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[groovyd]

I have a huge collection of music.  When I select a song to Play (with play doctor) it seems to recycle the same 2 dozen songs over and over again.  Often the songs do not even relate very well.  All my tracks are fully tagged via Jaikoz and Music Brainz and JR analyzed.  Everything is available for it, tempo, genre, year, etc. and yet it picks really poor choices and repeats them frequently.

[MrC]

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=88428.0

[groovyd]

... how is that helping me?  Here is the playlist it generated ... it isn't even close to random really, about a dozen different songs there repeated 4 times

[wig]

Mr C was pointing out that others have experienced the same problem. Here's another example.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=65319.0

From my perspective, Play Doctor has remained relatively unchanged for the last 3 years. I hope it gets some love in future versions.

I still think a 'no repeats' option would be a major improvement. Ditto for the rest of my requests in that thread.

[groovyd]

agree... no repeats should be the default behavior, especially since i have plenty of music to pick from

[groovyd]

i'm switching back to using iTunes until this and the volume leveling gets fixed.

[JimH]

Tell Play Doctor to use more variety.  Use Options to the right of the Play Doctor input.

[groovyd]

Where do I find the Play Doctor options?  I saw it once around when I first started the playlist but now I see only the currently playing album art in its place.  Is there a way to bring up the play doctor options at any time?  Is there a menu where I can set the play doctor options which doesn't go away ever? Tools -> Options? I don't see it anywhere.

[JimH]

Use Options to the right of the Play Doctor input.

[6233638]

Tell Play Doctor to use more variety.  Use Options to the right of the Play Doctor input.

Using more variety seems to loosen the restrictions on what can be played (e.g. genre) but I have not found it to help much with avoiding repeats.
Because it's pulling from a larger selection of tracks, there may be less, but I'll still see the same track repeated three or four times in a playlist every so often.
 
When set to "Lots of Variety" I don't find Play Doctor selections to be very good at all. If I start a playlist with an slow-paced ambient electronic track, that's what I want to listen to. I don't want rock music mixed in with it for example.
Additionally, selecting "Some Variety" instead of the default "More Variety" has a tendency to just play tracks from the same artist or exactly the same genre, rather than including related genres.
 
 
I don't think anyone wants true randomness with music playback either (I seem to recall an older version of iTunes having a slider that you could set between more/less random) and I didn't think Play Doctor was supposed to be random anyway.
It would be nice if the "randomness" could be tweaked in certain parts of the program.
 
This is a common issue for game designers where the game states that something is supposed to have an "80% chance" and the player expects that it should work most of the time rather than being based on truly random dice rolls where it may not work 10/10 times if you're unlucky, rather than working 8/10 times.
People think they want randomness, but they actually don't.
 
 
Another issue I have with Play Doctor - which is at least partially related to this, is that there is no way to remove upcoming tracks from the playlist.
It should be possible to "remove" tracks from the playlist, which would strike them out and make changes to the upcoming playlist as though they had been skipped.
 
While I think the issue of repeating tracks needs to be addressed, it would be less of an issue if the tracks could be removed before they start playing.

[groovyd]

Perhaps I was unclear... I do not see the 'Play Doctor input' or options anywhere.  Perhaps a screenshot highlighting what must be right in front of me that I just don't see?

[MrC]

See attached screenshot.  You'll see these when you select a player under Playing Now, and playback is Stopped.

[JimH]

It's in Playing Now when playback is stopped.

[groovyd]

ah thanks guys... i knew i saw it there once but my playback is never stopped which is why i couldn't find it ever again.  almost makes sense. cheers. 

yeah of the available options i don't see a 'don't repeat' option unfortunately.  tried the not played today option and i still get the same song repeated over and over.  must only follow the rules while building the playlist the first time and not update it as it goes.  would be really nice a 'do not repeat' option that is of course selected by default or a 'not already in playlist' filter option.

[6233638]

If you stop playback, the Play Doctor list becomes a regular playlist, rather than being dynamic.
You need to start another Play Doctor session if you want the playlist to be updated when you skip tracks, or make changes to the rules.

