JRiver Media Center

View Schemes are the main way to browse through files in Media Center. Views can be created which help users see different parts of their library; these are effectively the same as database views. They are based on using metadata as criterion for creating a filtered list of files.

The view system is very powerful and fully customizable. For example, a view could be made which shows only audio files in MP3 format which are longer than 3 minutes, or images taken in Africa in the year 2006.

For ease of use, several default views exist which show files of a specified type only, including: audio, images, or video.

Various view items, or panes, can be aligned to the top, left, right, or moved in drop-down menus, that can be used to further filter results. For example, one of the default views, artist/album, allows selecting a specific artist or album, or both, and shows files from that album or artist only.

Once a view is created, it is automatically saved in the library and can be opened in the various user interfaces and searched using a real-time search box. The searches are customizable and possible on any field or tag in the library.

JRiver Media Center allows the creation of playlists. It also can export playlists as M3U, M3U8, ASX, MPL, CSV.

Smartlists are similar to playlists except that rather than selecting a list of songs, the list is governed by a set of rules. For example, a smartlist might take every video file which was produced in 1994. Smartlists can be based on Playlists. They are defined using an expression language. Media Center provides a wizard style dialogue box to simplify creating these.

An added benefit of a smartlist over a basic playlist is that a smartlist is dynamic; it will update itself whenever new files that meet its criteria are added to the library. For example, one could create a smartlist to show all tracks with the genre tagged Indie Rock. If a new album were added to Media Center's library that had the Indie Rock genre tag, Media Center would automatically add those files to the smartlist.

Standard view combined with a third-party skin

Through the default Media Center UI for desktop environment the user is exposed to all of the core multimedia features, such as:

• Tagging
• Ripping
• CD/DVD burning
• Accessing portable players
• Creating/editing playlists, smartlists, and views
• Setting up TV stations
• Accessing web media

Standard view occupies a large amount of screen space, can be viewed in either full screen or as a window mode, and it consists of the following components:

• Tree: allow for hierarchical navigation between different views of the Media Library
• Action Window: provides quick access to common tasks, such as ripping/burning
• Header: presents the playback controls and options for selected track
• Playing Now: displays current playlist items
• Panes/Thumbnails: aid in simple point and click media browsing
• Tagging panes: allows tagging media files

Theater view in Media Center

While the Standard and Mini views are designed to be used in front of a desktop or laptop computers, Media Center includes an additional 10-foot user interface called the "Theater view".

This is made to work on a large screen, such as a television, projector or large computer screen. The interface is made to work in a 10-foot mode, i.e. from a living room sofa using remote controls, rather than the conventional mouse and keyboard.

As of JRiver Media Center 12, Theatre view relies on Microsoft's DirectX graphics engine. With this, Media Center uses 3D and 2D Animation to create a more visually appealing interface, which more nearly resembles that of a digital recording box, or DVD player.

The Theater view doesn't provide the editing interfaces of Standard view, but instead provides much more accessible access to the different views of the library. All the buttons in Theater view are large, and tend to move to different pages to display different information.

Theater view also provides access to the weather, news websites and RSS feeds.

Mini view is similar to that of Winamp. It's designed to take up minimal screen space while still providing access to basic controls. Mini view skins are different from the other UI skins seen in Media Center in that they can employ JavaScript to make them more dynamic. Mini views are far more flexible than the other types of skins, allowing Media Center to take various shapes and forms using transparency effects.