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[6233638]

Normally, I am not someone that just puts their playlist on shuffle - I tend to listen to albums from start to finish. (and maybe skip a track if I really don't like it) But there are times when you just want background music, or want to mix things up a bit.

So I tried out the Play Doctor for the first time a couple of nights ago, and it was basically perfect. Other than it playing the song I seeded the playlist with a second time about ten tracks down, and then twice in a row about five tracks later, I was able to leave it playing music for hours and never had to touch it, and it brought up some tracks that I didn't even remember having in my library. There was a good variety in the tracks being played which kept things interesting, and nothing that felt "out of place" from the playlist.

Prior to using Media Center, I had been going for the "easy" solutions when tagging files, so most of them really just fall into simple categories like "Rock, Electronic, Acoustic, Alternative, Pop, Classical, Film Soundtrack, Game Soundtrack etc."

But I have noticed that the Play Doctor was really only staying inside the category that the initial seed is from. Now this worked out great the other night, but I have tried the Play Doctor a few times with other genres of music since then, with very mixed results - even using that initial seed isn't giving me a playlist nearly as good as that first time I tried it, and I suspect that this is partially due to the fact that I was rating a lot of the tracks as they were being played.

It steps outside the seed genre more if you change to "lots of variety" and while I like it doing that, it was adding a lot of tracks that didn't "fit" with the rest of the playlist.


So what I'm wondering, is how to tag files more effectively for better results when using the Play Doctor.
"Electronic" for example, covers a massive range of music, and there are many derivatives/sub-genres that you can categorize your music with.

What I don't know is what the best way to go about this is. Do I tag files with:
Genre: Electronic; Trance
or
Genre: Electronic
Style: Trance
For example? Does Play Doctor look at Style at all?

This is a particularly big problem with Film/Game Sountracks where the type of music can vary wildly inside those genre - it might be ambient music, rock, acoustic, electronic, chiptune etc.
Once or twice it did pull in a couple of tracks from Film Soundtracks that fit in well (I assume because I have other albums from that artist in the same genre as the seed) but that was rare.


I was also wondering about the way that ratings are weighted in the Play Doctor. The way I rate my files is:

• I don't like this song. Don't play it.
• It's all right - I don't mind hearing it, but I wouldn't pick it out to seed a playlist with for example.
• I like this song.
• I really like this song.
  
• Doesn't get any better than this. (there are very few tracks with this rating)

The majority of my library that I have rated so far fits into the 2-4 range. It's probably mostly 2-3 star ratings with a selection of four stars, and only a handful that have a five star rating. Honestly, I would be fine with a 1-4 range rather than 1-5.

But this seems to be placing emphasis on unrated tracks over 2-star rated tracks, which I think is what's messing up the Play Doctor results I'm getting now compared to what I had the first time I tried it.

And rating in general has always been a problem for me. I like this track, but is it a 3 or a 4? I like it better than the last track which had a three star rating, but I don't know if I like it as much as the one before that, which was four stars. A rating system that was based around you hitting a "better/worse" button, rating things on a much more granular scale "behind the scenes" and figuring things out based on that would suit me a lot better. It's maybe not as useful as "absolute" ratings when you are only playing an album at a time, but seems like it would help to improve the way that Play Doctor works.


And similarly, there are some songs which I would rate highly, but wouldn't want showing up in a random playlist. Is there a good solution for that? I don't want to exclude the album/artist or genre, and tagging them with a specific keyword is a tedious process. I still can't think of a better solution than iTunes uses.


I've also experienced a few issues when using the Play Doctor:

• If I use Remove Duplicates from Playing Now, it stops scoring out any tracks that are skipped. I'm not sure if that means it's stopped doing Play Doctor tasks, or if it's just a visual bug.
  
• I can't remove tracks from a Play Doctor list - the option is disabled. I would prefer it if "removing" a track was the same as skipping it in the playlist - but in advance of it actually playing.
• I am still having issues with Zone Switching in general, but I now have three zones set up:
  • Audio - This plays music at its original sample rate, sequentially, uses album-based ReplayGain stops when it finishes playing.
  • Video - This only exists because I was fed up with losing my "now playing" list for music any time I started to play a video.
  • Doctor - This resamples everything to the maximum supported, uses track-based ReplayGain, removes silence, fades between tracks (though I'm not sure the fade option is working correctly between files of different types/sample rates) and just keeps playing music until it's stopped.
  My issue is that even though I have Zone Switch set up to send anything that is not a video through the "Audio" zone, if I have been playing music in the Doctor zone, stop playback, and then just go back to my library and hit Play on an album, it's sent to the "Doctor" zone, rather than my "Audio" zone.

