I'm finding Facets very functional and flexible so far!

Is there a way to list multiple values from multiple fields within a single column ?

For example, I want a column that lists all the values for %artist%, %performer%, %composer%, %group%, and %album artist%, instead of just having %<artist>% or having %<artist>%, %<performer>%, etc as separate columns.

p.s. Echoing someone else earlier in the thread, pleeeeeeease make Facets filter in both directions, not just left to right!!!

I think I understand what you want. Try these two options:

1. Make a new custom column in the Facets section of the Preferences dialog, include every field that you want viewed. Something similar to below will show each field one after another in a single pane.

Name: "custom" ... or whatever you want to name it...
Pattern: "%artist% - %performer% - %composer% - %group% - %album artist%


2. Right-click a column and choose "Multiple columns" this will allow you to view columns of info in a single pane. Keeping adding as many... sub-columns as you want.

There is an undocumented feature for this purpose:

[%<artist>%]|[%performer%]|[%composer%]|and so on

Beautiful!! Thanks! You are great!

I made a new column called "Artist*":

[%<artist>%]|[%<group>%]|[%<performer>%]|[%<composer>%]|[%<album artist>%]

It works exactly as intended. I'm so happy!!!

[edit: I changed the name to "Artist++" and made another one called "Artist+" without Album Artist for cases where the glut of compilations isn't desired.]

-------------

Sketching,
Thanks for your suggestions! It's not what I had in mind, but I can imagine a scenario where it could be useful, although I think in most cases it would be more functional to simply create a new Facet for each column instead of placing all those columns as subcolumns in one Facet. It's nice to have such flexibility. One could always create new tabs for specialized alternative implementations of Facets like that, so that way we are never limited to one arrangement. At present I have 8 different Facets UIs in my theme, each containing 3-11 Facets, each containing 1 or 2 columns. With the wonderful Tabs UI none of these different instances of the Facets UI compete for screen space. They all serve different purposes.

Facets seems quite useful as is, but I noticed a small bug and have a proposition for you. I try to use it with a remote and the problem a face is that the keyboard shortcuts for moving between the columns are tab and shift+tab. This would be a lot easier for us remote controller users if you could move with just left and right keyboard buttons, since there is no other use for them anyway. Most remotes map left, right, up and down into these anyways, and it would make it easier to use with a keyboard as well since you wouldn't have press two buttons at a time to go left.

The small bug I found is, that when I create a new column it gets mapped always as the last column regarding the keyboard shortcuts. Say, I have columns 1, 2 and 3 in order, and place a new one between 1 and 2, the order will be 1, 4, 2, 3 if I move between them with the tab-button.

I love this one. Thank you very much !!!!

Hello,

is it somehow possible that, when I have a column "Album artist" that albums with no value in that field are not displayed there ? It would be great if I could do this also in the normal playlists. Standart it shows the Artist when Album Artist is empty. Thanks very much in advance

Alex

Use $meta(album artist) instead of just %album artist%

thank you very much kanak.
I'm getting more and more into this.....

There is an inconvenience when it comes to deleting a search query from the toolbar. This is what has to be done: 1. Select query 2. Go into the popup menu and choose "Remove blah blah from history. I expected that now the query will be deleted but it is still displayed and can only be deleted if following step is done: 3. Select the displayed query and delete it manually - even using the built-in delete button doesn't clear the search string.

I suggest to introduce a remove-submenu where all stored queries are listed from where they can be deleted by a simple mouseclick without being invoked before

Hi Frank, a suggestion,

I read that you won't be implementing customizable statistics.
But would it be possible to implement a Facets-only tag which refrences the value of the statistics?

Example custom column which I think would be useful:

$ifgreater(%FacetsTracksStatistic%,50,%ARTIST%,)
so any artist with less than 50 tracks total is taken off the column.

here's a little ditty i made for Facets
it moves any untagged files to an artist called "_MISSINGTAGS"
i hope itll be useful for some people.


it checks first to see if all 3 %ARTIST%, %TRACKNUMBER%, %ALBUM% tags exist
if they exist, then it will check %BAND%, then %ALBUM ARTIST% and take it as the artist value. I use %BAND% first since zune dosent recognizes album artist tag since it dosent use id3v2.4 (i think itunes dosent either). just delete the $if3() part with %ALBUM ARTIST% if you dont use %BAND% normally.

