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Author Topic: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle  (Read 5555 times)

Gatherum

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[18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« on: January 16, 2013, 06:48:32 pm »

Hello there. I have a small feature request to make...

Back when the Play Doctor was first implemented, it give me the ability to simply hit the Play button without entering anything into the field and what would result was a completely random shuffle of all my music, to include Last.fm tracks. These days, I have to type in an artist to get the thing running, but the shuffle selection naturally becomes narrower because it will try to play stuff that is similar to what I enter. Which is all well and good, of course. Sometimes, I like listening to a more specific kind of music. Other times, though, I could go for anything.

Any chance that the completely random shuffle capability could be brought back?
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arrowc

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2013, 08:36:21 pm »

When you first start if you are in audio section just hit play, it plays just as it used too. Random if you have random selected
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Matt

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2013, 08:49:12 pm »

Yes, as arrowc said, you can focus the 'Play Doctor' box, type nothing, and hit enter.  It'll mix everything, but consider ratings, learn from skips, apply the Play Doctor filter, etc. like all Play Doctor playback.
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glynor

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2013, 09:39:36 pm »

Yes, as arrowc said, you can focus the 'Play Doctor' box, type nothing, and hit enter.  It'll mix everything, but consider ratings, learn from skips, apply the Play Doctor filter, etc. like all Play Doctor playback.

I actually use this quite a bit.

I have a bunch of saved Play Doctor lists that have fancy "smartlist-style" rules under the Rules for Files that can be included (Search) setting, and which then just run a Play Doctor on the results.

For example, here's a simple one I have called "A Few Good Songs":
Code: [Select]
[Media Type]=[Audio] -[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Other] [Rating]=>=3 -[Genre]=[Other],[]
But you can get even more complex.  So here's another big shuffle.  It uses a ~mix= command do set percentages by genre (with a big number of tracks to get a large data set) and then does a Play Doctor list on them:

Code: [Select]
[Media Type]=[Audio] [Removable]=0 -[Keywords]=[noipod],[live],[multichannel] -[Rating]=1 [Channels]=<=2 -[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Other],[System] ~mix=1350,6%,{[Genre]=[Alternative]},10%,{[Genre]=[Americana]},6%,{[Genre]=[Classic Rock]},10%,{[Genre]=[Electronic]},3%,{[Genre]=[Folk]},15%,{[Genre]=[Indie]},4%,{[Genre]=[Jazz]},6%,{[Genre]=[Pop]},8%,{[Genre]=[Progressive]},10%,{[Genre]=[Psychedelic Rock]},4%,{[Genre]=[Punk]},6%,{[Genre]=[Reggae]},3%,{[Genre]=[Rock]},3%,{[Genre]=[Trance]},6%,{[Genre]=[Urban]}
You can use the ~mix= command with any Tag in your Library, so you can mix certain percentages of Ratings, and Genres, or Artists... Basically anything you can think of, and then apply a Play Doctor to it, and you can get some neat effects, and ever-changing "themed" shuffles.  Play with the number of tracks you include in the "source list" and the amount of variety you use in the Play Doctor logic to see what you get.
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MrC

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2013, 09:49:49 pm »

How did you come up with those mix percentages! :-)
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glynor

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2013, 10:10:45 pm »

How did you come up with those mix percentages! :-)

I have a spreadsheet.

That's a very generalized one that I use for an "all music" type Playlist (it is similar to the one I use as my "master list" to sync to my phone).  I have others that have far fewer Genres included which are more specialized.

For example, I have one called "Strings and Things" that is:
50% Americana
30% Folk
15% Psychedelic Rock
5% Classic Rock

I give them corny names that are easy to remember and understand for anyone who might wander up and want to use them.

Another handy tip, along the same lines...

Play Doctor Driven Views:

You can save these fancy Play Doctor lists to your Playlists section in your tree, but it isn't always easy to access them cleanly from Theater View and remote devices (like JRemote or DLNA players).  But this is easily solved.  First, you have to save the Play Doctor lists to a folder in your Playlists section (obviously you don't want to recreate those each time).

Then, in Standard View, make a new "folder view" (mine is called "Mixes") under Audio in the Tree, uncheck Allow Tree selection in the View settings.  Under your new folder view make some blank views (I actually add [Genre] as a category to mine, usually, for Standard View, but they can be just blank), and then in their individual Set Rules for file display (Search) settings, just use the Playlists is any filter to point the view at the Play Doctor list, like this:



Then, every time you open the view, it'll be filled with a new shuffle of the tracks pulled from the Play Doctor list.  So far, not super useful (though in a nice spot that is easier to find with the rest of your Library).  But then comes the real genius.  You can import these views into your Theater View and Media Network setups easily via their relevant options under:

Options > Theater View
Options > Media Network > Advanced > Customize Views

Just import the view and remove any Categories you added and voila... You have Play Doctor in JRemote!

A handy setup tip for doing this:  After you make your first "Play Doctor Driven View", you can just drag-drop it in the Tree onto the parent "folder View" you made to hold them all.  It'll ask you to move or copy.  Pick Copy, and you have a duplicate.  Then just open it up, edit the Play Doctor list it points to, and rename it, and you have another one.  Repeat until you finish all of the cool Play Doctor lists you made.  I did a whole bunch of these on a rainy Saturday afternoon during nap-time a while back.  It didn't take long once you got the swing of it down.

