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Topic: Help me break my itunes habit! (Read 2883 times) previous topic - next topic
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Help me break my itunes habit!

Hello,
I've come to this forum to try to desperately break my itunes habit. I've been using itunes for maybe 6 or 7 years now because I have an ipod and i've never ever liked the software so i've come to try foobar2000 but I have no knowledge of experience of this program.

There are a few things I am concerned about because I have developed a certain way of viewing my music library.

I like to sort my music by Artist. If the CD is a compilation CD, I name all the Artists the same and then have the album artist represent the artist of each individual song.
When I view my music by artist, id like to be able to click on an artist and view all the songs that artist has sorted into albums by year of release.

I dont use playlists at all I prefer to just use artist's and albums to navigate around my music.

Itunes had a feature which allowed me to view my artists along with a little image of an album done by the artist. I have now adapted to only using this as a way to find my music easier and that is the more important thing that itunes offers me that is holding me onto it.

is there anything I can do to encourage me to use foobar rather than stick with itunes?

Kind Regards,
Penfold

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #1 –
Everything should be doable. In particular :
  • Provided with foobar core is an Album List (foo_albumlist) which gives quick access to Media Library Content with customizable tree view
  • You may also have a look at the facets third party component which is also highly configurable and enables browsing by cover art.
  • Regarding compilations, the encouraged standard is to use the %album artist% tag and customize the library views accordingly. It seems you are doing the opposite.

You will need some basic knowledge of foobar title formatting to build your desired browsing structure, and make sure you understand the field remapping feature.

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #3 –
Quote from: penfold1992 on
If the CD is a compilation CD, I name all the Artists the same and then have the album artist represent the artist of each individual song.
That is precisely the wrong way around. I presume you do it this way so that you can quickly sort by artist, but it is semantically hideous. foobar2000 makes this simple as %album artist% will map to artist if metadata for album artist does not exist in the file.
 

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #4 –
Quote from: db1989 on
I presume you do it this way so that you can quickly sort by artist, but it is semantically hideous. foobar2000 makes this simple as %album artist% will map to artist if metadata for album artist does not exist in the file.


I do it because I can sort by artist yes but also because thats the way itunes reads it. Itunes has no way to view by album artist rather than artist unless its "Sorted by Artist" which also causes problems.
now the problem is... how to reverse all those fields around for all my music...

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #5 –
Quote from: penfold1992 on
I do it because I can sort by artist yes but also because thats the way itunes reads it. Itunes has no way to view by album artist rather than artist unless its "Sorted by Artist" which also causes problems.
What problems? Back when I had a proper library in iTunes, I sorted it by artist>year>album>track with no problems, and compilations were displayed as expected with an album artist of Various and artists filled individually.

Granted, simply finding the option to sort that way is very cryptic, and I cannot even remember how to do it now, but it is there, unless the program has gotten worse, and other problems with iTunes are a subject for elsewhere.

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #6 –
Quote from: NEMO7538 on
Everything should be doable. In particular :

  • Provided with foobar core is an Album List (foo_albumlist) which gives quick access to Media Library Content with customizable tree view
  • You may also have a look at the facets third party component which is also highly configurable and enables browsing by cover art.


I've just installed spotifoo and it has something thats I think are ok... but I'm not happy with it as it is.

I'm going to have a look into facets and see if it can offer what im looking for. I dont exactly want a cover flow of albums which is a little more tricky I guess...

I just want each artist to be represented by one single image that I can then click on to only view the songs by that artist (like going inside a folder) Is this at all possible?

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #7 –
it would be best to just start out with your own configuration, if you want to get the most out of foobar2000. in my opinion here is a good method to start:
Download, facets, simplaylist, simplaylistmanager regardless of whether you think you will or will not use playlists.

Start with a blank slate: view>layout>scratchbox. 
rightclick, add
left right splitter
left side, add container [tab]
first tab, add media library viewer [albumlist]
second tab, add media library viewer facets
third, add simplaylistmanager
any other tab - anything you want.
right side, add container[playlist tabs]
inside container, add playlist renderer - simplaylist.
Edit>apply layout
right click on somewhere in the top toolbar. select layout editing mode.
done

your now have a quite a bit of foobar2000 functionality exposed.

The context menu [right click] and Shift right click are your friends as is the edit layout button in the toolbar.

good luck

Edit: Keep in mind you can add as many splitters as you want and place any available element anywhere you want. The left side tabbed container i suggest using can have as many tabs as you want. Add a tab, insert an element you are curious about and you can check it out without changing the basic configuration. Decide you have no need for the functions / display of that element, remove it or remove the tab and it is painlessly gone.

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #8 –
Check out Slides 1.8, I browse my music the same way, you can browse by artists, a-z artists, album covers, sort by many fields.

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #9 –
Quote from: tpijag on
it would be best to just start out with your own configuration, if you want to get the most out of foobar2000.


i whole heartedly agree with this. it's not a good idea to dive in with 3rd party configurations until you have a basic understanding of how foobar really works.

the one linked above is a very poor choice considering it doesn't contain a graphical library browser of any kind and that was something that was specifically asked for. as mentioned already, foo_facets can do all of that.

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #10 –
I have to disagree, I wouldn't know half of what I did if I didn't start out using the foonight config theme from Deviant Art, the amazing thing about CUI is being able to read the splitter code, you can cut the code at certain places to figure out what it does. I learned so much doing that, the skin become like an educational real time reference to me.

I've edited that layout to death and made it my own. So yeah I think it's a good idea to start with 3rd party skins, I guess foonight was coded in a way that was easy to understand so some layouts may be a bad idea.

Although I also think it's a good idea to start from scratch, it's useful to learn the basics. Once a grip of the basics is in order you can learn a whole lot from scripts.

Help me break my itunes habit!

Reply #11 –
I think that this “learn everything from scratch and then you will see what amazing stuff this software can do” attitude is a bit counterproductive as evangelism, because the investment is quite a bit costly (assuming your time is not free). It hardly worked to promote *n*x, and only in science it works to promote TeX and friends.

What I would do if I were the OP, would be to google around for screenshots of themes (and watch out for which fb2k version they were built for!) and then download one and see if it is tweakable. If you choose to tweak, then backup often (maybe use http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=68528 )

(I am not the OP, I am still tweaking a veryveryvery simplistic  defaultUI setup for functionality rather than look: The left hand side is fully taken by a column with album list by folder structure (as I use informative folder names) and a search filter box; for the right hand side different views selectable by the top tab, but as default a topleft selection data square, topright album art, bottom playlist, where I usually focus on library selection or queue. Too many views possible, so I'll likely by time just remove those I do not use, but once I have a tab row then more tabs aren't much of a cost.)