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[HPBEME]

Just one week ago I bumbled into the MC27 option to use a 10-star rating system… When did that happen!? As a very long time user of this program, I cannot believe I missed that feature being rolled out. Whenever it was… Hallelujah! 

That said, it appears the 10-star field cannot be displayed in the player bar for quick rating access. Is that really the case? I can rate media with the 10-star system in the detail track list in the lower window, but cannot do it via quick access in the player bar? Say it ain't so! Hopefully somebody can tell me how to tweak this or that to get it working, but if not, I am devastated. I've been waiting for a 10-star (or 5-star with half-stars) rating system for 15 years, but without player bar quick access, its utility is severely diminished.

I've already converted the songs I had previously rated (~ 20,000) to the new rating system (1 -> 2, 2 -> 4, 3 -> 6... etc.) and thanks to MC's phenomenal tagging capability that took all of one minute. I still have a couple thousand tracks that have never been rated, and for the foreseeable future I will be tweaking the converted ratings, as that is kind of the whole point of a more discreet rating system… Right?  The distribution of song ratings is a quintessential bell curve - over half of my library is rated 3 stars, while the other ratings tail off precipitously to either side of the big bell. I imagine this is true for most people. With 10 stars, songs I previously rated from 2 to 4 can now be fine-tuned with values from 3 to 9, so having quick and easy access to edit the ratings is paramount.  Plus, I really like having the stars displayed on the player bar! I now just show the stars numeric equivalent (i.e., Rating: 7/10) since I am unable to figure out how to display the 10-stars directly.

Oh magnificent and generous keepers of all things MC, have I persuaded you to add this functionality yet? I am not too proud to beg… Please please please please please, oh please... add this capability. I thank you for your indulgence.

[David Sydney]

Don't see that anywhere - is it in the settings somewhere?

[SkGe]

The only thing you can do is to ask this as a request or feature implementation, and maybe some of the team member will have a look and if is feaseble to be added in MC. Which it will be cool to have it but just hoping. Or more on this, that 10 stars rating to be converted in 5 stars and half of and then to be able to add on display area to be used.

[HPBEME]

As I mentioned in the my post, I only stumbled onto it myself.... I was editing some library fields for other purposes, and suddenly there it was.  That is why I was shocked to see the option, which based on my scouring the forums, the 10 star system has been around since 2018 I think, maybe even sooner.  Here is the process to implement it:

• Go to Options/Library & Folders/Manage library fields
• Click button at the bottom of the field list column on the left to add a new library field
• Name the new field whatever you wish, but "Rating–10" is an obvious candidate
• Go to the drop-down menu for edit type - among the choices you will see both "five stars" and "ten stars"… Choose 10 stars
• You can now point to that new field to show in the Playerbar (By right clicking on the playerbar display and choosing "customize display")
• Unfortunately, all it will show is a numeric value, so I added the words "Rating:" in front of it, and "/10" after it so it would show up in the display as "Rating: X/10"

In the event my instructions above are not clear, here is a YouTube video I found showing the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fjrf5mTcWg

So this is where the issue is... The player bar display only shows this numeric value, and not the real-time accessible and editable stars. You cannot simply click on this value in the display like you do with the 5-stars and quickly edit the rating.  You must add a new column in the lower details window that points to the new rating–10 field.  It is here that you can hover your mouse over the stars and then click as many as you want to rate the song...  You just can't do it in the player bar, as there are no stars to click on.

This is the functionality I am hoping/begging the wonderful folks at J River to add.  Because without it, the already tedious process of rating songs becomes even more tedious.
While you can 10-star rate songs with a "mouse-hover" in the detail list, if you are in another tab other than playing now, or in Display View where you pop-up the player bar while songs are playing to rate them (which is generally how I do it), you can't.  You have to exit the display view and/or go back to the playing now tab, and then scroll the details list to the current song to rate it.

