What's new in Music Collector? 2017

Fixed

• Pick Item Screens: when using the quick search the list wasn’t always sorted correctly
• Manage Pick List:
  • When using the quick search the list wasn’t always sorted correctly
  • “auto resort” check box didn’t work
• Reassign Index fields sort fields were stored as “reassignindex” as sort fields preset
• Manage Presets: removing all presets would cause an Access Violation after closing the screen
• Edit Album: navigating Tracks or Links using ALT+N or ALT+P would navigate the albums instead

Fixed:

• Edit Screen:
  • Some fields were overlapping when resizing the screen
  • Orchestra grid was too small after opening the screen in a wider size than normal
  • Making the screen larger and then smaller again would show a scrollbar on the “user defined” tab when it wasn’t needed
  • ALT+N/ALT+P for Next/Previous played a Windows sound
• Adding a new item to a list sometimes displayed a popup that was too small
• Reassign Index Fields: Saving your selected fields wasn’t possible sometimes
• Export/Print field selection menus were missing “Manage Presets…” caption

Fixes for the Clean Templates:

• Country flags weren’t displayed
• We swapped musicians and instruments (musician names now display on the left, instruments on the right)
• Images for musicians weren’t displayed correctly
• Layout of discs wasn’t always correct for multi-disc albums
• Tracks that were placed after (but not inside) a header messed up the layout of the tracklist
• Several other improvements to the layout

NEW: Fully Automatic CLZ Cloud Syncing!

The free CLZ Cloud service is at the center of all our cataloging solutions (desktop, mobile and web), the glue that binds them all together.
Tens of thousands of users are using the CLZ Cloud syncing every day, to transfer data between their desktop, Connect and mobile software, to update their online collection list, or simply for keeping an online backup of their precious database.

Now, it is time to take the CLZ Cloud to the next level, with automatic syncing:
Add or edit albums in Music Collector and these changes will auto-upload to the CLZ Cloud instantly. Did you make changes using the CLZ Music mobile app or directly in Music Connect? Just start your software and changes will download automatically.
No more need to go to the Sync with CLZ Cloud screen, ever.

With “Sync Automatically” switched on…

1. Your online cloud backup is always up-to-date.
2. Your cloud viewer always shows the current state of your collection.
3. All your CLZ tools (desktop, mobile and Connect) will always be in-sync.

Automatic Cloud Syncing is an optional feature, switched OFF by default. If you don’t want to auto-sync, or don’t want to sync with the CLZ Cloud at all, just leave it switched OFF.

Revamped Edit Album and Edit Disc/Track screens

A huge refresh of the Edit screens, bringing the look and feel more in line with the recent Add Albums from Core screen.

• Button bar is now at the bottom of the screen
  With OK button high-lighted in blue, nice Next/Prev arrow buttons, etc…

• Clearer blue “+” buttons for checkbox list fields (like Sound, Extras)
• Same blue + buttons for dropdown fields (like Format, Label, Packaging)
• Revamped Edit screen for pick list items
  Button bar at the bottom with blue OK button, smaller generate buttons, etc..

But it’s not all just cosmetic changes:

Improved interface for adding Artists, Musicians, Credits

The new interface helps you make better use of your existing person pick lists:

• Cleaner lists, showing just Display Name and Instrument/Role.
• Right-click to Modify the name and sort name of a person in the list.
• Drag the icon in the first column to change the order.
• Click the “x” in the last column to remove entries.

Fixed:

• Add Albums from CLZ Core:
  • Add as multi-disc album would sometimes add extra discs due to unexpected behaviour of multiple selection in list.
  • Failed searches would remain in barcode queue but would not be visible in the list.

Fixed

• Quick Search suggestion box could crash the app.
• Alphabet bar wasn’t working anymore.

Next week, Apple will release the new macOS 10.13 “High Sierra”.
If you are planning to update your Mac to this new OS, then we strongly recommend to update your Music Collector software to today’s version 17.0.4!

Music Collector problems on High Sierra:
We have been testing our software on beta versions of High Sierra for quite a while, to make sure we were ready for it’s release. We found that most of the software seems to be working as normal.

Unfortunately, we found a big problem in the Preferences screen, it does not open at all anymore, making it impossible to make any changes to program settings.

Luckily, our Mac developer Ronald was able to fix the Preferences screen to make it work on the new macOS. A fix was released today, in version 17.0.4.

Fixed

• Preferences screen didn’t load properly on macOS 10.13 “High Sierra”.
• Upload Cover to CLZ Core: Images were not always uploaded properly even if they were within the 500KB file size limit.
• Main Screen: Quick Search: Occasional crashes in the quick search when using the “Search-as-you-type” suggestions.
• Sync with CLZ Cloud: Sometimes crashed during the upload of covers.