[pcstockton]

yeeaaaaaah... It doesn't work very well anymore.  Radio play worked better in my opinion.

The fact that you can ONLY change the "variety setting" when stopped, in Playing Now, is very limiting.

i want to LOVE it but I can't.  But it is so close to being fantastic that I wait....

-p

[groovyd]

+1 - This is the most important feature for me in a music player, to be able to select a song and get a day of music around that song without repeating itself over and over.  Play doctor comes close and I think adding a couple more options would greatly improve it.  Actually just the one option is enough, 'do not repeat'.  Ambitiously the second thing I would change is to re-analyze the tracks in the list after each play since fields like 'last played' change and should be re-evaluated but this would not be strictly necessary with 'do not repeat' setting.

[JimH]

Seed the list with a larger group of songs.

[groovyd]

i chose 5 songs for the playlist and of course those were repeated 5 times each.

[JimH]

You can try changing the settings to get more variety, but this won't change anytime soon.

If you skip a track, MC learns from that.

[glynor]

i chose 5 songs for the playlist and of course those were repeated 5 times each.

I wonder under what circumstances this happens, because it certainly doesn't happen with my Library.

Can you describe what songs you picked?  What do they have tagged as Genre (are they the only ones of their kind in the Library)?  How many total tracks to you have, and are they somewhat rationally tagged?

[mwillems]

I wonder under what circumstances this happens, because it certainly doesn't happen with my Library.

Can you describe what songs you picked?  What do they have tagged as Genre (are they the only ones of their kind in the Library)?  How many total tracks to you have, and are they somewhat rationally tagged?

FWIW, I get repeats almost everytime I make a playdoctor playlist from a song (as opposed to an artist or a genre).  I have about 50k music files and the genre tags are mostly (about 95%) populated. I use the variety setting just below "lots" ("more variety" I think?).  I've definitely used a song with a genre tag that has hundreds of albums in it, so there's no shortage of options for play doctor to work from.

If I use an artist as the seed, I don't always get repeats of songs, but every fourth or fifth song is typically from the seeded artist which (if I only have an album or two by the artist) leads to repeats.  The only seemingly "safe" setting for no repeats at my house is seeding based on a genre.

I try to use skips to train play doctor when I think of it, but my main use of it is during parties when I'd like to generate a playlist and walk away, so it's been slow going and hasn't improved the repeats so far.

[6233638]

...
I try to use skips to train play doctor when I think of it, but my main use of it is during parties when I'd like to generate a playlist and walk away, so it's been slow going and hasn't improved the repeats so far.

If we could "skip" (remove) tracks before they started playing, I think that would solve a lot of the issues with Play Doctor.
My biggest issue with it is not the repeats - because once you skip one or two of them, it usually sorts itself out. The problem is that you have to wait for the track to start playing before you can do that.

[groovyd]

I have around 30k tracks, all were tagged using Jaikoz and then double checked manually for accuracy.  Then I performed the JRiver analysis as well so they should be fully setup.  I choose any songs which I want to listen to immediately that represent my feeling at the moment.  It always does the same thing and repeats like nuts.  I think realistically there should be a simple 'no repeats' checkbox on the play doctor options, it really isn't hard to iterate over a list and remove repeats or exclude them from being inserted in the first place. I am a computer programmer by the way, so no need to teach me why that is harder then it sounds.  Should take all of a half a day to implement and test.  Send me the code and I will add it for you.

[glynor]

I use Play Doctor in nearly exactly the same way, and I very rarely get repeated tracks.  I mean, every once in a while, but certainly not every time I use it.  There's got to be something odd about your particular Library, or the filters on Play Doctor, that is triggering the condition.

What do you have the Play Doctor settings set to, exactly?
You didn't answer my question about Genres.  One of the main ways Play Doctor selects related tracks is via Genre.  If you have only a few files in each specific Genre (perhaps possible if you heavily sub-categorize your Genres, then you'd be likely to get repeats.  Play Doctor wants to fill 100 tracks.  If it can't find 100 tracks, then they'll repeat.

So, something is causing the algorithm to get stuck, if it is more than occasional.