[JimH]

Normally, I am not someone that just puts their playlist on shuffle - I tend to listen to albums from start to finish. (and maybe skip a track if I really don't like it) But there are times when you just want background music, or want to mix things up a bit.

So I tried out the Play Doctor for the first time a couple of nights ago, and it was basically perfect.....
It steps outside the seed genre more if you change to "lots of variety" and while I like it doing that, it was adding a lot of tracks that didn't "fit" with the rest of the playlist.

It will learn from your skips.

[6233638]

It will learn from your skips.

There doesn't seem to be any way to remove or "skip" files before they are played though. If I seed with a track from Rammstein, and it has Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the playlist, I don't need to hear it to know that it doesn't belong. (though depending on how the analysis works, I can actually see a reason why it might have thought that would fit)

[wig]

It steps outside the seed genre more if you change to "lots of variety" and while I like it doing that, it was adding a lot of tracks that didn't "fit" with the rest of the playlist.

So what I'm wondering, is how to tag files more effectively for better results when using the Play Doctor.

The best way I've found to shape a Play Doctor playchart to my preferences is by using smartlists.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=79859.msg543077#msg543077

Some suggestions for your particular issues:
 
 - Use the ~mix modifier to set the proportion of songs based on star rating. I like to mix in a small number of songs I haven't heard for a long time, and songs from new albums.
 - Create your own 'Disabled Tracks' field and exclude that from the settings. Or do the opposite, and create a 'Enabled Tracks' field and only allow tracks with that tag.

I've also experienced a few issues when using the Play Doctor:

If you stop Play Doctor, or manually add a track, it drops out of Doctor mode.

I'd also like a 'no duplicates' option for Play Doctor, but haven't found a way to achieve it. It won't honor a ~nodup=[Artist],[Name] option in the rules, for example.

[Matt]

Just a note that a rating of 3 is equivalent to unrated with regards to Play Doctor.

It's like this:
1) I basically never want to hear/see this
2) I don't like this very much
3) I like it (which is why it's in my library) [same as unrated]
4) I like it a lot
5) I love it

[6233638]

The best way I've found to shape a Play Doctor playchart to my preferences is by using smartlists.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=79859.msg543077#msg543077

Some suggestions for your particular issues:
 
 - Use the ~mix modifier to set the proportion of songs based on star rating. I like to mix in a small number of songs I haven't heard for a long time, and songs from new albums.
 - Create your own 'Disabled Tracks' field and exclude that from the settings. Or do the opposite, and create a 'Enabled Tracks' field and only allow tracks with that tag.

Thanks for the suggestions, looks like I have a lot of reading ahead of me. Hadn't really looked into smartlists. (I never use playlists, which is why the Play Doctor is so appealing)

I'd also like a 'no duplicates' option for Play Doctor, but haven't found a way to achieve it. It won't honor a ~nodup=[Artist],[Name] option in the rules, for example.

I don't necessarily want no duplicates, but only allow it for 4-5 star rated tracks, and once every couple of hours.

Just a note that a rating of 3 is equivalent to unrated with regards to Play Doctor.

Well that explains what I've been seeing now since rating a lot of tracks, as 2 stars is equivalent to unrated with the way I've been grading them.

It's like this:
1) I basically never want to hear/see this
2) I don't like this very much

See, this I don't understand. I either like a track, or I don't. It doesn't make sense to specify how much I don't want to listen to something.
And if I do like a track, then I want to say how much I like it.
But I still feel that some "better/worse" system would work better than a few stars in actually creating a ranking system between all the thousands of tracks in my library. Stars are fine as a coarse adjustment, but a better/worse system should help fine-tune the ratings of everything without actually having to think about it.

But that's the main reason most tracks in my library don't have a rating at all yet - it usually involves too much thought/interaction if you're just listening to an album while doing something else. There's no quick way to rate a track without bringing MC to the foreground, and even then, I would much rather say better/worse than look at the rest of my ratings for that album and see how it ranks among them.