Fixed

• Add Albums from CLZ Core: Access Violation when adding several albums by barcode

Fixed:

• Add Albums from CLZ Core:
  • (un)checking an item in a selection would not (un)check all those items
  • horizontal scroll arrows were showing because the tabs didn’t fit in Light Skin

New:

• Add Albums from CLZ Core: the 4 “Add by” tabs now have icons.

Fixed:

• Add/Link Music Files:
  • Adding an album from music files will now leave the “Packaging” field empty instead of setting it from the Field Defaults.
  • Import from iTunes: Album notes’ first character was missing.
• Edit Album: Links tab: When editing a local link, the “previous” button didn’t work.
• After adding an album where a pick list item (such as an artist) was updated with new information, not all albums using that same artist were marked as “dirty” for syncing with CLZ Cloud.
• Main Screen: Quick filter panel option “keep active” wasn’t applied directly after restarting software.

New:

• New option for CLZ Barry: Auto-Connect. When enabled, the built-in Buddy for Barry automatically connects to the server when you start the program or open the Add screen.
• The Expire Date of your Update Plan is now always visible in the lower right bottom of the main screen.
• Add Albums from CLZ Core: when album isn’t found in Core by CD ID you can click a “report missing” result now instead of a popup always showing.

Fixed:

• Edit Disc: rescanning the CD didn’t add all the scanned CD information
• Add Albums from CLZ Core: When adding by CD ID, the screen didn’t close when option “Automatically close screen when search queue is empty” was checked.

New:

• Add Albums from CLZ Core: right click context menu for “Add by Catalog Number” results.

Fixed:

• Add Albums from CLZ Core: adding an album would cause an Access Violation when option “Download genre data” was switched off.

Big changes today! The Add Albums Automatically screen has been completely re-designed, to make it both easier-to-use and easier-on-the-eye (and it’s now called “Add Albums from CLZ Core”):

• A clear two-panel design: Search Results on the left, Preview on the right.
• The Search Results now show cover images for every album.
• Automatic Preview of selected result (no more double clicking).
• Improved success rate on barcode searches for both CDs and vinyl!

See it in action:

Here’s the full list of improvements:

Read more

Fixed:

• Edit Screen: clicking “Update” would cause an Access Violation

Fixed:

• Edit Screen: switching tabs could throw a “Cannot focus a disabled or invisible window” error when the screen was still loading

New:

• Links to renew your update plan will now automatically log you into your account on the website.
• Check for Updates: now has a link to the “What’s New” blog on our website.
• My CLZ Account popup: now has a link to the “What’s New” blog on our website.

Fixed:

• Edit Album/Edit Track: using ALT+N or ALT+P to navigate to Next or Previous Album/Track could throw a “Cannot focus a disabled or invisible window” error

Fixed:

• Quick Search Suggestions:
  • selecting an item from the suggestion list would sometimes do nothing with a grouping on more than one field active
  • clicking the “show all results for…” label after pasting a search string with the mouse didn’t always perform the search
• Quick Search: “matches:” followed by nothing would result in a “regular expression required” error
• Scaled images for thumbnails, CLZ Movie export, etc. are now saved without metadata for smaller file sizes and better performance
• Main Screen:
  • Images Popup didn’t show box set covers
  • Nothing would show when switching to Cards view after applying the quick filters
  • Select random didn’t always work properly in a filtered list
• Manage Pick Lists: deleting text from the search box would initiate “remove item”
• Import from XML: price and value fields weren’t always imported correctly
• Import from Text: fields were not properly imported when delimiter appeared in field value
• Sync with Cloud: HTML in plot and notes fields didn’t always sync down properly
• Editing/Adding Pick List items: it was possible to create duplicate items with identical Display Names
• If a front cover has been attached to an album, “Read from file tags” would move it to the images folder
• Edit Album:
  • list in “Fix Tracks” screen was showing information in the wrong columns
  • double clicking an item in the tracks list wasn’t taking “double-clicking…” option into account
• Playing a subtrack from the Details View didn’t work
• Main Screen: Composers would show for all levels (disc, header, track, subtrack) instead of only the highest when they were identical
• User Defined Fields: adding a user defined field will now add it to the same group as the one currently selected

We’ve expanded the quick search box to now also allow “search-as-you-type” with suggestions for pick list fields.

How does it work?

In the quick search box top right of your screen you should see a “dropdown” button. Use this to select which field you wish to perform a search on. If “search-as-you-type” is available for that field, it will instantly work once you start typing in the box.

Example

You can now select the field “Artist” in the quick search box, start typing an artist name, and instantly see suggestions (based on what you typed) of artists you have in your database. Click on an artist to see all his/her albums!

