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[Skillsadam]

A little help for a mini smartlist. What I wanted to do was to put, for instance, 3 gigs of random complete albums on it. Got random albums, no problem, but I can't constrain the size of the playlist. Is there a way to apply a size limit to the ENTIRE smartlist?

skills

[lee269]

In the search box click the drop down, Add Modifier/Limit/select limit to x megabytes. If you prefer typing in the search box, "~s=x"

(AFAIK this works. I note the 'ENTIRE' - is this where your problem is? I think the importance of the order of smartlist criteria changed in a recent build. So if you are having problems, this might account for it, ie you limit the size of individual albums rather than the overall list. I cant find a link to prove this.)

Hope this helps.

[Skillsadam]

What I'm finding is that no matter the order or parentheses, I can't control the size of the finished playlist. So, for instance:

modifier:full album limit:100 megabytes

actually gives me a wildly varying amount of music from 12 gigs to 36 gigs. That's what I'd expect, but if I do this:

(modifier:full album) limit: 100 megabytes

I get about 1 gig of music. I would have thought the second one (with other stuff thrown in) would give me a playlist of random albums. Do I need to switch them around, that hadn't occurred to me until I wrote this post.... I'll try that and see what happens.


edit - nope, doesn't change anything

skills

[lee269]

On the face of it, it seems to me that what you have described should work. However I cant find the darned original thread about this. Smartlist evaluation order has changed, though. See a reference here.

[EDIT: Found it! It was build 10.0.70]

2. NEW: Search post process commands (start with ~) are evaluated in order, and multiple of the same command can be used. (some advanced smartlists may need to be tuned to work)

After all this, Im a bit confused. I cant figure out intuitively what should be done. Nothing new there for me But there is obviously now an order of precedence for modifiers. If I get a chance tomorrow Ill try playing around with some smartlists.

[Skillsadam]

I'm still using 9, so that doesn't apply to me I guess. That's for the help, though. Guess I'll just keep pecking away.

skills

[lee269]

Ah, OK - sorry. I guess that was a red herring.

Im using 10 so I cant compare. I do have a couple of smartlists using the limit criteria to keep them to time limits which I think have been in there since v9, but none with full album also. Plus there are the auto smartlists 'one audio cd' and 'one data cd' which use the limit (if they are in v9).

A bit more messing comes up with this:

limit:3 tracks Modifier: fullalbums limit:200 Mb

This almost works - full albums below the Mb limit, but I seem to have to fine tune the track limit to make sure I get near the Mb limit. Occasionally I get cut off albums. Actually Im not sure this really works .

Overall, I think we need a smartlist expert here. Sorry I couldnt work it out for you.

[Matt]

You need version 10 to do what you want.

Otherwise you may be able to do it with nested smartlists in v9.1, but I'm not sure.

[lee269]

Matt

Thanks - I wondered about nested lists. Can you explain exactly how to do it in v10? Im not sure that my suggestion is totally correct for v10.

[JimH]

You can drag one list into another.

[Skillsadam]

I'll try nested lists then and see if that works.

Thanks guys!

skills

[Matt]

I meant one smartlist referencing another by nested smartlists.

This is less necessary in MC 10 now that post-process items get evaluated in order.

"modifier:full album limit:100 megabytes" will work as you want in MC 10.  In MC 9.x, it'll run the two in the reverse order of what you want in this case.