[Matt]

See, this I don't understand. I either like a track, or I don't.

We could switch to a two star rating

With regards to what stars mean, I think we're following the standard here.  For example, Amazon uses five star ratings.  Both 1 and 2 star reviews are not good.

[6233638]

We could switch to a two star rating

Haha. Well I'm not meaning rating tracks as "good/bad" but "better/worse" than the last played. What I envision would essentially give it an absolute ranking in your entire library. (but you could still just hide it behind the star ratings)

Say you have already rated an album and the first two tracks have a three star rating.
Track #1 might already have a position of #5340/12,000 in your library.
Track #2 may have been sitting at #6128 but if you rate it as better than the last, it gets bumped up to #5339 from where it was before. (or it gets bumped up in the rankings somewhat, and the first track moves down - that's where things get tricky)

It makes more sense when you're using the Play Doctor (any maybe it's already doing something like that behind the scenes) and shuffling tracks than it does playing the albums sequentially, but even so, as long as the previous track has a rating, hitting better/worse has a meaning.

Now of course I'm sure it would be far more complicated than that behind the scenes, but you probably get the idea.

Better/Worse is an easy decision. Deciding if a song is a three, four, or five, if the last track was a two, is too involved.

With regards to what stars mean, I think we're following the standard here.  For example, Amazon uses five star ratings.  Both 1 and 2 star reviews are not good.

Yeah, I guess so. It just seems like you're wasting a star.

I don't see any point in differentiating between "I don't want to hear it" and "I absolutely hate it" - either way it's not getting played. That only leaves "Average, Good, and Great" - which is fine I suppose, but I'd rather use four stars to rank how good something is.

[wig]

Thanks for the suggestions, looks like I have a lot of reading ahead of me. Hadn't really looked into smartlists. (I never use playlists, which is why the Play Doctor is so appealing)

I don't use Playlists either, but Smartlists are a whole other animal. They are dynamic and highly configurable. When combined with the skipping power of Play Doctor, I get a customized, but unique, experience each time.

If you haven't tried it yet, click the Options menu next to the Play Doctor field and choose Select Rules For Files that Can Be Included to see what you're missing. You can set rules to exclude 1 and 2 star songs from Play Doctor with no reading at all 

[glynor]

Well that explains what I've been seeing now since rating a lot of tracks, as 2 stars is equivalent to unrated with the way I've been grading them.

I should say...

This is also the Star Rating system I use.  Mine equate roughly to:

1 = Bad, but I don't want to delete it for some reason (usually to keep an album complete)
2 = General (aka same as unrated)
3 = Better than average
4 = Very, very good.  The best track of a good album, for example.
5 = The best songs of all time.  Timeless.  Immortal.  Songs I still know by heart 10 years later.

When I "newly rate" a song, I follow a couple informal rules.  Mostly, you can't go right from unrated to five star, and it is very difficult to go from unrated to four stars.  Generally, if I'm listening and I find a song I "like" I'll give it three stars.  Then, after a while of hearing it again and again, if I still really like it, I'm "allowed" to bump it to four stars.  This prevents me from having lots of brand new tracks end up with four and five star ratings that later (after the "newness" wears off a bit) I'd want to downrate.

To get to five stars, you have to be one of the best songs of all time, as far as I'm concerned.  If a particular artist has more than one or two five-star rated tracks, then that's really saying something.

I know others do the same (it has been discussed in other threads).  Having two "tiers" of "bad" ratings doesn't make much sense.  I do have two tiers of "badness".  Either I rate it one star (and most of my views and fancy smartlists filter these out), or I delete it.  If it is bad, it is bad, and usually I delete them.  But, if I'm hovering over that delete key and I'm not quite sure for some reason, I throw a one star at it.

It might be worth thinking about switching the logic to consider three stars "better than par" and two stars as equivalent to unrated.

[6233638]

…are you me?


At least I'm not alone in the way that I'm rating tracks.

The only thing is that even if I don't like a track, I will keep it in my library for the sake of completeness. (I never buy individual tracks, only albums)
The exception is if I get the soundtrack for something bundled in with a purchase, and if I don't like that, I have no qualms about deleting it in its entirety. I don't like having loose tracks - though perhaps that might change if I start making more use of the Play Doctor.

[6233638]

Getting back to tagging, how should genres be handled? Is it best to have one main genre and use style for subgenres, or tag files with multiple genres?

