As Michael explained, using the advanced search is the easiest option. But that assumes you have some criteria for the tracks that is supported there. Perhaps these tracks have a separate genre. If not, read on.
I think this issue has come up a number of times. If all of your books, podcasts, etc. are in a specific high-level folder separate from your music then you can create a custom library view manually. I don't know if someone came up with a better solution but here is what I did. If you are comfortable with SQL and editing a pref file then this can work for you. Make a backup first!! This is especially important with library views as I will explain later. 1) First you need to find the criteria that you will use to identify all of the tracks. For that you will use the high level folder structure. So if you store all of these tracks under M:/Music Library/My Books/ then you just have to create a view to only include tracks under that folder. Anything starting with that as its source location will be in the view. There is a little twist to this. The library is stored as a URL and is probably formatted a bit differently depending on your operating system. In windows M:/Music Library/My Books is stored in LMS as file:///M:/Music%20Library/My%20Books Before you panic, there is an easy way to get the text exactly as you need it. Either edit it replacing spaces with %20 (but there are other special characters that need their % equivalent) or you can install the SQLite Manager in Firefox which can then be used to browse the LMS database to get the exact url as LMS stores it. If you choose to browse the database with the SQLite Manager, you will be browsing the library.db (on windows C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\Cache\library.db) Run the SQL SELECT * FROM tracks or something more refined like this (titlesort values are all uppercase so choose a short book title) SELECT * FROM tracks where titlesort = 'A TALE OF TWO CITIES' The second column is "url". Right-click and copy the cell. Save it in a text file for use below. It will look something like this: file:///M:/Music%20Library/My%20Books/Dickens/A Tale of 2 cities.mp3 Remember that the titlesort is taken from the tag, not the filename. I tried to emphasize that by naming them differently in my example. You only need the first part of the string for the high-level folder that contains all your books. file:///M:/Music%20Library/My%20Books ----+----1----+----2----+----3----+----4----+----5 Use the ruler to count the characters. In this example the length is 37. Note that while %20 represents a single space, it counts as 3 in the length. You'll see why later. That's the hard part. The rest is easy. 2) Go to your prefs folder (on windows it is C:\ProgramData\Squeezebox\prefs) where you will find the file virtualLibraries.prefs. Make a copy to save it. I recommend naming the saved copies with versions (e.g. virtualLibraries.prefs.V1). 3) First, create a spaceholder for a new library view. Use advanced search to search for anything (artist, genre, etc.) and then save the search as a library view. This is just to create a library view that can then be edited to do what you really want. Library views in the pref file have some ID's assigned to them which are stored elsewhere in the database so you need to have all the pieces connected correctly. 4) Now that you have a library view, stop LMS. It will have to be stopped while you switch the prefs files. 5) Go back to your prefs folder and make another copy of the file virtualLibraries.prefs with a new version number (e.g. virtualLibraries.prefs.V2). This one will be edited with your custom query. 5) Edit the new V2 copy with your favorite text editor (I like uedit32 but windows Notepad does fine -- don't use anything that adds formatting like Word). 6) In there you will find an entry for the library view you just created. Change that one too look like this. Leave the ID's as they are in your prefs file (don't try to take shortcuts by copying/modifying the ID's). Do not use my ID's. You only need to copy from the "name:" down and then set the name and the 2 parameters. The first parameter is the length of the partial folder name and the second is the partial folder name. The sql does not need to change. The params are substituted in the SQL where the ? are (WHERE SUBSTR(me.url,1,?) = ?). vlid_bb7e569d: id: advSrch_1443647243 name: Book Library params: - 37 - file:///M:/Music%20Library/My%20Books sql: INSERT OR IGNORE INTO library_track (library, track) SELECT '%s', id FROM (SELECT me.id FROM tracks me WHERE SUBSTR(me.url,1,?) = ? AND me.audio = 1 GROUP BY me.id) 7) save this backup version (V2 if you used my naming convention) Delete the live prefs (which you should have already backed up as V1) and make a copy of V2 renaming it as the live copy virtualLibraries.prefs. Don't just rename V2 -- keep it as a backup. 8) start up LMS and you should be in business. A note about backups and why they are extra important with virtual libraries. When you select a library to use, there is a Delete option just below the Use option. If you press delete, there is no confirmation. You will wipe out the custom query you just created and there is no going back -- unless you made a backup. If you need to swap in a backup version, always do that when LMS is shut down. If you don't shut down LMS, it may/will write out the cached version when it shuts down and overwrite your new/restored queries. Also note, that most apps do not support 7.9 features which includes the library views. At least I haven't seen any that mention supporting this and the ones I have tried do not. That is why I use the web UI on my tablet (yes, you read that right). The Logitech app (if it still works for you) lists library views, but if you try to use it, it doesn't take effect. Use the web UI to test this. Michael, if you are reading this, I would greatly appreciate it if you could insert a few blank lines between the Use and Delete links. Using the web interface on a tablet it is easy to fat-finger the delete. I have become accustomed to enlarging everything before pressing. I don't ask for a confirmation prompt since I understand that would be much more work in the web UI. But a few blank lines about the width of my index finger would be great ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ dbm204's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=65916 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106488 _______________________________________________ Squeezecenter mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/squeezecenter
