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[glynor]

Since Matt was so kind as to add the one auto-Date-filling field I asked for recently, I thought I'd be greedy and ask for another one that I've wanted for a long time.

One other View I've long-wanted to make, but have been unable to satisfactorily create, is an "In Progress" view, similar to what you get in Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and other similar services. This View would list videos (and maybe Podcasts too, for which it'd be similarly handy) that you've started playing recently, but that you haven't yet finished.

This would be handy because, especially since having a kid, my wife and I rarely finish movies and even sometimes hour-long TV shows in a single sitting. It would be fantastic to have a view auto-filled with just the stuff I started watching in the past week, but didn't finish.

To make this, I need a field identical to [Last Played] except which fills with the current date immediately upon starting playback (rather than filling when the playback has finished enough of the file for it to count as "played"). You could call it [Last Opened] or maybe [Last Started] or something.

That way, with a bookmark percentage and/or the Watched() expression, you could easily make a search that results in files you've started recently, but never finished. Without it, I can only fill the list based on [Last Played] which only works for files which we started and made it to the 1/2 way point in (which is when that field gets filled).

[RD James]

+1

[BryanC]

+1

[Matt]

You got me in a good mood today

Coming next build:
NEW: Added a "Date Last Opened" that gets set as soon as playback is started.

[RoderickGI]

Excellent.

[glynor]

You got me in a good mood today

Thanks a ton. Both of these additions will be quite useful.

[ferday]

They help me as well.  Nice one Matt

[AndyU]

Anyway that this field in conjunction with some smart expression could help you restart a playlist where you stopped it, or an album - I often don’t have enough time to listen to a whole opera, say, it would be great to be able to easily restart more or less where I left off?

[RD James]

Anyway that this field in conjunction with some smart expression could help you restart a playlist where you stopped it, or an album - I often don’t have enough time to listen to a whole opera, say, it would be great to be able to easily restart more or less where I left off?

Being able to easily resume previous sessions, and making it easier to start/resume playback of media without having to think about where it's located in your library, are both areas that I'd like to see improved.
This change could help somewhat, but I think what would really be required is for Media Center to store 'sessions' which would be storing the complete state of a "Playing Now" list to a playlist as it is updated.
It would have to store the current playback position, and keep updating the session as it is changed. Any time the Playing Now list is cleared or replaced, it would create a new session. Previous sessions would be persistent so that you can resume something you started to play a week ago.
I thought there was a smartlist which attempted to do that but I'm only seeing a "recently played items" list, which is not that useful since it doesn't store the Playing Now session, only items which have actually been played.

[AndyU]

If I remember, or have the time, I’ll save the rest of the album as a playlist - “Don Giovanni - to be finished”, it would just be nice if it was effortless. Netflix asks me whether I want to resume watching or start at the beginning .. and if they can do it, surely the boys at J River can.

[RoderickGI]

I thought there was a smartlist which attempted to do that but I'm only seeing a "recently played items" list, which is not that useful since it doesn't store the Playing Now session, only items which have actually been played.

The Smartlist Group you are looking for is called "Recently Playing Now's". It is automatically created as required and stores recently Playing Now lists at certain times. i.e. When you are playing a Playlist, then change to a different Playlist. The operation seems a bit quirky to me sometimes, but it is there. Of course, if you start playing one of the saved Playlists it doesn't start from where you left off, but starts at the beginning again, depending on settings like shuffle. I don't know any way to have MC start a Playlist where you left off, other than Pausing playback and then restarting it in Playing Now.

MC removes older recent Playing Now's at some time, and the playlist group itself may disappear when there are none. It can also be deleted but will be recreated by MC as required.

Netflix asks me whether I want to resume watching or start at the beginning .. and if they can do it, surely the boys at J River can.

MC already does exactly what Netflix does, when watching a single file of type Video. MC can start at the beginning, start where you left off, or ask you what you want to do. It is called Bookmarking.

MC doesn't do it with multiple files in a Playlist, or with individual Audio files, for good reason. Do you really want to resume playback of a Track part way through? Most people want to listen to it from the beginning next time they play it, regardless of where it was up to when you stopped it last time. Make sense for short duration media files. Maybe for long Classical pieces that would be an issue. But then if particles were used for long pieces break them up into movements or whatever, and the particles were added to Playing Now rather than the full piece, we are back to playing multiple short duration audio tracks.

