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[Marko]

Is there some sort of "programming" issue that prevents the "send to" funtion from including smartlists as well as playlists?  This strikes me as an odd ommission in the program.  It would really accelerate workflow (for me) if you could right click on an album and "send to" a smartlist, which I vastly prefer to using playlists.  Once the library becomes big enough, the smartlist creation process gets really sluggish as you wait for the "list" of albums/artists/etc. to come up.  A right click method of creating smartlists would eliminate this issue.

Larry

Need more explanation of what you're trying to achieve here. it sounds like you're saying you want to right click on file/files and "send to" smartlist. Do you mean you want that file included in the smartlist, so you want the send to command to add the rule to the smartlist? If that's right, I can't see it happening, but you never know...

playlists are simply a list of files and there locations. try dropping an .m3u playlist file onto an open notepad window and you'll see what I mean.

smartlists are "saved searches" in a way, but the beauty of them is that the search rule is run on the database at the time you ask to display the contents of the smartlist. therefore, after creating and saving a smartlist, any files you later add to your library that meet the search criteria will also be included in the smartlist search results.

or have I missed the point entirely?

[gpvillamil]

Perhaps what he is describing is a feature that you see in some e-mail programs when you creating filters. In Outlook it is called something like "make rule from this message", and it basically lets you define a rule based on aspects of the message. Kind of a query by example function.

In the case of smartlists, I suppose if you sent a song or an album(s) to a smartlist it might pop up a dialog box with checkboxes, like:

[ ] All artists like this
[ ] All albums like this
[ ] All genres like this
...

So if wanted to create a smartlist with songs by a subset of artists, I could just select a single album by each one, send to smartlist, and tick the box for "All artists like these" or something like that. Then MC would build the corresponding rule.

[lalittle]

Thanks for the responses.

I understand the distinction between playlists and smartlists, but what I'm wondering is why there isn't a way of using "send to" with smartlists like there is with playlists.  When you create a smartlist, for example, that includes everything by a certain artist, you "add rule" and select "artist."  A new box pops up that includes every artist in the library.  You scroll down to the one you wish to select, and you check it's box.

Why not just allow us to use a right click "send to" command to do the same thing?  You right click, "send to" a smartlist, and it does the exact same thing I just desribed -- i.e. it creates a rule that includes the artist.  This would be FAR easier than scrolling through a lists of hundreds or thousands of items in order to check a certain box.  You would have to edit the rule to change it to "exclude," but this would still be easier than scrolling through a huge list.

This just strikes me as an odd omission, which is why I'm wondering if there are certain specific reasons for not offering this funtion.

Larry

[bjsolem]

Why not just allow us to use a right click "send to" command to do the same thing?  You right click, "send to" a smartlist, and it does the exact same thing I just desribed -- i.e. it creates a rule that includes the artist.  This would be FAR easier than scrolling through a lists of hundreds or thousands of items in order to check a certain box.  You would have to edit the rule to change it to "exclude," but this would still be easier than scrolling through a huge list.

Not a bad idea but how would MC know that it is the artist that you want to send to the smartlist, not the genre, the year, the bpm, the rating or some other piece of all the tagging info.  

I have no smartlists based on artists, all of mine are based on rating, genre or something similar.

[rocketsauce]

And how would MC know what to do if you're sending the file to a smartlist that has a more complex set of rules than just a specific artist? Some of my smartlists have 6 or 8 rules.

Rob

[TestingGuy]

I'm a relatively new MC user, and I think I understand the issue here.

As an example, consider this scenario:

1) Open MC & open your Audio library.
2) filter your view of your library by selecting a genre, a few Artists, & maybe a rating.
3) you can see the results of this query in your listing below the query fields.  

I believe the issue/question here is:  since I've defined a query, why can't I right click on one of the fields of my query & say "Send To:  Smartlist" .

Today, if you right click on a field of the query, you get "Send To:  Playlist" and its clear that this static list of songs is used to define a new playlist.  

