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[Matt]

Would people like having what playlists a file is in stored in the file's tag?  It's the one piece of DB information not backed up in the tag.

Playlists are great for organizing something like "Who's In A Picture" where one file could be in a bunch of categories. (i.e. Wife, Grandma, etc.) However, when the info isn't stored in the tags, it doesn't transfer to other MJ's and can't be rebuilt after a computer crash from the files alone.

The downsides to storing the info in the tag is that it gives MJ more to keep track of when working with playlists and would cause tag updates when changing playlist info, so it could affect performance.

So would people like this?  Thanks for any advice.

-Matt

[michel]

Matt,

Is it a coincidence ? You are proposing another way to set multiple values to a field vs mine way:

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=beta;action=display;num=1036768998



I think you mean "only playlists", not auto smartlist since I think it doesn't make sense.

[bennyd]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes

[michel]

Thinking a little more I am not sure I would use this feature. Indeed, tags are for me the way to stay independant of MJ. So if I use that, to set styles for example,it is unlike I will can use this information with another software.

[phelt]

If it's a DB value, fine whatever. I don't use playlists that much. I don't think it would be so cool as another ID3v2 item due to possible file rewrites, etc.

Unless it were optional

[Cmagic]

Hi Matt,

As you mentionned this would be very useful for pictures.
But then I wonder, in what kind of tags would you store this info in jpegs ?

There's already a tagging standard for jpeg and tiff known as IPTC.
In IPTC there are fields provided for keywords (family, country, seashore...) that
let you classify related pictures to your liking. Such tagging is supported in a lot
of picture software (photoshop, acdsee, cumulus, etc..)
Wouldn't it be great if MJ also stick to this digital imaging standard ?

Well, you probably thought about that anyway...

[RemyJ]

If it's a DB value, fine whatever. I don't use playlists that much. I don't think it would be so cool as another ID3v2 item due to possible file rewrites, etc.

Unless it were optional

Well, I use a LOT of playlists and don't see any need to clutter the tags either, nor would I want the overhead.

[Matt]

< bump in case anybody else has an opinion on this >

[Phydeaux]

Hi Matt,

It will be nice to see which people are in which photos, but I don't know that playlists are a good way to do it. How will MJ handle a new picture, for example, that has playlists from someone elses library associated with it? Will it create a whole new set of play lists (which could be a horrid prospect!!).

I prefer a single field to keep track of people in a photo. It is easy enough to create a smartlist along the lines of "people=me,mum,cat" for example. That might be more "standard" with other database ways of doing it. Or for other programs that might want to read the metadata associated with a particular file.

In my opinion, not necessary.

While we're talking fields and tags, however, consider a peek at my thread [link]http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=beta;action=display;num=1036833505[/link]

Hope the comment is useful!

P.

[Matt]

I prefer a single field to keep track of people in a photo

The problem is that a single field doesn't work very well in the tree, because you'll get entries like "mom", "cat", "mom, cat", "cat, mom" which isn't probably what you'd want -- you'd just want "mom" and "cat".

However, playlists already work great in the Media Library tree.  (because they're based on the version 7 "categories" which were for exactly this purpose)

[Phydeaux]

Important: Don't forget the functionality of the playlist: keep a list of things to play!. Don't confuse it with what you want it to do (keep track of what's in a picture)!!

You are talking about a huge paradigm shift from where "the file contains the information" to one where "where the file IS contains the information".

Let's follow your logic: Firstly, kill all fields that MJ can or ever hopes to store. Secondly make a thousand and one playlists under different groups for Genre, Artist, BPM, Colour of the Underwear that the Recording Technician was Wearing, etc. Oh, and of course, your regular playlists.

You'd be negating the need for Media Library because we, as the music collection owners, would have done all that hard work ourselves...

Essentially you're consiering moving to a completely different kettle of fish here -- a relational DB. MJ has some of the functionality of a relational DB, but only in the playlists.

There is a lot of merit to this approach and it means that files only contain fields that are relevant to them. However, it is a HUGE change in mentality from where MJ is now.