[RD James]

The Smartlist Group you are looking for is called "Recently Playing Now's". It is automatically created as required and stores recently Playing Now lists at certain times. i.e. When you are playing a Playlist, then change to a different Playlist. The operation seems a bit quirky to me sometimes, but it is there. Of course, if you start playing one of the saved Playlists it doesn't start from where you left off, but starts at the beginning again, depending on settings like shuffle. I don't know any way to have MC start a Playlist where you left off, other than Pausing playback and then restarting it in Playing Now.

MC removes older recent Playing Now's at some time, and the playlist group itself may disappear when there are none. It can also be deleted but will be recreated by MC as required.

Ah, it may have deleted itself then as I think that was a fresh start.
I'm not sure what logic is used, but I tend to find that there are a lot of "recent playing nows" listed which are not particularly useful, as it seems to create a new one for every minor change you make.
That's why I suggested that it update the session for minor changes, and only create a new one when there is a major change such as clearing or replacing the playlist.
They would have to be persistent, and pick up where you left off for it to be something that I would actually use though.

MC already does exactly what Netflix does, when watching a single file of type Video. MC can start at the beginning, start where you left off, or ask you what you want to do. It is called Bookmarking.

Yes, it has bookmarking but there's no quick and easy way for me to type the name of a show and have it start playing.
I have to switch to my TV view, select the show, go to the last episode that I watched, select all episodes from there onwards, and finally hit play.
I just want to type a name, hit enter and have MC set all of that up for me. That is how streaming services work.
Bookmarking doesn't work when playing to mobile clients either, and if it requires transcoding you can't seek more than a minute or two ahead on iOS.

MC doesn't do it with multiple files in a Playlist, or with individual Audio files, for good reason. Do you really want to resume playback of a Track part way through? Most people want to listen to it from the beginning next time they play it, regardless of where it was up to when you stopped it last time. Make sense for short duration media files. Maybe for long Classical pieces that would be an issue. But then if particles were used for long pieces break them up into movements or whatever, and the particles were added to Playing Now rather than the full piece, we are back to playing multiple short duration audio tracks.

I would only want it to resume mid-track podcasts (and I think it does?).
For music, it would be picking up from the last track that was played in an album or playlist, rather than the middle of a track.

[RoderickGI]

I agree with all that.

Yes, it has bookmarking but there's no quick and easy way for me to type the name of a show and have it start playing.

On this one I was specifically addressing AndyU's comment, and not your new functionality request in the other thread. I'm pretty sure MC does what Netflix does, if not better.

Your Sessions idea sounds like an interesting one. Maybe a one button "send Playing Now to a Playlist from the current track on" solution would almost be possible with these new fields.

[AndyU]

MC already does exactly what Netflix does, when watching a single file of type Video. MC can start at the beginning, start where you left off, or ask you what you want to do. It is called Bookmarking.

MC doesn't do it with multiple files in a Playlist, or with individual Audio files, for good reason. Do you really want to resume playback of a Track part way through? Most people want to listen to it from the beginning next time they play it, regardless of where it was up to when you stopped it last time. Make sense for short duration media files. Maybe for long Classical pieces that would be an issue. But then if particles were used for long pieces break them up into movements or whatever, and the particles were added to Playing Now rather than the full piece, we are back to playing multiple short duration audio tracks.

I know about bookmarking, and I know MC can do that for videos. I was wanting a similar feature for audio which I would find particularly useful for operas. Restarting the “track” where I’d stopped listening would be good enough - opera “tracks” are often less than a minute. It would also be useful to have the option to restart a playlist or album where I had left off. Maybe I want to listen to Bach’s Cello Suites in the morning this week, and I’d like to start this morning where I left off yesterday.

As I said, when I can be bothered, I achieve the result I want by saving the rest of the opera/playlist as another playlist, or deleting the bit of the playlist I’ve played, this is just a bit tedious. The “listening sessions” idea someone else had is a good idea too, if a listening session was preserved somehow, you could just resume it. I can never remember where i’ve got to listening my way through Haydn’s quartets, how nice it would be to make the whole box a listening session and then proceed through it as I wish.

[RoderickGI]

Fair enough, but your comparison to Netflix, a video service, wasn't exactly fair.

Does Apply Music, Google Music, Spotify, any of the other services or applications do what you want? I don't think so.

