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[bspachman]

This is a spin-off of a problem I'm having with my iPod. I've created a smartlist to synch my 30GB iPod with. The rules are:

Media Type: audio, Limit: 25000MB, Modifier: FullAlbums, Not Comment=Christmas

However, the modifier "FullAlbums" in the smart list doesn't appear to work as I expected it to. I expected it to include every track on an album that otherwise satisfies the rules, but it doesn't. As an example, I know my library contains all the tracks from "Abbey Road", but the smartlist only includes tracks 1-6, 8-9, 11-13, 15, & 17. If the album were actually incomplete, it shouldn't be there, but since it is, I would have thought all the tracks would be included.

Steve suggested trying the keyword "completealbum==1", but that shows the same behavior.

So....

1) What's the difference between the "Modifier" FullAlbums and the "Keyword" completealbums.

2) Am I right in assuming that the completealbum keyword syntax is "completealbum==1" or "competealbum==0"? Why not just a single equals sign?

3) Why aren't all the tracks being included?

Best,
Brad

[Cmagic]

Hi,

The problem with your smartlist rule is the presence of the Limit keyword and the FullAlbum modifier in the same formula. There is a probleme of precedence. The Limiter (25 GB) in your case will alway be applied last to effectively guarantee that this limit is respected. Therefore the completeness of albums is not.

To overcome this effect you need to use two smarlists.
A first one (Limiter) will have a rule such as 'Type: Audio Limit: 2OGB'
and the second one a rule such as 'Playlist: Limiter Modifier:FullAlbums'

However in this case it's quite difficult to guarantee that the total size does not exceed your iPod memory capacity. The limiter should therefore be significantly lower than 30 GB. You have to do some trial to figure out the best limit. Anyway in this situation it might be better to evaluate the average size of an album in you collection (Lib Size / # Albums) then estimate the number of albums that can fit in you ipod memory and use a rule scheme to randomly select this number of full albums. As we tried to do in the following thread :
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1052332509

Although we can imagine some workarounds, managing full albums is not an easy task in MC9 as a lot of side effects appears when the number of albums you select is close to the number of albums in your whole library.

Anyway it's always fun to play with MC9 smartlists.

Hope it gives you some ideas to craft your own smartlists rules and scheme.

Have a nice day,

Christian

[bspachman]

The problem with your smartlist rule is the presence of the Limit keyword and the FullAlbum modifier in the same formula. There is a probleme of precedence. The Limiter (25 GB) in your case will alway be applied last to effectively guarantee that this limit is respected. Therefore the completeness of albums is not.

Thanks! I thought that rules were applied in the order they were defined. Is there an "order of operations" for smartlist rules? Have you figured them out through trial and error?

To overcome this effect you need to use two smarlists.
A first one (Limiter) will have a rule such as 'Type: Audio Limit: 2OGB'
and the second one a rule such as 'Playlist: Limiter Modifier:FullAlbums'

I understand the concept. However, this doesn't seem to work for me. I still get missing tracks in my albums. I don't think there are as many missing tracks, but there are certainly some. I'll give the "Random Album" method a try tomorrow...

However in this case it's quite difficult to guarantee that the total size does not exceed your iPod memory capacity. The limiter should therefore be significantly lower than 30 GB.

Actually, it looks like the limit to fill up the iPod is around 27.5 or 28GB. That leaves enough room for the databases and a few contacts and notes.

Although we can imagine some workarounds, managing full albums is not an easy task in MC9 as a lot of side effects appears when the number of albums you select is close to the number of albums in your whole library.

I wonder why that is... Matt, any input? It'd be great if MC could manipulate full albums as simply as it does tracks. I know that the iPod and iTunes have built-in methods to shuffle full albums. It would be great to be able to download only full albums to our handhelds...

Thanks for the pointers, Christian!

Brad

[NoCodeUK]

I think some kind of "drill down" method using the album view would be nice.  If you wanted to use whole albums you could go into the album view and manipulate the album as a whole but could then drill down to the individual track level.  I suppose in a way you can do that now by changing the views but it could be combined as a feature into the one view.

Adam

[Cmagic]

Hi,

Have you figured them out through trial and error?

Yes, pure trial & error plus some logic. Anyway it would be nice to have some written docs on the inner working of smartlists rules but I guess it's quite some work.

I wonder why that is... Matt, any input? It'd be great if MC could manipulate full albums as simply as it does tracks.

Tracks are kind of first class objects in MC, with their own properties and stuff. Albums are not. Albums are just collections of tracks throught the playlist or smartlist mechanism. I guess that promoting playlilsts or more generaly media lists as first class objects with their own properties is not a piece of programming cake !!
Although this would be a nice addition that would allow some neats organizing tricks on whole albums or playlists in the way NoCode just mentioned.
Let's wish upon a star, as we all now that Matt and the gang are first class developers

Ciao folks,

Christian
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Listening to: 'See You Later, Alligator' from 'The Cristal Collection' by 'Bill Haley' on Media Center 9.0