Let's get back to what we have now:

Having "mum, cat, dog, bird" in a photo field is fine. If I enter a search for people=cat,bird,dog won't MJ find the photo concerned??? There is a difference, is there not, between people="cat","bird","dog" and people=[cat],[bird],[dog].

Along this line, however, you really need to make a more intelligent wizard that can handle, for text fields, things like "includes", "starts with", "ends with" and "is".

Once this is done, I think that your suggestion is nullified because it is then easy to create lists of photos with "me and mum" and it is easy to create a list of photos with "me and not a dog" (NO pun intended!!!).

At the end: I don't think that playlists have a function being stored in a file. If I send a picture to friends over the ocean (even you, for instance!) it is more "useful" when you browse the image in a different program (eg: Windows XP -- actually, does that read image metadata??), you don't want to know what playlists a song is in, because not all playlists are people.

I may have a playlist called "relax" which has some slow tunes and some other soothing images. You, as the recipient of my piture, don't need to know that - and all that information has bloated the size of the picture. If there is a field telling you that the people in the picture are, Bob, George and Mary -- that is more useful to you.

Isn't it?

I hope I'm on the right page as you!!

[Phydeaux]

Although:

It would be useful to have a Media Library View as follows:

- Images
     - People
          - Me
          - Mum
          - Cat


I am seeing why you want to have this feature, Matt, but I don't know that it is the best way to do it.

Here's a thought.

I've often wanted to create a true music database which songs could be "connected" to their composers so that I can enter in things about Beethoven, a picture or two, and his birth and death dates, and so forth.

What you're suggesting is something along those lines because your playlist suddenly becomes a "person".

That in my opinion would be  .

However, I still maintain that a playlist is a playlist and not a person and therefore has no business in the file.

Similar argument for cover art... Each song is assigned to the same cover art in an album, rather to a "playlist" which contains the cover art... (that takes some imagination and features that MJ does not have!!).

Anyway... I'm off now! I had just finished writing a Fourier Methods exam and am now heading home to celebrate the start of my holidays!!!! See you all sometime in the future!

[Matt]

Important: Don't forget the functionality of the playlist: keep a list of things to play!. Don't confuse it with what you want it to do (keep track of what's in a picture)!!

Actually, Media Jukebox v1.0 through v7.0 had "Playlists" and "Categories".  In version 8.0, we merged them into one system that could do both.  

So, actually playlists are designed with organization in mind.  And playlists inside of playlist groups make a cool way to do "one to many" organization with Media Jukebox.

Just ask Lise (she wrote the help) -- this is at the core of how she organizes in MJ...

[Phydeaux]

I seem to have lost track of the original question!!!!

Apologies to all.

Yes, the organisational benefits of playlists are wonderful. I use them too, but mainly, I must add, from a "smartlisting" point of view. Now with the customisable fields, I'm really in a quandry as to how to proceed. Perhaps all this angst is just my insecurities showing!! With power comes great responsibility, or something!!!

No, I don't think that a playlist should be kept in a file tag. Images are not big and only a few tags would increase their size more than is necessary.

How compatible would these tags be with other apps?

If you lose your DB, tough luck for not having backed it up!

Right. I'm going now!

[michel]

Matt said

The problem is that a single field doesn't work very well in the tree, because you'll get entries like "mom", "cat", "mom, cat", "cat, mom" which isn't probably what you'd want -- you'd just want "mom" and "cat".

Probably you didn't read this post (you answered it though...) explaning a way to display "mom" and "cat" in the tree using a single field with multiple values:

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=beta;action=display;num=1036768998

[Cmagic]

No, I don't think that a playlist should be kept in a file tag. Images are not big and only a few tags would increase their size more than is necessary.  

How compatible would these tags be with other apps?

I follow Phydeaux on that. If the necessary information for playlists (categories) should we saved in the image then it seems to me a requirement that those informations be saved in a compatible way. The only "quite compatible" meta-data formats for jpegs today are EXIF and IPTC.