Huge thanks for expanding the list components for the new DUI. I'm completely sold on it, and this knocks one things off the list of what I need to make my UI look like what I need. Just new a lyrics panel for it, and I'll be one happy dude.

for the facet columns, is it possible to edit the rating column so it shows a number 1-5 instead of stars?

you could make a custom column with [<%rating%>]

Facets also computes ratings for albums and artists (basically every custom column available), which cannot be accessed by any sort of titleformatting. .

I Looked around and iv also tryed to do this myself but im having no luck.
I would like to sort by path, or whats in my media library..

exp:
F:\Music
F:\Cd Music
F:\Seed Music
D:\Fresh Music

Something like that.

Maybe a stupid question, sorry.

As Facets supports autoplaylists, can I create a autoplaylist with it, showing the most recently added songs/albums? I use the tag "date added" for each file, when it is added to the library. Now I would like to create a autoplaylist sorted by date added (newest first). Is that possible, or do I need autoplaylist manager for that?

McMusic, you will need the media library search wich is part of the DefaultUi (no extra component dll.file needed). That is so far the only ml viewer that lets you create autoplaylists defined by a sort string.

Thanks for your feedback. But how can I create a sorted autoplaylist? I can use the search string to define a pattern. But the ist no "sort by" field or something?

Hey, is there any chance someone could give me a little help with this code/title formating that i'd like to use with facets. here it is
$if($and(%ARTIST%, %TRACKNUMBER%, %ALBUM%),$if3(%ALBUM ARTIST%)$cut(%artist%,1),*Missing Tags*)
Now it diplays nice, however i wanted the *Missing Tags* part to be wraped with ( ) so that it turns grey instead the color of your font. Anyway i can do this with the title formatting that i modified?
Here is Frank's example: $if2(%album%,'('unknown')') <- that turns grey/opposite of your colored font. That's what i would like to have but unknown being Missing Tags, and well in my title formating thing.
I hope others like it, it's not entirely mine.
((I originally posted this in http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....1938&hl=))I deleted it there, and posted here.

Here's the code:



NOTE: $if3(%album artist%) is the same as %album artist%

thanks kanak you've been a great deal of help. That is now very close to how i want it. Now i have the Arist, and the first letter, example:
Bob DylanB, i am tryin to edit yours to allow just the First letter. Not both. In the middle of figuring it out, i'll edit this post when/if i get it, thanks.
EDIT: it works now, i moded yours with mine got, $if($and(%ARTIST%, %TRACKNUMBER%, %ALBUM%),$if3(%ALBUM ARTIST%)$cut(%artist%,1),'('*Missing Tags*')').

is vacuously true in your case because you've already checked whether the artist tag exists (remember that foobar maps artist to album artist if the album artist tag is missing).

So, simply having $cut(%artist%,1) would suffice

OR if you want to cut by album artist (Various Artists become V, and not the first letter of each track artist), you should $cut(%album artist%,1)

hi,

id love to use Facets! its simple, powerful and real fast! i have some suggestions for next releases.
first is about save configurations for columns/Facets and reload from context menu (something like 'last searches')
next is about possibility for change playlist name for Facets
...next is about shortcut for 'search' textbox focus
another is about rating statistics - is it possible to implement with Facets 'i like/i dont like' (-1/0/1) statistics? (i know i can use column for that)
and last is a little complicated its about 'real name' tag. is it possible to add special tag for 'real name' search? for example i want search 'Prince' artist (there is [%<artist>%]|[%<real name>%] settings). so, Facets will be search and display all Prince albums AND all Prince projects which has the same 'real name' tag as 'Prince' artist (Joey Coco, Alexander Nevermind etc.) it could be work for 'album artist', 'composer'... or for tags from user settings i know there could be problems with different artists who has 'prince' in his name (a lot of projects for display) but it could work only with one selected artist from Facets-list (first when multi select).

thanks

You can rename the facet playlist like any other one.



