Tab for sorting by date added & Custom Library Folder structure Options

[pietz]

good morning,

im currently trying to find a program to replace Songbird 1.9, which is kinda outdated but featured a few things that arent possible in the latest version. on the way i tried Helium Music Manager, which was pretty good at first but then messed up quite a few things. so now i want to try the most functional program were you can control everything manually and foobar sounded like the way to go.

Im looking for two things in foobar that i cant hep to find. i did search the forum and google for answers, but the answers in other threads dont lead me anywhere, so here i go and ask myself:

1. How can i add a Tab (like Artist/Title/Album/Duration) to the library that sorts my music by the date i added them to the library. this is something really basic and i believe many people want to arrange their music here and then, so they see their last added tracks on top. i read a few threads about "%added" and "date_added%", so i right-clicked the tab bar->columns->more and then created a custom column with the name: "Date Added" and the pattern: %added% (also tried %date_added%). this doesnt work and only gives me questionmarks in the specific column. another thread answer said something about going to library->search and then a few other steps, but i cant even click the "Search" button, since its grayed out.

2. the second big thing is the reason i stayed with songbird 1.9. i listen to a lot of electronic music and one day noticed that "Albums" are really irrelevant to me. thats why i like to keep my music library folder in a different structure: Library/Artist/Title.mp3. i did read something about "file operations" but maybe because im new to foobar, i just couldnt understand it. i want all the music that i add by hand to foobar to move to my library with my own folder structure. any solutions for this?

and if someone has a link for a guide to change the ui elements it would be highly appreciated too. once im used to how foobar works it might be great, but right now it comes with a lot of questions...

big thanks in advance

[Daeron]

The N/As are probably there due the reason that most of your files were added to your Library before the Playback Statistics component was installed. So technically speaking they weren't added at all, at least from the component's perspective (I am wildly guessing at this point, though). You can try re-adding all your files or rescanning your Library to write %added% tags, if they don't have one yet (N/A).

The previously mentioned autoplaylist does exactly what you want. Using a query like 'ALL SORT DESCENDING BY %added%' will list everything located in your Library in a single playlist with the most recently added tracks on top, updated automatically whenever something changes.

If you want to see the value of the '%added%' tags, go to 'Preferences/Display/Default UI/Playlist View'. Give a name to your custom column and use the code: '%added%'. Then close the preferences window and as I remember you have to right-click on the header of your Playlist viewer to select and activate your new column. I haven't used the Default UI in ages, but it should be pretty straightforward.

Edit: You might want to clarify what you mean as 'I want to have my Library as a list' by the way. Because the way you worded I assumed you were talking about a single, huge playlist. But I have a feeling you were rather referring to something like a tree view of your Library's folder structure, which is handled by a Library viewer, not a Playlist viewer.

As for adding files to your Library, that's what the File Operations component is for. It will never add files to your Library without any user input by design. However everything is very straightforward, you only have to select the files you want to add and choose a pre-defined pattern for the directory structure/file naming scheme (both of them are highly customizable via foobar's own titleformatting).

This post has been edited by Daeron: Oct 10 2012, 09:29