The success of the audio part of MJ was in part due to its strong support with existing audio format: mp3/id3, ape/apetag, mpc/apetag, ogg/ogg tag, etc...
I think it should be the same for the imaging part if MJ wants to play a similar role as a digital image management and organization tool.

Check out one way of organizing digital images (quite similar to MJ playlist) with Imatch, an image organizing tool :
http://www.photools.com/imcats.html
and
http://www.majid.info/radio/stories/2002/06/29/imageCategoryManagementWithImatch.html

If managing a specific image tagging standards with MJ is too much then don't save anything in the jpeg images and let's live with MJ database alone otherwise if you want to save meta-stuff in the image then use existing compatible mechanisms.

Just my humble opinion.

have a nice day.

[Phydeaux]

Hi again, Matt.

I must say that given the "function" of a playlist, and despite everyone's use of playlists to organise, it still seems a counterintuitive way to do things. I constantly ask myself: when to use a custom field, and when to use a playlist.

Yes, yes, yes: the simple answer is use a playlist when there is more than one option that can go into a field...

So here is my epiphany: Have a "custom field" which, when defined, asks for a playlist group. It appears in the list, with all other properties, but when you click on it to enter a value, a pop-up window appears with the playlists within that group with easy check boxes next to them. The user can then just click on the checkboxes that are relevant.

So I may have a playlist group called "People" and under this group, I have playlists for every person I know (which seems messy....). When I click on the "People" field in the properties pane, a pop-up appears giving me the option to choose the playlists that I want it to belong in...

That could work. It would certainly make the ability of selecting playlists (or, should I say, categories) for a song to belong in, a much easier process, and also serves to bring the playlists "into" the file's properties, thus making it less counterintuitive...

However, then we get back to the issue of what to do with the tags in the files....

Sigh. I am actually torn on this one now. I'll start a new discussion about tags just now... There are a few things that I'd like to add which are not appropriate for this column!!

P.

Help? Advice? Am  taking this too far? Should I seek professional "assistance"?

[V-Man]

Can I just add that I would love it if MJ copied the keyword system used in Jasc After-Shot for images and video. That is, to allow the user to create their own hierarchy of keywords (independently of the images), eg:

[-] People
  [-] Family
     [-] Parents
     [-] Siblings
  [-] Celebrity
     [-] Music
     [-] TV/Film
     [-] Sports
[-] Vehicles
  [-] Car
[-] Style
  [-] Photo
  [-] Cartoon

Then to allow the user to select a combination of these keywords to assign to each video/image, by clicking to place a checkmark next to the desired items.

To search for items, you would check a set of keywords and MJ could list all files that have all of those checked keywords assigned.

It sounds complicated but I've tried the After-Shot demo and it really makes sense

[NoCodeUK]

Seems like a good idea if it wouldn't fudge up the dbase...

Adam

[Matt]

Phydeaux and Michel

You both have good alternatives to the playlist system we have now.  However, since what we have works fairly well, we won't be making big changes in this area for version 9.0 -- there's just no time.

Cmagic

If you do a search here, you'll find a bunch of discussion about image tags.  We created our own XML JPEG tagging system because EXIF/IPTC was too limited.  However, we'll probably add at least read-only support for those tagging formats to 9.0.

V-Man

You can do exactly what you're describing using playlist groups with playlists in them.  Searching is simple using the search wizard, and assignment is quick too using the "Playlists" pane in the dockable file properties window.

[Cmagic]

Hi Matt,

We created our own XML JPEG tagging system because EXIF/IPTC was too limited.  However, we'll probably add at least read-only support for those tagging formats to 9.0.

Good to hear that MJ9 will read EXIF/IPTC because my camera produces EXIF and I have more than 1000 jpegs
with IPTC infos and categories (keywords)  from Photoshop, Imatch or Exifer.

thanks for the infos

Listening to: 'You Can't Fool Me' from 'Beyond Cool' by 'Lucky Peterson' on Media Jukebox