Take a look in the roadmap: that feature is in the list of undecided features



I don't understand what you mean. Try in other words what you would like to achieve.



I think the context menu is the wrong place for that. I already made some thoughts about that and will try to phrase a posting in the next days about that topic

First off, thanks for this amazing plugin.
I didn't read the whole thread so i'm sorry if the question has already been asked. I'm wondering if theres a way to limit the items facets displays to the currently selected playlist (like iTunes does)? I understand that facets uses a playlist itself but maybe there's a workaround or something? The reason is i have some pretty long playlists and finding something in them takes forever, having facets display only the contents of the selected playlist would speed up finding things.

Facet is a very flexible plugin: you can create several tabs with different facet views and you also can change that facet views quickly by context menu. However, i believe that saving facet view shemes inside of one tab could be a useful feature. In the next lines i am going to list arguments for such a feature, to enumerate what all such a feature could make possible and to show that it wouldn't bloat the preferences or menus of the Facets plugin. Although i will speak of concrete details and my bad english can provoke that, i hope very much, Frank, that you won't misunderstand the following as instruction - i had just some thoughts and ideas for further improvement and hope that some of them may inspire you.

Sure, if you are already happy with two or three views you will only need just three tabs, that's all. But if you are like me you would create a huge amount of views for different purposes: library browsing, playlist creation, looking for duplicates, - when support of album art is implemented somedays - browsing by cover art and so on.

So, the first argument for saving facet views is
1. A better organization of different views
Instead of creating for each view an own tab we could group several views that belong to one purpose inside of one tab. Also a heavy usage of the context menu could be avoided: a view can be very complex as it consists of the number of facets, the columns and the sorting of the columns. The saving of a view should happen in a userfriendly way: once a view is created one click on "save view..." (available in layout editing mode f.e) opens a window where we can store the name of the view that then could be available in a list callable by a triangle on the right(edit: left) side of toolbar (like the search filters).


Furthermore the implemanation of view shemes could also be used for
2. Creation of library subsets
wich i consider as the main reason for saving views.
I mean: the "save view..." window not only allows you to define a name for the view but also to type in a filter_query that reduces the content of the view to just a part of the library. I don't see a competition to the already existing opportunity to filter the content in toolbar for some reasons:
a) the view sheme would contain complex or large queries wheras the toolbar filters would merely refine the search with short queries and mainly b) we could in a view sheme combine a special subset with the most suitable view and sorting (for playlist interaction)

For illustration an example:
Facets: "1. Date 2. Label 3. Albums", Name: "The best albums from hip hops golden age", Query: "albumrating GREATER 3 AND genre IS Hip-Hop AND date GREATER 1986 AND date LESS 1993", Sorting: "%date% %album artist% %album%" or "default sorting (preferences/general)" (for playlist interaction), Refine search in toolbar: the saved or new filters.
(A remark: a view could remain editable by context menu but should show the saved layout when loaded again)
(Another remark: the name of the view could be displayed at beginning of toolbar and is not editable)


As a view sheme contains a query and also a sort string we would also have
3. A better organization of autoplaylists
Once a view sheme is stored you can also regard it as a preset for autoplaylists wich additionally could be refined by selection in the facets and by filtering in toolbar. As already a sorting string for playlist interaction exists you also wouldn't bother about defining a sorting for the playlist.


As you can create subsets of the database a view sheme also could be used as
4. A viewer for selection/now playing information
I mean: you can use expressions like database searchs "search for same"-functionality.

A simple example:
Facets: "1. Date 2. Albums", Name: "Other albums of same artist", Query: "artist IS %artist% AND NOT album IS %album%", Sorting: %date%



I had some ideas more but i already wrote more than too much. The effort to phrase that all with my poor english was so big that i hope on some feedback. Thanks for reading such a long post!