That's a more important problem to solve.  I have no idea how complex it'd be to add this kind of filter, or if there is some reasoning (beyond limited time and other priorities) not having it already.  But it wouldn't help if it made Play Doctor lists result in only 4-5 files, once it removes duplicates.

[mwillems]

I use Play Doctor in nearly exactly the same way, and I very rarely get repeated tracks.  I mean, every once in a while, but certainly not every time I use it.  There's got to be something odd about your particular Library, or the filters on Play Doctor, that is triggering the condition.

What do you have the Play Doctor settings set to, exactly?
You didn't answer my question about Genres.  One of the main ways Play Doctor selects related tracks is via Genre.  If you have only a few files in each specific Genre (perhaps possible if you heavily sub-categorize your Genres, then you'd be likely to get repeats.  Play Doctor wants to fill 100 tracks.  If it can't find 100 tracks, then they'll repeat.

So, something is causing the algorithm to get stuck, if it is more than occasional.

That's a more important problem to solve.  I have no idea how complex it'd be to add this kind of filter, or if there is some reasoning (beyond limited time and other priorities) not having it already.  But it wouldn't help if it made Play Doctor lists result in only 4-5 files, once it removes duplicates.

Glynor, to add a few more data points, I have a genre with 4500 tracks in it and no subgenres.  I tried a series of 10 different songs from that genre to use as test seeds.  All the results below are in the first hundred tracks.

Eight out of ten repeated the seed track at least once.
Four out of ten repeated the seed track at least twice.
One out of ten repeated the seed track four times.

All of the playlists contained at least one other repeated track (other than the seed track); six out of ten had multiple repeated tracks.  One particular seed track produced a list with more than 20 duplicates (the list was almost one fifth repeats).

All this is from tracks drawn from the same genre with 4500 files to choose from. That's pretty typical of my play doctor results (although I often get many more repeats with genres that only have, say, 1000 files in them).  So, at least in my case, I don't think limited tracks per genre is the issue causing the repeats. 

That said, the non-repeat picks were pretty good, and I like play doctor a lot except for the repeats.  I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to add a +1 for a "no repeats" option (recognizing that there are higher priority issues for the devs)

[groovyd]

I use Play Doctor in nearly exactly the same way, and I very rarely get repeated tracks.  I mean, every once in a while, but certainly not every time I use it.  There's got to be something odd about your particular Library, or the filters on Play Doctor, that is triggering the condition.

What do you have the Play Doctor settings set to, exactly?
You didn't answer my question about Genres.  One of the main ways Play Doctor selects related tracks is via Genre.  If you have only a few files in each specific Genre (perhaps possible if you heavily sub-categorize your Genres, then you'd be likely to get repeats.  Play Doctor wants to fill 100 tracks.  If it can't find 100 tracks, then they'll repeat.

So, something is causing the algorithm to get stuck, if it is more than occasional.

That's a more important problem to solve.  I have no idea how complex it'd be to add this kind of filter, or if there is some reasoning (beyond limited time and other priorities) not having it already.  But it wouldn't help if it made Play Doctor lists result in only 4-5 files, once it removes duplicates.

Actually it would help.  I would see it could only find 5 files and I would know my library is not tagged very well. It could even tell me that directly. Genres are all selected using MusicBrainz database, so it is what it is. Looking at the Genres they don't look very sub-divided at all, they look appropriate. Is this something I would re-classify by hand? I don't think so.  It took Jaikoz days to get it all right.

Rules are 'lot of variety' and 'Last Played not in last 7 days' thinking this might help it kick them out as soon as they are played but the playlist unfortunately does not auto-update between tracks as iTunes does. It should. That wouldn't be a big programming job either.

[glynor]

Glynor, to follow up on my post above, I have a genre with 4500 tracks in it and no subgenres.  I tried a series of 10 different songs from that genre to use as test seeds.  All the results below are in the first hundred tracks.

Eight out of ten repeated the seed track at least once.
Four out of ten repeated the seed track at least twice.
One out of ten repeated the seed track four times.

Unfortunately, your results are useless without an accounting of the Play Doctor settings (including the Files to Include search).