Lastly, you can do the same exact thing with regular Smartlists if you want to sync some of these Play Doctor driven lists to your iDevice using prod's MCiS add-on.  It doesn't handle the Play Doctor lists directly properly, but if you just make a Mixes folder with Smartlists that point to them under your "iTunes Lists" folder, and sync that, it works perfectly and you get ever-changing Play Doctor driven lists in iTunes.

Pretty sweet.
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wig

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #6 on: January 17, 2013, 06:26:35 am »

Yes, as arrowc said, you can focus the 'Play Doctor' box, type nothing, and hit enter.  It'll mix everything, but consider ratings, learn from skips, apply the Play Doctor filter, etc. like all Play Doctor playback.

Matt, when I do this my 'seed' song is always from the same album (In Search Of The Lost Chord by the Moody Blues). I'm using the default settings. 

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drmimosa

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #7 on: January 17, 2013, 12:34:39 pm »

I've used a similar (but with simpler results) technique to customize the Car Radio buttons, using custom playlists to limit the files available for Car Radio. It's easy to do from the "set rules for files that can be included."

I also find that seeding Play Doctor with very broad Genres works great in combination with my basic basic ratings scheme. I use 4 stars for favorite albums, 5 stars for favorite tracks, and one star for Steely Dan (just kidding.) Haven't found any use for 2 and 3 star ratings yet.

Play Doctor seems to work very well with this rating scheme and Genre seeds. I hit a Car Radio button set up for the genre "Rock and Pop Music," and basically get a personal top forty radio station.

Great thread, and thanks Glynor for posting some new ideas on how to integrate Playlists with Play Doctor, with some expression tips to boot. 
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Matt

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #8 on: January 17, 2013, 01:57:51 pm »

Matt, when I do this my 'seed' song is always from the same album (In Search Of The Lost Chord by the Moody Blues). I'm using the default settings.

I can't reproduce this.

Could you try Play Doctor > Options > Reset Settings to Defaults...

That will rule out some weird filter for the files to include causing trouble.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

wig

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #9 on: January 17, 2013, 04:17:23 pm »

I can't reproduce this.

Could you try Play Doctor > Options > Reset Settings to Defaults...

That will rule out some weird filter for the files to include causing trouble.

Yep, I've done that multiple times. Doesn't help. But I did create a new library and I can't reproduce the behavior there.

Is there someway to reset the learning (skips, etc) for Play Doctor on my main library?
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wig

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2013, 06:24:01 pm »

UPDATE: My new library finally finished importing all my files, and now it has the same behavior as my original library. Every seed song is from In Search Of The Lost Chord.

Any thoughts? They're just plain old 128bit mp3s. Is there some sort of hidden tag JRiver is focusing on?
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gappie

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2013, 06:30:31 pm »

UPDATE: My new library finally finished importing all my files, and now it has the same behavior as my original library. Every seed song is from In Search Of The Lost Chord.

Any thoughts? They're just plain old 128bit mp3s. Is there some sort of hidden tag JRiver is focusing on?
i guess murakami would love that as a start of a story.. but anyway, unseeded doctor plays here well. are the second and the rest of the list also the same everytime?
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wig

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2013, 06:42:08 pm »

i guess murakami would love that as a start of a story.. but anyway, unseeded doctor plays here well. are the second and the rest of the list also the same everytime?

No, but it's mostly related stuff (Zeppelin, Dead, Zevon, etc).

I removed the album from my library and unseeded worked fine. I added it back in and Lost Chord dominates again.

Do I have a haunted digital album?
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MrC

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #13 on: January 17, 2013, 06:45:52 pm »

I noted the same play doctor list sans-seed in reply #3 here:

    http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76607.msg518948#msg518948
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gappie

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #14 on: January 17, 2013, 07:09:35 pm »

No, but it's mostly related stuff (Zeppelin, Dead, Zevon, etc).

I removed the album from my library and unseeded worked fine. I added it back in and Lost Chord dominates again.

Do I have a haunted digital album?
a haunted album, nice. and the lost chord dominating again, sounds more like robert johnson or some hardcore jazz/avantgarde, but would not expect that from the moody blues. maybe some silly changes as a test would give some insight for where to find the source. like, well silly, change the band name, or the album name. i dont know, something wild. anything to put a stake through its heart.
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wig

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #15 on: January 18, 2013, 01:09:46 am »

a haunted album, nice. and the lost chord dominating again, sounds more like robert johnson or some hardcore jazz/avantgarde, but would not expect that from the moody blues. maybe some silly changes as a test would give some insight for where to find the source. like, well silly, change the band name, or the album name. i dont know, something wild. anything to put a stake through its heart.

I did some testing. It's the word Search in the album title that's triggering the bizarre behavior.

Any track with Search in the album title gets jumped to top of the Play Doctor seed list. If I remove Search from the album title of all the tracks, seedless Play Doctor works fine.
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gappie

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #16 on: January 18, 2013, 01:43:19 am »

now that is easy to test.i named an album search, and indeed. doctor will always start with it...

 :)
gab
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Matt

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Re: [18.0.106] Completely random Play Doctor shuffle
« Reply #17 on: January 18, 2013, 04:29:06 pm »

That was a weird one.  Nice detective work.

Next build:
Fixed: Starting Play Doctor playback with an empty seed was not working nicely in some cases.
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