@smkk

You can use the built-in playlist search functionality (see main menu->edit->search) or try foosions database search wich allows you to define more exact searches or create a custom view in album list (see context menu) to browse your playlist.
I think a functionality like you described implemented in facet would disturb the clean concept of a library viewer. Another point: How should the binded facets interact with playlists? Should the active playlist be filtered when selecting something in the facets or should theselection be sended to facet playlist?

Well i've been using iTunes for few years before i switched to foobar and facets bacisally made foobar usable to me. Maybe it's just that i'm still used to it that the items in the column libary browser gets limited to the items in the selected playlist, but i always found this useful for quickly finding things, especially when you have a huge libary with several hundred of artists.


Well the playlist would be displayed as-is until something is selected in facets (which is filtered to only the content of the selected playlist). Like you have a playlist for soundtracks, you select the playlist and can use facets to quickly browse the playlist instead of scrolling forever or typing cryptic search phrases in the searchbox. Loot at it like like a way to pre-filter facets via playlists. And of course, to display the whole libary in facets again you would need a playlist which contains everything.

Hi everybody,

Frank, I've been using Facets pretty extensively for a few months, and I have two small requests :

1°) "Don't search in [name of the tag]" option (e.g. %lyrics%)
The Facets search just looks everywhere for the desired search expression : tag fields, filenames, etc... and this is great of course. However, when there are embedded lyrics, the search results quickly become irrelevant, because Facets does also look inside the lyrics themselves. This can be useful sometimes (if you really want to look inside the lyrics), but most of the time it makes searches more difficult because there are too many unwanted results.

So I guess some option in Facets' prefs that would allow us to skip a given tag field would be most welcome. What do you think ?

2°) Improved unicode / accents support (I couldn't find a better name for it )
There are files with quite uncommon accentuated characters (ó, ú... you get the point). Example : "Farewell to Lórien", bonus track from the Two Towers OST (but also lots of foreign artist names : Pasión Vega, etc.).
If I want to look for that track, I can't type "Lorien", because Facets won't find anything. And the "ó" character doesn't exist in my keyboard, so it's not easy to type.
So I guess it would be nice if Facets would help us with those characters :
- when you type "o" it will look for "o" but also for "ó", etc.
- when you type "i" it will look for "i" but also for "í", etc.
- when you type "e" it will look for "e" but also for "é", "è", "ê", etc.
- when you type "c" it will look for "c" but also for "ç", etc.
- etc.

Could you please let us know your position on these two points ? Thank you.

thumbs up for this system, besides the super-ugly buttons foobar will be 'config-free' (for me) soon as it seems.

@smkk

I know what you mean and it would be a nice feature as the facets are acting as a super filter. However, i would prefer more the creation of custom views as they are more flexible: you can take not only the whole playlist but also just a selection or other sources (selection in facets itself ...) as basis for a custom view.

The benefit of such an option would be very limited, and it cannot be implemented in a reliable, consistent way if you intend to use it with titleformatting. Think of nonsensical examples such as sorting artists by %tracknumber%, for example - there is no definite answer to that.


Noted, thanks for reporting this.


Agreed.


Sorry, but titleformatting does not work this way; the number of tracks for each artist can only be determined after the column pattern has been evaluated for all tracks, and then it would be too late to fill in that variable. In general, hiding items with less than a configurable number of tracks would be possible.


I'm afraid that would result in even more minor requests to customize various columns. Sorry, but you will have to live with the defaults.


The idea is starting to grow on me, I'm considering to add it in the future.


Some of your ideas match with what I have in mind as possible long-term goals as I move on with the component.


Solid suggestions, but I would like to avoid inconstencies with the results of foobar2000's other search functions.

Such options should rather be introduced globally, not by each individual component.

Thanks for your reply Frank. In that case, may I count on you to discuss this issue directly with the other developers ? I believe your opinion will have more weight than mine.

It would be nice to see those suggestions soon in the "planned features" list for the upcoming foobar versions.

If you prefer that I bring the idea directly to the devs, just let me know.

If you like to display the folderstructure of your library and also want to display the root-directories at first you can achieve that by "$replace(%path%,\,|)" in Album List. Is there a way to do the same in Facets? If yes it must be more complex title formatting.

