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[Richee]

I have been using Media Center for years and have barely touched the power contained within.
Recently I attempted doing something with Playlist Groups.
I created a Group first. Then I created a playlist in it with Dark Side of the Moon.
I added a smartlist in the group with a bunch of albums I wanted to play randomly while Dark side of the Moon played as an album.
The problem is, while DSOTM shows in the playlist consecutively the other albums ranomize per album, not per the playlist.
There is no documentation on how Playlist Groups work which makes it almost impossible to figure out.
Examples would be nice as well.
Does anyone use this function to good effect?

  Hope some one can help.  Rich

[marko]

I use playlist groups for just two purposes:

1. Organisation
I have an "Audio" group which contains all audio related smart lists and playlists.
There's another of the same for images.
Then there's the MC managed "Recent Playing Nows" and pix01 groups.

on the root of the playlists tree, besides the default Recently Played and Top Hits lists, I have a "!Search Index!" smartlist that I use for quick searches not suited to the search bar and a "Played Today" smartlist that does just that.

Finally, I have a group there called "View Scheme Groups" which exists for the following reason:

2. Use in view schemes
It's possible to create a playlist group, add some smartlists and/or playlists to it, and then add that group as a pane in a view scheme.
Each playlist then shows as a selectable item in the pane.
The introduction of "Search List" panes in MC12 made this step redundant in many ways, but it does still have some useage value. The thing is, playlist groups created specifically for use in a view scheme will almost certainly never be visited directly, so I place them as inside this "View Scheme Groups" group to keep the tree tidy and uncluttered.

Now, other people that use MC to serve up playlists to external media players will probably use playlists and their groups in a much more serious way....
anyone?

marko.

[Richee]

I guess I had a different idea of the purpose of Playlist Groups. Looks like you use them as an organizational tool.

I thought they were that plus a way to combine different types of playlists so all you needed to do was send a group to playing now with the characteristic of each playlist being maintained, but it doesn't do that exactly.

Add a single smartlist for 100 random songs to a playlsit group. Clicking on the smartlist gives you a random selection, but clicking on the group reacts quite differently. Looks like it randomizes by album. A small number of files selected will look random but if you increase the number to the upper limits of your library you will see it is grouping albums together but in a random manner. I want it to maintain the playlist character. That way I can control the group by what playlists I have in it. Hope that makes sense.

I really don't have a large amount of playlists so I can see no benefit in using it for keeping clutter down.
But I can see how it could be useful in that regard for someone with lots of playlists.

Thanks for your input.
rich