We’ve expanded the quick search box to now also allow “search-as-you-type” with suggestions for pick list fields.

How does it work?

In the quick search box top right of your screen you should see a “dropdown” button. Use this to select which field you wish to perform a search on. If “search-as-you-type” is available for that field, it will instantly work once you start typing in the box.

Example

You can now select the field “Artist” in the quick search box, start typing an artist name, and instantly see suggestions (based on what you typed) of artists you have in your database. Click on an artist to see all his/her albums!

Fixes in this version

We also fixed some issues with the program in this version:

• Images Popup:
  • “size window to picture” showed image slightly smaller
  • .tiff images were not showing

Great news for vinyl collectors: our web-developers Joe and Robbert have revised and improved our Discogs search mechanisms, to give you more up-to-date Discogs data and more images.

Read more

Great news for vinyl collectors: our web-developers Joe and Robbert have revised and improved our Discogs search mechanisms, to give you more up-to-date Discogs data and more images.

Read more

Fixed:

• Program would crash at startup on macOS 10.9 or older
• Search-As-You-Type tweaked to search first letters of each word only, making the results more precise
• Add Albums Automatically : image popup for cover was showing the images of the selected item in main screen

Quick Search: Search-As-You-Type suggestions

Instantly find and select a particular album in your local database:

• In the Quick Search box, just start typing the first few letters of the artist or title you are looking for.
• While typing, a drop-down list will appear, showing the first five matching albums.
  (for most albums, it only takes 2 or 3 letters before it shows up.)
• Once you see the one you were looking for, use the up/down keys to select it, then hit Enter.
• The album will now be selected in your list, with the details showing in the Details Panel.

NOTE: this Search-As-You-Type feature replaces the old “filter-as-you-type” behaviour of the Quick Search box. If you want to go back to the old behaviour, you can do so in the Preferences screen, on the Behaviour page using the setting called “When typing in Quick Search box”.

Read more

New:

• Images popup now also supports “Size Picture to Window without stretching” option
• Quick search: suggestions now also are shown when searching on “Title” field

Fixed:

• Main Screen:
• Quick Search: applying a filter could cause unexpected behaviour
• Images Popup:
  • the status bar wasn’t always showing the right image path when opening
  • .bmp images were not showing
• CueCat scanner wasn’t working properly any more

Quick Search: Search-As-You-Type suggestions

Instantly find and select a particular album in your local database:

• In the Quick Search box, just start typing the first few letters of the artist or title you are looking for.
• While typing, a drop-down list will appear, showing the first five matching albums.
  (for most albums, it only takes 2 or 3 letters before it shows up.)
• Once you see the one you were looking for, use the up/down keys to select it, then hit Enter.
• The album will now be selected in your list, with the details showing in the Details Panel.

Read more

Fixed:

• Export XML: XML was not exported correctly.
• Edit Screen: Cover Popups were not always prompted on macOS Sierra.

Fixed:

• Edit Screen:
  • Composition Table: columns could not be resized beyond certain size.
  • Tracks Screen: column widths were not remembered.
  • Edit Track Screen: Credits: Roles were sometimes reverted to “Engineer”.
• Add Music Files: artists with accents were not imported.
• Play music: tracks were not played in the right order on iTunes when playing an album.
• Discs, Headers & Tracks total time didn’t include subtracks time.
• Templates:
  • Cobalt and Carbon templates: Choruses were not always displayed.
  • Templates: Fixed naming of discs in single- vs. multi-disc albums.

Fixed:

• Crashes during Check for Update process
• Edit Album: Some combobox functionality for “Vinyl Color” field didn’t work

Fixed:

• Cards View: Quick Search didn’t filter the cards in the list.
• First Letter folder option was not using the Sort Names.
• Loan Manager Screen: Search was not working.
• Sierra: Full Screen Mode: “Add Cover” popup appears under the Edit Screen.
• Internal Images: Templates images were not updated after editing an item.
• When no internet connection was available, app was launched in Trial Mode.

Fixed:

• Tag reading music files: in rare cases some text tags like Artist and Title were not read properly because of different encoding
• person grids: adding a person with a display name that existed multiple times, would sometimes save the wrong one
• Templates: subtitle in details template is now on a separate line
• Edit Album:
  • On User Defined Fields tab, “_[Add pick list item]_” didn’t work for comboboxes
  • Changing the role for a credit would mark all albums dirty where that person appeared instead of just the edited album
• Manage Pick Lists: removing pick list items didn’t mark their corresponding albums as modified
• Main Screen:
  • accelerator keys in main menu (like “ALT+F” for files menu) didn’t work
  • selection text at bottom of screen wasn’t always properly updated