But as you say, RD's idea of Sessions is a good one. The two new fields being added to MC may just make it possible to do such a thing with Views and/or Smartlists. Let's see what can be dreamed up when the fields are available.

[glynor]

I know about bookmarking, and I know MC can do that for videos. I was wanting a similar feature for audio which I would find particularly useful for operas. Restarting the “track” where I’d stopped listening would be good enough - opera “tracks” are often less than a minute.

You can set MC to use bookmarking for any file type, either globally or on a file-by-file basis. By default only certain file types have this turned on, but you can alter the behavior however you'd like:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Bookmarking

If you want all files of a particular type to automatically get [Use Bookmarking] set to yes, you can easily make a Tag on Import rule to set this automatically at import:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Tag_on_Import

That won't help with resuming Playlists. I don't have a good suggestion there as it would be fundamentally at odds with MC's Playing Now system (I'm sure there's some clean way to do it, but it isn't a simple and obvious thing to solve, for sure). However, you can absolutely resume playback within any file type you want.

[AndyU]

You can set MC to use bookmarking for any file type, either globally or on a file-by-file basis. By default only certain file types have this turned on, but you can alter the behavior however you'd like:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Bookmarking

If you want all files of a particular type to automatically get [Use Bookmarking] set to yes, you can easily make a Tag on Import rule to set this automatically at import:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Tag_on_Import

That won't help with resuming Playlists. I don't have a good suggestion there as it would be fundamentally at odds with MC's Playing Now system (I'm sure there's some clean way to do it, but it isn't a simple and obvious thing to solve, for sure). However, you can absolutely resume playback within any file type you want.

Thanks, but it’s being able to resume a playlist or album or album that I would appreciate - think of an opera, a set of piano concertos or string quartets that you might want to listen through, or maybe I want to work my way through a Miles Davis discography when I have time... I can achieve this as MC stands by saving the balance of a playlist/album as another playlist, but it’s a bit cumbersome. With this new field you propose I just wondered if I might achieve a similar end by resuming a playlist, say, at the track where the date/time last played was less than the date/time the first track was played - that would probably do.

[glynor]

I completely get why you want that, but if your request is specifically around playlists, then no. I can't think of a way for you to build it manually, even with this addition.

Now, if you wanted to make a View that would show [Album]s (or any other field in MC) which have had any one file started, but not all of them finished, then you could do that. It'd be a bit complicated, but could be done with a strategy similar to my existing Favorite Artists or Current Shows Views.

The basic idea would be:

1. Make a Smartlist that does a search for any audio file (filtered appropriately so weird stuff doesn't sneak in) where [Date Last Opened] is within X days.
2. Then, as the last item on that list, add ~expand=Album. This will fill it with all of the tracks from any album where any one file was played in the last X days (whether the track was finished or not). And at the end, you might possibly need to remove duplicates, but probably not.
3. File this Smartlist away in a Utility folder or something. You won't use this directly in everyday usage.
4. Then, make a separate View (or Smartlist if you prefer, but it would be more useful as a View) and add p="YOUR PLAYLIST'S NAME HERE" as the first search item. Then add a second filter for [Last Played] is not within X days. This will take that first list you made, and filter out any of them that were already played. Also add a ~sort
5. Add View Categories to the view to make it useful. Like [Artist] and [Album] or maybe just [Album] for example.

Then, this new View will automatically show the not-recently-played tracks for any Album where at least 1 track was played within the last X days.

You might be able to do it with playlists by using playlists as a source (in the utility smartlist), adding ~seq, and then filtering the view with a Playlists filtering Category. But I'm not positive you'd be able to pull it off properly.

[AndyU]

Thanks Glynor, especially for understanding,  but .. err ..

For remembering the context of where I am I have  two and a half strategies. 1) save the balance of what’s playing as a playlist.  It’s a few clicks, but not too difficult. 2) Create a new zone, and rename the old zone as “rest of Don Giovanni”. 2.5) with sensible foresight, realise that I will often not manage to listen to all of a long work or set of works, so create a new zone just for that work, which I can resume playing whenever it suits.

For finding out which cds of my boxed sets or whatever I haven’t played all of, then something like your strategy would be great.

[bv1pacb]

Coming next build:
NEW: Added a "Date Last Opened" that gets set as soon as playback is started.

I wanna say how handy this is.  Thanks!