Re-order folders in Mezzmo Library

[Gus]

Just a small thing really, I use the Add Folder feature to access physical folders on my local disks. It would be good to be able to re-order these and change the way they are shown to my TV.

Currently they are displayed in the order they were added. This is fine at the start since i can add the folders in the correct order, but later when i add new folders they will be added at the end of the list.

No rush

Cheers

Gus

[Paul]

Nice idea, Gus. A few users have also requested it and we'll certainly add it into a future version of Mezzmo.

[LRC]

Did this feature ever make it into Mezzmo? ie: Is there any way to change the ordering of top-level items (Music, Videos, Photos, added-folders, added-playlists) in the Library tree displayed on the left-side? Would be great if we could just drag and drop to change the ordering.

[Peter]

Hi,
in Mezzmo 5 you can change the sort order of the folders/playlists by changing the sort order in the parent playlist's properties. The playlists/folders are sorted alphabetically so you can change between ascending and descending only, to change the order of your playlists/folders you can rename them to add a number to the start of the name:

1. Music
2. Photos
3. Video

Then Mezzmo will list them in this order.

[LRC]

The sorting by preset list of sorting options is generally OK, and there are plenty of sort options to choose from, but it would be very very nice if an arbitrary sort order was supported, where the user could simply drag and drop through the GUI to change the order (just like in WMP). This includes the top-level items in the library tree and also items within playlists.

For example, I'm finding impossible to create a properly sorted playlist of songs from a double album, where the song media files are separated into two sub-folders based on which disc they come from.

Here's a simplified example of the problem:

Located in folder M:\music\artist\double_album1
1.album1song1.mp3 (title in the properties is the same except no mp3 extension)
2.album1song2.mp3 (title in the properties is the same except no mp3 extension)
3.album1song3.mp3 (title in the properties is the same except no mp3 extension)

Located in folder M:\music\artist\double_album2
1.album2song1.mp3 (title in the properties is the same except no mp3 extension)
2.album2song2.mp3 (title in the properties is the same except no mp3 extension)
3.album2song3.mp3 (title in the properties is the same except no mp3 extension)
4.album2song4.mp3 (title in the properties is the same except no mp3 extension)

Track numbers in each file's properties match the prefix number of each file.

OK, I want to put these all into one playlist so I can play the entire double album. And I want the playlist to play all songs in the order they appear on the albums (same as order listed above).

So I create a playlist then drag and drop the individual files into the playlist, first the files from from double_album1 then from double_album2.

If I sort by title things are wrong: first song is #1 from album1 and second song is #1 from album2, etc.

If I use the "sort by most recently added" it should work, and indeed in this case all the songs from the first album show up first and in the correct order. But when I then add the songs from the second album, they do not show up in the playlist in the order added, even if I tediously add them one by one. There seems to be a semi-random shuffle in the order of the second album songs even when sorted by most recently added and adding them one by one - this might be a Mezzmo bug.

By the way: I wish there was a way to disable the confirmation dialog box which pops up every time after I drag and drop a file to add it to a playlist - very extremely annoying when adding files to a playlist one by one (such as creating a playlist of favorite songs from among many different albums). Is there any way to get rid of that confirmation dialog? There is no checkbox to "not show this again"...

Anyway I do understand that I could rename the files and/or titles to force a sort order, but I already have playlists with these songs set up in another media player so changing the filenames or titles would screw up that other playlist. I should be able to set the playlist order in Mezzmo without having to patch filenames one by one and then go fix playlists in other players as a result.

Bottom line, I'd like to request as a new feature to arbitrarily sort playlists through drag and drop of files into different positions within the playlist. Just like one can do in Windows Media Player playlists... And I'd like to request a way to disable the confirmation pop-up when adding files into playlists.

Thanks!

[LRC]

By the way, I just found that for my particular example (just above) changing the sort specification to: Album / Series (Ascending) achieves the sort order I want. It wasn't at first obvious to me that "series" was equivalent to "track number" for music playlists.