Genre/Style would certainly make things easier, but I don't know if the Play Doctor only looks at Genre.
I see that Style only accepts strings, and not lists though - is there any way to change that?

[drmimosa]

I'm guessing

Getting back to tagging, how should genres be handled? Is it best to have one main genre and use style for subgenres, or tag files with multiple genres?

If you dig around in the hidden Appdata folders for JRiver, you can see a folder called "Last.fm Similar Artists."

Hmmm...Play Doctor's secret brain? In any case, you might research how the Last.fm genres are set up and test how using their genres works with Play Doctor.

For my use of Play Docotor, tagging files with multiple genres works best.

[kstuart]

I was sure this thread was going to be about:



and whether the modern series is a separate series or not...

[glynor]

I'm guessing
If you dig around in the hidden Appdata folders for JRiver, you can see a folder called "Last.fm Similar Artists."

Hmmm...Play Doctor's secret brain?

I don't think Play Doctor has anything to do with LastFM.

That's probably related to MC's LastFM integration.  I could be wrong, though.

[6233638]

I think he might be right actually. I've never used the Last.fm service, but as soon as I start a Doctor playlist, that folder gets created with five or so XML files.
It's probably not all the Play Doctor is doing, but it definitely seems to be using that information.

[6233638]

Getting back to it, is there any way to have [Style] accept multiple values?
Does the Play Doctor even consider [Style], or does it only look at [Genre] ?
If there are multiple Genres (it does accept multiple values) does it actually consider anything past the first one?

[MusicBringer]

I like this thread - four stars at least 
I am keen to improve my Play Doctor selections.

When tagging I use multiple genres a lot.

For example: Electronica; New Wave; Live Concert

I separate using a ;
Is that correct?

I have never used Style.
Should I consider using Style -what's the benefit over using multiple genres...

[6233638]

When tagging I use multiple genres a lot.

For example: Electronica; New Wave; Live Concert

I separate using a ;
Is that correct?

I have never used Style.
Should I consider using Style -what's the benefit over using multiple genres...

Separating items with a semicolon is the right thing to do in [Genre] as that field is set up as List (semicolon delimited)

This means that if you enter: Electronica; New Wave; Live Concert

Media Center reads that as three separate Genres:

Electronica
New Wave
Live Concert

My issue with [Style] (and [Catalog #] for that matter) is that it's set up as String which is essentially plain text - there's no way to add multiple styles. (and no way to change it to a list field)
If you entered that same: Electronica; New Wave; Live Concert into the style field, Media Center would just see it as a single Style called "Electronica; New Wave; Live Concert" - not three separate styles.

There is nothing wrong with entering multiple values into the Genre field - it's how I have my files tagged at the moment.
But it seems to me that the best way to have files tagged would be to put them in a single Genre (or maybe two in some cases) and keep Genre limited to "simple" categories so that when I go to the Genre view I only see broad categories such as Classical, Electronic, Pop, Rock etc. and double-clicking on them would list their sub-genres ("style") if I want to be more granular about what I am looking at.

If you just put everything into the Genre tag, that top-level view could end up with a lot of entries, rather than maybe 10 main categories.


An example of this type of categorization is how AMG lists their Genres and sub-genres. Rather than give everything its own genre they have:

• Electronic
  • Downtempo
  • Electronica
  • Experimental House
  • House
  • Jungle/Drum'n'Bass
  • Techno
  • Trance

They actually go a step further and have Styles a level under Sub-Genre, but that's far too granular for me - I don't really care about the distinction between Styles and Sub-Genres.

I suppose an easier solution might be to simply create a [Sub-Genre] field that is set up as a list, but as it's not a stock field in Media Center, I'm guessing that would be totally ignored by the Play Doctor - but that only matters if [Style] isn't already being ignored.

Alternatively, it seems that there is an "unofficial" way to handle sub-genre, so that if you tag files as: Electronic\New Wave; Live Concert that would only show as two Genres, with New Wave as a sub-genre of Electronic.