[zybex]

You can have the 10 stars showing on the player bar, but not edit/change the value as with the 5-star rating.
To show the field as stars, add this to Customize:

Code: [Select]

left(★★★★★★★★★★, [Rating10])Or, to always show 10 stars (some filled, some blank):

Code: [Select]

left(★★★★★★★★★★,[Rating10])left(☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆,Math(10-[Rating10]))To show dots when there's no value defined:

Code: [Select]

if(isempty([Rating10]),··········,left(★★★★★★★★★★,[Rating10])left(☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆,Math(10-[Rating10])))
You can replace those Unicode chars with something else, like a tomato 🍅🍅🍅

EDIT: There seems to be a bug with customized Stopped Mode text, as the text doesn't change when we select a different file. It works fine when playing something.

[HPBEME]

zybex, Thank you so much!

At least now I can see my stars again! And your second code option that shows a song's rated value as "filled" stars with the remaining as empty stars is definitely the way to go... without that, it is difficult to distinguish 5 stars from 6, or 6 stars from 7, etc, which I imagine was your reasoning to include it.  So again, thank you!

Even before you edited your reply to include a solution for dealing with unrated songs, I was trying to modify your initial code posts to do just that.  Unfortunately, the dots/bullets are extremely close together.  I'll experiment with other Unicode characters to see if I can get them spaced out better.  In any event, I greatly appreciate your effort.

That said, the most critical aspect of my desire is to edit the rating real-time directly in the player bar, which you noted is not possible (at least with the codes as shown).  Until that capability is added to the program by the best people in the world at JRiver (too much?), this is much better than simply showing a number (though I imagine other users may prefer just a number to the stars). Thanks again.

[HPBEME]

I decided a much simpler approach to unrated songs is to simply note that with text.  To that end, here is my mod to your last code/expression:

Code: [Select]

if(isempty([Rating10]),/(not rated/),left(★★★★★★★★★★,[Rating10])left(☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆,Math(10-[Rating10])))
I wanted parentheses around the text, thus the need for the escape "/" characters, but obviously you know that far better than me.  This comment is aimed at other MC expression code novices like myself.

[zybex]

Apparently it also supports color, so try this - also with a different dot char:

Code: [Select]

<font color="#808080">if(isempty([Rating10]),••••••••••,<font color="#FFFF00">left(★★★★★★★★★★,[Rating10])<//font>left(☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆,Math(10-[Rating10])))<//font>
You can also just space out the dots like this:

Code: [Select]

<font color="#808080">if(isempty([Rating10]),· · · · · · · · · ·,<font color="#FFFF00">left(★★★★★★★★★★,[Rating10])<//font>left(☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆,Math(10-[Rating10])))<//font>
Or using this spacing instead of the white stars (note the math expression change), and also adding a numeric value in front of the stars:

Code: [Select]

<font color="#FFFF00">left(★★★★★★★★★★,[Rating10])<//font><font color="#808080">left(/ • • • • • • • • • • •,Math(20-2*[Rating10]))<//font> ([Rating10]/10)
Many options Unfortunately it looks like the text is forced to be Bold, it would be nice to control that too. <//B> doesn't work.
Color above assume a Dark theme... change to fit your taste.

[HPBEME]

Okay… So I tried all your options.  You're a very clever boy, aren't you!?

Before your last post, I had already tried different Unicode characters and adding extra spaces around the bullet points, but it always ended up displaying less than 10!  Where I erred was I had a space after the last bullet before the comma delimiter, and that messed things up.  I was able to achieve wider spacing without modifying expression as you did "Math(20-2*[Rating10])".  You just have to ensure there is not a space after the 10th bullet.

Here is my latest code:
<font color="#505050"> if(isempty([Rating10]),•   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •,<//font>left(★★★★★★★★★★,[Rating10])left(☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆,Math(10-[Rating10])))

Now when I add more spaces between bullets, the player bar display automatically increases spacing without the math code modification, and conversely, it automatically decreases spacing if I remove spaces.

That is also pretty neat how you can adjust font colors for each specific area of the rating, and override the skins XML file setting.  Now that I think about it, I guess you're not overriding the skin since the stars are usually controlled by an image, not via text as we are doing here.  Speaking of skins, I am pretty close to finalizing a brand new skin that I have been developing for some time, and hope to share it with the MC community in the near in the future.  It is unlike anything currently available.

