Grouping Music in Directories

by **Robertsonland** on Sat Jan 14, 2006 4:12 pm

Hi, I've been looking all over for an answer to this and search returns nothing as well as going back over old posts. I looked through the docs and nothing spelled out how to do this.

We keep our CDs grouped by let's say Genre (Rock, Childrens, Christmas) etc. Under each of those directories we'll possibly group further but not all the time. The Music portion of XLobby always throws all CDs on the screen regardless of where they lie in the directory structure. I was hoping to get it to behave a bit more like the movie section. In movies if I put a directory Comedy and then movies under it, when I load movies in XLobby I get a "button" to push to go into the comedy directory. Is there a way to do this with music as well? If someone knows where I can find an answer to this or if I need to modify the music xml and can possibly point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.

Lance

by **Colby** on Sat Jan 14, 2006 4:47 pm

Im not for sure, but cant you import your music with a genre>artist>album structure or a directory structure?

Delete or rename (backup) your music db xml.

F2
Set your path to import your music. Click the database page>import tab. Here is you template. Choose music, then your import type. Views radio buttons at the bottom.

Give it a try.
Good Luck

by **Robertsonland** on Sat Jan 14, 2006 5:16 pm

That is how I do it for Movies but Music doesn't import the same way. I can do it manually in the xml I think after I've done all imports. I go in and wrap another <item> tag with the genre name of type folder and it seems to behave normally when I do it that way. I was just hoping it would import them the same way it does movies and keep the directory as an entry in the db but it seems to not do that.

Thanks.

by **Robertsonland** on Sat Jan 14, 2006 5:34 pm

Well I did find one problem when doing music this way and it does the same thing in movies as well, when I go into a directory of other music or movies and click on menu, when I return to Music or Movies I am only in that same directory with no way to go "up to the top" and work my way back down again. I'll have to look at the events I guess to see if there is a way around this as I would like to start at the "top" directory every time I enter into the music or movie area.

Edit: (Wasn't thinking about the "up" one directory button. That works just fine so this will work for music by manually editing the files)

Lance

by **Colby** on Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:17 pm

I would suggest not manually editing anything. You can create a page event that will take you up to the top of your category, so as you enter the page, It would always be top level.

Why are you wasting time sorting your music by genre in windows, only to have to edit the xml again? Seems like a double waste of time. Let Xlobby filter the genre and organize your files by album/artist. I mean that would be a lot simpler to set up when you add additional music files. Editing the xml could be unstable too.

by **Robertsonland** on Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:13 pm

Well my 4 year old navigates this on his install of XLobby (We have the kids music and Christmas music on his PC's version of XLobby and we have the Kids, Christmas, Rock, Pop etc on the HTPC version of XLobby) and I have to give him a way to get to his music. Not sure what you mean by letting Xlobby filter the genre. I guess I'm still too new to XLobby. I was just wanting it to import like Movies but now that I think of it that wouldn't be nice either as you would get a grouping by artist then as well which I wouldn't want.

When my wife uses it she just wants to go into Music and see "Kids", "Christmas", "Rock", "Pop" etc on the screen to get into the CD genre she wants then pick the CD from there not have to search through a couple hundred CDs or have to go down to the PC and type in the CD search to find a CD. I'll play around with it more to see if there is a way to do what I want with the base import.

Thanks,

Lance

by **Colby** on Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:55 pm

Making filters isnt that hard. You should have no problem sorting your category with the touch of a button. You could even make a rolling button that sorts through the genres you specify. So you click one button and your music is sorted.

by **Colby** on Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:32 am

I had another thought tonight. You could import different genre directories as different databases. Then create a button to change to the appropriate database. This way your windows directories are still intact, but you can filter out the kids music.

by **rembetis** on Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:39 pm

Colby wrote:I had another thought tonight. You could import different genre directories as different databases. Then create a button to change to the appropriate database. This way your windows directories are still intact, but you can filter out the kids music.

This is what I do for my kids music, and all my genres actually (though my default is an "all music" category). Bit of a bit to do separate imports for different databases, but makes it easy to go straight to the kids music. FWIW...