My issue with tagging files that way is that you have to type a lot more if you have multiple sub-genres, and it's not as easy to read. I'm not sure how files tagged that way would be handled by other media players either.
For example The Chemical Brothers - Surrender is listed as Electronica, acid house, big beat, techno, neo-psychedelia on Wikipedia (which is maybe going too far) but if I wanted to use that, I would probably want to tag my files as:

Genre: Electronic
Style: Electronica; Acid House; Big Beat; Techno; Neo-Psychedelia

But using the "unofficial" way of entering sub-genres it would be:

Genre: Electronic\Electronica; Electronic\Acid House; Electronic\Big Beat; Electronic\Techno; Electronic\Neo-Psychedelia


When I am actually browsing music, I usually only care about the main Genre field, which I keep limited to broad categories like that - but sometimes it's useful to be able to look only at a specific sub-genre and I was wondering if tagging the files that way might also help improve the results that you get from the Play Doctor.

If it doesn't actually make a difference to how Play Doctor works, I may not even bother changing things from how they are set up now.

And maybe I am approaching this the wrong way. It wasn't until I actually started using Media Center a few months back that I cared about going beyond broad Genre categories at all really, so perhaps someone with more experience knows of a better way to handle things.

[InflatableMouse]

What aboot Mood? I personally really like the idea of using mood to determine a playlist. It makes more sense to me than genres, as your mood largely determines to which genres you would want to listen to. Building a playlist based on 'new wave' limits your choices to that genre and styles, but a mood would include completely different genres you would want to listen to as well.

But I guess it just adds to an already impossible task: filling all the fields with proper data to use.

[6233638]

What aboot Mood? I personally really like the idea of using mood to determine a playlist. It makes more sense to me than genres, as your mood largely determines to which genres you would want to listen to. Building a playlist based on 'new wave' limits your choices to that genre and styles, but a mood would include completely different genres you would want to listen to as well.

But I guess it just adds to an already impossible task: filling all the fields with proper data to use.

Oh, I agree - I've been thinking of a way to incorporate Mood since I saw the field there. But it's just creating even more work, and even more decisions I don't want to have to make.
Rating tracks is already too much work. (which is why I like the idea of just being able to hit a "better/worse than the previous track" button)

That's actually what I like about the Play Doctor - I can pick a track that is the "mood" I'm wanting, and it generally does a good job sticking to it.
But once I started rating files - with two stars as the "baseline" value, rather than the three stars it turns out Media Center expects - the quality of those results got worse.

And with my files only tagged with very broad Genre categories, setting Play Doctor to Lots of Variety was a bit too varied - which is what started me looking into the best way to tag my files, and how to incorporate sub-genres in a way that Play Doctor understands - if it's even looking at the way my files are tagged, and not just pulling information about the current artist/track from Last.FM

[InflatableMouse]

And with my files only tagged with very broad Genre categories, setting Play Doctor to Lots of Variety was a bit too varied - which is what started me looking into the best way to tag my files, and how to incorporate sub-genres in a way that Play Doctor understands - if it's even looking at the way my files are tagged, and not just pulling information about the current artist/track from Last.FM

That is easily tested with a relatively small library and changing the genre field to something obviously different and rating it 4 stars to make it use it and see what happens.

I once planned on making a Python script to pull genre, sub genre (style) and mood info from AMG per album and writing tags to the files but I was just learning python, it proved to difficult for the time I had available to learn it.

[vagskal]

Getting back to it, is there any way to have [Style] accept multiple values?
Does the Play Doctor even consider [Style], or does it only look at [Genre] ?
If there are multiple Genres (it does accept multiple values) does it actually consider anything past the first one?

I do not know about Play Doctor, but there is an easy way to have a ; delimited list in the stock [Style] field.
Make a custom list data type and edit type field called [Styles] for example. Click OK to save the field and reopen the Manage library fields dialog and change that field to calculated data with this expression: [Style]&datatype=[list]
Show the [Styles] field in the grid and enter your styles there. They will propagate as a ; delimited list to the stock [Style] field, that can be saved to the file tags if you want. Use [Styles] in panes.

The stock [Mood] and [Publisher] fields work the same way. I do not know about the stock [Catalog #] field.

[MrC]

I once planned on making a Python script to pull genre, sub genre (style) and mood info from AMG per album and writing tags to the files but I was just learning python, it proved to difficult for the time I had available to learn it.

That all-around-good-guy MrC did something like this recently.  Modifications would be trivial.

[InflatableMouse]

That all-around-good-guy MrC did something like this recently.  Modifications would be trivial.

You didn't! 

I'm reading it now  .