I am using the facet with ratings as the first selection point. I have values from 1 to 5 for the ratings. Unfortunately i can not get the unrated songs to be displayed.
So how can i set a value for displaying the unrated songs in the facet selection? I know it´s not directley a question of the facets. Sorry!

The origin reason why i have asked this, is that several songs are not displayed in the facet selection, when i use everywhere "all". To get around that in the meantime i have removed the facet ratings and there are still lots of songs missing. I have already done a rescan of the library, but no result.
All my songs on a mapped network drive with the following sorting:

Artist --> album --> song

I hate to ask such not really defined questions, but are there any known reasons why songs which are added to the library are not shown?
Please also remember and answer my question above. Thanks in advance!

Sorry, i have found my mistake. There were genre missing in the not shown songs.
To get around such a problem next time, i would like to define something for empty values, so that all songs are really displayed if i use all in ratings, genre, etc.
Any solution for that?

Moderation: Merged three posts. Please use the button.

Regarding your questions, there is a Facets manual.

i encounter strange ?bug?/behavior. i dont know precisly when it happens (it has happened many time so far) and i cant directly reproduce it but:
i have dblclick action as "send to facet playlist" (which is great function) when i let facet component to create its own playlist its called samothing like "Facet playlist" or so and its fine. i use this a lot but from time to time i find facet playlist renamed even so i didnt do so willingly. it then look like this:



the selected playlist is facets. renamed to "questionmark in square" = probably just unknown char.

when i look inside index.dat in "playlists" folder which tracks names of playlists it look like this:


i dont know if its truble of facet but its playlist is the only one that is loosing its name.

edit: typos

I remarked that sometimes the tracks of a selection is displayed in "selection properties" ui-element in wrong order: not by default sorting/sorting in playlist view. F.e: I select an album and the tracknumbers in selection properties window are displayed as "5;3;4;6;7;8;9;1;2" - correspondending to that the order of titles and filenames is wrong.

@ binding of facets to active playlist

I would like to remark that it would be better to use an autoplaylist that gives back all music instead of the facet playlist to display the whole library. I think i could use that feature in another sense than smkk: not for library management in the style of iTunes but as playlist filter - f.e one facet view with filter toolbar and/or facet view with album covers (planned feature). If then the facet playlist would give back the whole library it would come to a conflict if you use facets one time in normal mode (wich i would keep) and at same time in playlistbinding-mode.

The alternating colors aren't matching the playlist for me...

Hi,

I noticed in Facets, when a field is not populated, e.g. BAND, it is not displayed under BAND Facet at all. This is understandable. I was wondering could you please display them as Unknown Band etc. So we can track them down and tag those files.



vs



Thanks,
McoreD

Try using $if2(%band%,Unknown) in Facet Preferences.

drbeachboy, that's awesome. I'm chopped.

Thanks,
McoreD

Playing with foobar McoreD ?

AFAIK there's a simpler way : simply remove all the brackets in Facets prefs. This way every Facet will show all the results, including "?".

Yes Jose.

Foobar2000 is an excellent tagger for me. I want to create a plugin like iTSfv for iTunes - so I can autocaptitalize, embed artwork, fill track count etc - but I want a SDK with examples for C#.

I just realized how cool the title formatting is. This was so useful for me with Classical music.



Thanks again,
McoreD

Is this a bug or is there some way I can fix it?

Thanks for you effort in making this plugin!
I've recently updated to 08-02-25 version and noticed a small but eye catching display bug while using classic theme in XP. The border of the search bar becomes distorted when foobar is resized.

Just wanted to let you know.



Edit: Frank, could you please make emboss/sunken border as an option for the search field?

I started using more shortcuts and noticed something strange:
When using "Send to playlist and play : someplaylist" when some artist or album is selected in Facets all works well and someplaylist starts playing with the right artist or album, BUT sometimes the playlist is not sorted in the regular %path_sort%.

Hi Frank,

Not sure what I am doing wrong here:

For a facet panel called BAND, I have



Now I have four artists not sorted alphabetically:



Any ideas?

Thanks,
McoreD