However my suggestion for an arbitrary sort order, set through GUI drag and drop, still stands. I should be able to set the playlist order exactly how I want it to be, not how the software wants it to be based on a finite set of pre-defined rules.

And my suggestion for an option to get rid of the confirmation pop up when adding files to a playlist also stands, makes it much more tedious to create random playlists of favorites.

Thanks!

[Paul]

Understand. We do have manual ordering of items in playlists on our development task list. We'll bump it up the list with a higher priority. We'll also consider adding a "Do not show again" checkbox to the confirmation dialog.

Just to clarify:


"Album / Series" will sort your music by album
"Track / Episode" will sort your music by track
"Disc / Season" will sort your music by disc number
"Artist / Actor" will sort your music by artist
"Album Artist" will sort your music by album artist

[TheAndyMac]

It would be great if you allowed multiple levels of sort (say up to 6 levels, on any playlist type) in a similar way as you allow multiple levels of grouping in the Smart Playlists.

With this approach you could then easily do, for example, sort by:
* Album Artist
* Year
* Album
* Disk Number
* Track Number

An intermediate option would be adding the ability to create "custom sort" combination options (using the same thinking as above) which you could use in the sort option for the playlist - and would make it easily usable for multiple playlists.

This level of control would get around most use cases where manual sorting is needed (but manual sort would also be really useful).

[Peter]

Hi,
thanks for the suggestion, Mezzmo uses an sqlite database so multiple sorting orders are possible when creating an sql select statement. We will add support for this to the user interface for a future update. Your idea for the custom sort creation might make this easier to implement so we will consider this when adding this feature.

[gpafford]

Peter, on 10/20/2016, 05:54 PM, said "...Mezzmo uses an sqlite database so multiple sorting orders are possible when creating an sql select statement. We will add support for this to the user interface for a future update. Your idea for the custom sort creation might make this easier to implement so we will consider this when adding this feature."

I'd like to second the request for an additional field in each playlist so one can order songs in any order desired. I'm thinking of a "favorites" playlist that contains songs from many albums/folders. Adding a "manual sort" field would allow the user to control the order of songs within the playlist.

[Peter]

Hi,
the manual sort is a bit different to the sqlite sort where you can sort on multiple fields. If you want to sort the files manually you can use an existing field such as the Tagline which is not used for music and put a value in there then select to sort the playlist by Tagline and that will give you the order you want. So the Tagline would have 1 for the first song and 2 for the second and so on.

[Olli-Pekka Isola]

Hi,

I support the idea of multi-level sort criteria (or custom hierarchical sort criteria) presented by TheAndyMac.

I have multi-CD albums where files (tracks) are in separate folders like CD1, CD2, CD3, and so on... Track numbering starts from 1 in each folder. Sorting based on title does not work, nor sorting based on track numbers or filenames. In such case the only viable solution is to sort by disc number and then by track number.

The quickest way to implement such custom sort criteria would be the addition of "custom criteria.." entry to the end (or to the beginning) of list of sort fields. The application should bring up a customization dialog if the user selects "custom criteria..." entry from the sorting drop down control. Of course, there are other ways (visually more descriptive) to implement the same thing.

I hope that this feature in one or other form will cut its way to a new version.


Kind regards,
Olli-Pekka

[Paul]

Many thanks for your thoughts. We'll certainly consider it along with the other suggestions we have from users.

[Lupus]

Hi

Currently, Mezzmo sorts the playlist alphabetically, unfortunately it is not very convenient for me. I would like to be able to set my own playlist order on the tree. Currently, to set my own order, I have to enter the numbers at the beginning of the Playlist name. Unfortunately, this does not look good on the Playlist tree. Please add the option to set your own order on the Playlist tree (it can be drag and drop).

1101

[Paul]

Thanks for letting us know, Lupus. We have this issue logged in our development list and we will add this capability into Mezzmo. Right now, we are working on a new set of features for the upcoming version of Mezzmo. We may consider your suggestion for a subsequent version of Mezzmo.