Alrighty then...  I want to express my gratitude to you again for all your help - I have learned a lot about expressions just through our exchanges this morning.  I have used expressions a handful of times in the past, but only in the simplest ways imaginable.  Thanks to your helpful posts, I might just to turn into an expression making geek!

[zybex]

You're welcome Looking forward to your new skin!

In expressions, spaces are ignored before/after commas. So if you want them there you need to escape them like so (only the first/last one needs escaping):

Code: [Select]

if(isempty([Rating10]),/   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •  / , ...
You may want to play around with my Expression editor, ZELDA

[HPBEME]

Sure, I would love to check out your expression editor… How do I get it?

With respect to the spaces, do you happen to know why my expression code works without having to incorporate the math modification as you did?  Did you try mine out, and if so, did you add and remove spaces to confirm that it works as I indicated?  If not, no biggie - but it's always nice to have more than one data point from which to draw a conclusion.

As great as all this is been, I'm still left with a rating system that I cannot modify directly in the player bar.  I guess I consider this post/thread as a feature request, but perhaps I should re-post some of this in an "official" feature request thread?  Is that necessary?  I see in your forum signature that you're on the MC beta team, so perhaps my communication with you is sufficient?  If not, please let me know, as I desperately want both the 10-star rating scheme, AND the ability to edit the rating directly in the player bar.

As for my new skin…  well...  it is stunning IMNSHO.  That said, I am just a tiny bit biased given the amount of time I've spent working on it… I mean a lot of time… I mean an astronomical amount of time… I mean so much time I am embarrassed to admit how much. When I finally do get it out there, hopefully everybody will find it as beautiful as I do.

[zybex]

Here: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,125975.0.html

Your expression with spaces is similar to the second one on reply #7 above, where I also used spaces. It works because it's just like any other text string of fixed size. The Math() expression is meant to calculate how many white stars (or dots) are needed after the rating, so it's variable in length. To have a variable length of space+star items, you need to calculate 20-2*[rating10]; to have 2 spaces, each item now has 3 chars (space+space+star), so it needs to be 30-3*[rating10]. And so on.

The 3rd expression doesn't need the ifEmpty() check; for empty ratings, it displays 0 filled stars followed by 10 dots - Expression Language function args assume the value is zero by default when it's blank.

Unfortunately I don't have any saying on what gets or doesn't get implemented by MC team. I think it's better if you start another thread called "[feature request] editable 10-star rating on the Player Bar", with a short description/screenshot. This thread is now tainted since it looks like it already got solved

I'm sure we'll like your skin! Good things take time, I should know...

[HPBEME]

I downloaded Zelda.  I look forward to playing with it in the near future.

Your math modification was exactly what I thought it was for, but since my expression worked without it, I was confused. 

I did not pick-up in your prior post that you are adding spaces between the stars - I thought you were just doing the dots like me (the star spacing is fine as-is for me).  But now I understand... it is needed to determine the correct number of filled vs. empty stars to display when you also add space(s) between stars.  Since that complication does not apply to unrated songs, my expression worked fine without the modification.  You have taught me yet another thing I can do with expressions however... thank you! 

Sorry to keep pestering you with more questions, but isn't there an "official" dedicated feature request thread? I gather from your response that I should create a new thread, but I thought that was kind of what I was doing when I created this thread.  Clearly not.  I noticed in your recommended subject line, you put [feature request] in square brackets...  I presume that was intentional. Does it force the forum software to automatically handle the thread differently than other threads? Again, my apologies for the endless questions.  I promise I will stop after this post.

[zybex]

There's no specific forum for feature requests, but adding "feature request" to the subject is good etiquette and makes sure someone from JRiver reads it. This thread was a good post and it was indeed a feature request already but... I've noticed the team is overloaded and can't usually get to all posts in the forum, so when they see a thread like this one where someone like me or other community member is already helping... They tend to ignore it. That's why I recommended that you should open a new post.

[HPBEME]

Sounds good.  Thanks again for all your help and quick replies.  Have a fantastic rest of your day.