) can decide if some of those enhancements will be implemented.

[Paul]

Excellent work Lich. Some great ideas.

A few of those extended ideas I've been planning (send-to menu, rating menu, column sort indicator, currently playing indicator). The extended treeview ideas are excellent and will certainly be available in future versions. The reason I'm sure of this is that the ML supports pane-1 (upper left) "view" plugins. With that we can implement any organization structure we can dream up.

#11 should already work, it's a bug that it doesn't.

Again, great post. I look forward to when all of the above is available.

[Lich]

Only Paul
Of course. In Paul we trust!;)
Excellent work Lich. Some great ideas.

A few of those extended ideas I've been planning (send-to menu, rating menu, column sort indicator, currently playing indicator). The extended treeview ideas are excellent and will certainly be available in future versions. The reason I'm sure of this is that the ML supports pane-1 (upper left) "view" plugins. With that we can implement any organization structure we can dream up.

#11 should already work, it's a bug that it doesn't.

Again, great post. I look forward to when all of the above is available.
Oh! Thanks!

[B.E.L.B.H.D.]

I like the idea of the "send to device". What is the status of device support? Far off?

[o2xygen]

Excellent ideas
The triangle idea is essential... And the "now playing" with different color will be useful...

[Willow of Oz]

Killer work there, Lich, on the mock-ups.

On the triangle idea, my preference would be for a one-two-three triangle approach rather than single triangle by colour. That way you don't have to remember that red is the primary sorting column, etc.

../\ ..................... \/ \/ ....
Artist .... Album .... Year ....


Representing ascending artist sorting followed by descending year sorting.

[thor]

I'm totally agree. Ordering by Year - Album in treeview is absolutelly needed. I was thinking exactly in the same improvement, but this excellent Lich's report is unbeatable.

[BALTY]

I like the idea of the "send to device". What is the status of device support? Far off?
Yes, me too.
Hey, Very well thought, and displayed out!
May I add something to the wishlist? This has bugged me forever.
If I have my player and playlist up. Then browse out to get songs through explorer (I'm a drag and dropper). And I accidently double click on a song... it plays it, and my original playlist is gone.
SORRY... The Original Question was: Can it be set up to ask if you'd like to save the original list before playing the new (If changes were made of course)? THANKS TO PAUL- HE ANSWERED THIS HERE http://www.quinnware.com/forum/showthread.php?p=37641#post37641

Thanks,
I'll hang up now, and listen to your response~ :ditsy:

[Lich]

Thanks for "added ML - header sort column bitmap in ML skins", Paul!
But this little triangle is placed wrong (incorrectly, misproperly:)) - it shows UP when tracks are in 0-9 order, and shows DOWN when they are 9-0. Same for alphabetical sorting.

[Lich]

1. Came true.
2. Came true.
4. Came true.
5. Came true.
8. Came true.
9. More than expected:)
11. Came true!
--
ML rules! Paul, Matt, Ben - your health!!
:wine:

[Paul]

1. Came true.
2. Came true.
4. Came true.
5. Came true.
8. Came true.
9. More than expected:)
11. Came true!
--
ML rules! Paul, Matt, Ben - your health!!
:wine:
To give you some credit Lich, I actually bookmarked this thread when I was putting together the Audio TreeView plugin.

[Lich]

That will be my favorite plugin:)

[idefiXX]

is it possible to add something for b106 ??
I am missing only one feature which is (for me) very useful when i am using iTunes - the 'recently added' feature...
just a thought, but great work with the media library paul and ben ! :cyclops:

[lynott]

# 4. Little triangle in column’s header, indicating by which criterion data is sorted and in which direction. It’s good practice:) If there will be multiple criteria sorting, colored triangle can be used (from red(cycle1) through yellow (cycle2) to green(cycle3):)) Yeah, this last is madness:)
--------------------------------------------------------
The triangle is there for shure, but there's still just one sorting criteria (artist asc or desc, year asc or desc and so on)

[Paul]

is it possible to add something for b106 ??
I am missing only one feature which is (for me) very useful when i am using iTunes - the 'recently added' feature...
just a thought, but great work with the media library paul and ben ! :cyclops:
To find recently added, create an 'autoplaylist' (see Gracenote Playlists in lower left pane).

[Lich]

#11 seems to be broken in b110.

[SliderJeff]

Hey guys,

First of all, thanks to Paul for a completely kick-butt app.

Now onto the question... did I just miss it, or is there an "auto sort on load" feature that exists somewhere within the preferences. I've been looking for that sucker since about a year and a half ago. Could be that I am just blind as a bat. :calm:

Thanks,
Jeff