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Author Topic: Q: Favorites and Smartlists  (Read 952 times)

mshaw

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Q: Favorites and Smartlists
« on: September 25, 2004, 09:55:40 am »

I have MC 10.0.155, not yet purchased.

I'm a little confused about the meaning of "favorites" as in View ->
Navigation -> Organize Favorites, and how the term is used in the
Smartlist Wizard.  In the former it seems to be a special library
category, and in the latter it seems to mean "all tracks with a rating
of 4 or 5."  Is this correct?

Anyway, though, my major question is this: I want to create a
smartlist to shuffle-play all of my favorite CDs in order.  I do NOT
want to shuffle the tracks.  In other words, as a simple example,
assume I've ripped 10 CDs into the MC audio library, and 3 of
these (A, B, and C) are my favorites.  Such a smartlist might shuffle
those as, say, B-A-C.  So playing the smartlist would mean I'd hear
all tracks from B, in order, followed by all tracks from A, in order, and
finally all tracks from C, in order.

Can I do this?  I've already figured out how to add complete albums
to my "favorites," but, again, this appears to be something different
from the "favorites" as understood in the Smartlist Wizard....

Oh, one final question: I believe I saw, on the Nirvislist mailing list,
something about being able to create and edit smarlists directly,
with a text editor such as Vim or (blech) the Windows notepad.  Is
this true?  Where do I put/find the smartlists for manual editing?

Thanks!
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antolod

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Re:Q: Favorites and Smartlists
« Reply #1 on: September 25, 2004, 09:07:28 pm »

Here is a list that will play 10 random albums, in album order, and selected based on rating of "favorite" which seems to select any album that has at least 1 track rated 4 or 5.  

[media type]=[audio] [Genre]=[Rock] ~sort=[Random] ~nodup=Artist ~n=10 ~a ~sort=[Album] [Rating]==4,=5

You could create a custom field to designate your favorite albums, it looks like only 1 song in the album would need to be tagged to get the album selected.  I am seeing album selected with only 1 song rated 4 or 5 in the above list.
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mshaw

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Re:Q: Favorites and Smartlists
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2004, 11:52:46 pm »

Thanks for the help.

I've experimented with this a bit, and there seem to be two
problems: first, the limit (~n=10) seems to go by tracks, not
albums.  That's easy enough to work around, though; I just
increased it to 100.

Secondly, however, it seems to select the albums not in random
order but rather in library (i.e. alphanumeric) order.  At least
that's how they got ordered in the playlist.  Since I was only
experimenting with three albums, I thought maybe it was
coincidence.  But one thing I'm obviously going to want with
this is to reshuffle the albums between playing sessions, and
I thought Player ->  Reshuffle (control-R) would do that, and
in addition correct the coincidental library-ordering of the list.

No such luck, though.  The resultant playlist seems stuck in
library order.

I tried building the smartlist both with the wizard as well as
by typing in what you provided, verbatim (the only thing I
left out was the genre).

Maybe this is more of a MC usage problem than a smartlist-
construction one, but being a newbie I just don't know.

Thanks for any additional help....
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mshaw

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Re:Q: Favorites and Smartlists
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2004, 12:21:56 am »

UPDATE: Okay, I think I may have figured out the previous
problem (at least the more serious one).  I took out the
second sort term, and now every time I select the smartlist
the albums are in a different order - with the tracks all IN
order, per album, just the way I want them.

I must say I'm very surprised that this is not a default playback
option - it seems so very basic to me, and yet none of the CD
jukebox players I've had have ever even offered it.  Oh well.

I'll fiddle with it a bit more and if I run into trouble with it again
I'll come back here - and I'll check this thread over the next few
days in case there are any other suggestions.

Thanks again!
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rocketsauce

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Re:Q: Favorites and Smartlists
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2004, 12:40:38 am »

I'm a little confused about the meaning of "favorites" as in View->Navigation -> Organize Favorites....

It's a way to save favorite or often used locations/view schemes/playlists of the library tree in order to navigate to them quickly. Basically, they're bookmarks and aren't related to the favorites item that is in the smartlist wizard.

Rob
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