The idea is that I just created a query using the databse field filters, that query works the way I want it to.  Now, I'd like to save that query as a SmartList.

I think this would be a very useful (and intuitive) means of creating SmartLists.  The existing means is not as simple and doesn't allow a new user to be confident in what he will really capture with his stored query.

[lalittle]

Not a bad idea but how would MC know that it is the artist that you want to send to the smartlist, not the genre, the year, the bpm, the rating or some other piece of all the tagging info.

Because you right clicked on an "artist,"  not on one of those other fields.  It takes whatever you right click on and uses this for the item in the smartlist.

I have no smartlists based on artists, all of mine are based on rating, genre or something similar.

Why not be able to right click on ANY of those items and "send to" a smartlist?

And how would MC know what to do if you're sending the file to a smartlist that has a more complex set of rules than just a specific artist? Some of my smartlists have 6 or 8 rules.

It simply uses the exact same logic that it would use if you added a rule using the wizard.  If you already have a smartlist and you click the little drop down arrow in the"search box," a window pops up where you can "Add Rule."  What I'm saying is why not use a right click capability to do the exact same thing.  Technically, this is simply a fast way of achieving the same result -- i.e. rather than "Add rule / Artist" and selecting an artist (or a year, or a genre, etc) from a "list," you just add it from a right click menu by "sending to" a smartlist.  Whatever type of field you click on, THAT's the one it uses in the rule.  It would use "include" by default, but you could simply click on the rule and change it to "exclude" if you wanted to.

Larry

[rocketsauce]

Ok, I understand. I guess it was a little confusing when you said "send to smartlist", because it's not really the same as "send to playlist". Maybe "Send as rule to smartlist" (or something similar) would be more descriptive.

I guess it could be easier. In order to right-click on a field to send as a rule, though, wouldn't it have to be displayed as a column in the track view? Very few of my smartlists are based on common fields like artist, year, album, etc. Most of them are based on other file criteria, like number of plays and custom fields, which I don't need/want shown as columns.

I don't really use right-click send to anyway...well...cuz I don't have anything to send anything to and once my smartlists are created, I don't really edit them very often and I don't have any playlists.

Rob

[lalittle]

Ok, I understand. I guess it was a little confusing when you said "send to smartlist", because it's not really the same as "send to playlist". Maybe "Send as rule to smartlist" (or something similar) would be more descriptive.

I agree that that would have been a better way of describing what I meant.

I guess it could be easier. In order to right-click on a field to send as a rule, though, wouldn't it have to be displayed as a column in the track view?

Perhaps, but this simply means that if you wanted to add a rule that dealt with one of these "other" fields, you'd have to create the rule the old fashioned way -- i.e. the way you do it now.  This is no reason to not make it easier to create the smartlists using the more common fields however (which is what I typically use.)

Also, you could always add the capability to create rules by right clicking in the "tag info" screen, where these fields DO show up.

I don't really use right-click send to anyway...well...cuz I don't have anything to send anything to and once my smartlists are created, I don't really edit them very often and I don't have any playlists.

Personally, I use smartlists almost exclusively.  Given my needs, smartlists simply offer better "management" capabilities over playlists.

Larry

[Zarius]

No comments one way or another on "Send rule to smartlist"... however if you've just built up a nice search in another view, you can simply cut (or copy) and paste it (or any part of it) into a new (or existing) smartlist using the usually cut & paste commands or 'copy' from the dropdown arrows menu (which I believe copies the whole string).  [size=-2]Note however that up to and including 10.0.43 shift-delete doesn't cut, it only deletes.[/size]

[lalittle]

It seems like you can't cut/paste certain parts of a given smartlist, however -- i.e. you can only cut the whole string.

Larry

[Zarius]

Select the text you want and use ctrl-c to copy. (if it's a rule that's gone into the different mode, just right click the part in question and click "Edit by typing".)