I just tried the same.  I used 10 different songs from three different test Genres on my system.  Two of these had between 3-5k tracks in the Genre.  However, my Electronic genre is broken into sub-genres and the particular sub-genres I used had fewer tracks.  By the way, I think it treats Sub-Genres as completely distinct.  (That stinks, by the way.)

Play Doctor was set to:
Lots of Variety
And the Search was:

Code: [Select]

-[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Podcast],[Test Clip] -[Genre]="Christmas" -[Genre]="Holiday" -[Genre]="Kids" -[Album]="Christmas" -[Album]="Holiday"
On all but two tries, I got no exact duplicates of the seeds (it did re-include a "song" twice but they were different copies off of different albums).

The two tries where I got duplicates were seeded by:
* Funky Pipecleaner by µ-Ziq (in Electronic\Drum and Bass which has ~800 tracks, and I have 82 µ-Ziq tracks).
* Toxygene by The Orb (In Electronic\Trance which has ~900 tracks, and I have 363 tracks by The Orb).

Incidentally, I also used:
A Journey to Reedham by Squarepusher (in Electronic\Drum and Bass, and I have 93 Squarepusher tracks) and it did not repeat.

Again, I'm not suggesting they shouldn't add a "no duplicates" processing step as suggested.  If it was there, I'd probably turn it on (and it would make using the lower variability settings more useful), but I really don't see it that much, unless I seed from something very "unique" in my Library.

[glynor]

That wouldn't be a big programming job either.

This is an aside.*

Guessing at this, in any circumstance, without knowing the details of the system used and the algorithm at hand is naive at best and obnoxious at worst.  And, it just makes the developers angry and less apt to listen to you (in this case developers who do listen to a ton of feedback here and Programming Sucks).  All changes, no matter how trivial, risk adding bugs.  All feature additions, no matter how trivial, increase complexity for the users, make the application less approachable, and can impact performance.  Everything has tradeoffs.

If you're not looking at the source, you don't understand it, or you can't prove how to do it without regressing one iota in performance, then you don't know so stop guessing at complexity levels.

* To be clear, I don't work for JRiver, so I don't know at all how they feel about this request.  I've seen people ask for it before (when Play Doctor was brand new).  I have no clue why it isn't there.

[mwillems]

Unfortunately, your results are useless without an accounting of the Play Doctor settings (including the Files to Include search).

I just tried the same.  I used 10 different songs from three different test Genres on my system.  Two of these had between 3-5k tracks in the Genre.  However, my Electronic genre is broken into sub-genres and the particular sub-genres I used had fewer tracks.  By the way, I think it treats Sub-Genres as completely distinct.  (That stinks, by the way.)

Coincidentally my search was the same as yours (it's the default I think):

Code: [Select]

-[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Podcast],[Test Clip] -[Genre]="Christmas" -[Genre]="Holiday" -[Genre]="Kids" -[Album]="Christmas" -[Album]="Holiday"
My variety setting was "more variety."  I have no sub-genres.  Sorry for not including that in the original post, I thought I had it in there but must have deleted it in drafting.

Play Doctor was set to:
Lots of Variety
And the Search was:

Code: [Select]

-[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Podcast],[Test Clip] -[Genre]="Christmas" -[Genre]="Holiday" -[Genre]="Kids" -[Album]="Christmas" -[Album]="Holiday"
On all but two tries, I got no exact duplicates of the seeds (it did re-include a "song" twice but they were different copies off of different albums).

The two tries where I got duplicates were seeded by:
* Funky Pipecleaner by µ-Ziq (in Electronic\Drum and Bass which has ~800 tracks, and I have 82 µ-Ziq tracks).
* Toxygene by The Orb (In Electronic\Trance which has ~900 tracks, and I have 363 tracks by The Orb).

As an aside I love both µ-Ziq and The Orb.  I used an Orb track as one of my seed tracks  

Incidentally, I also used:
A Journey to Reedham by Squarepusher (in Electronic\Drum and Bass, and I have 93 Squarepusher tracks) and it did not repeat.

Again, I'm not suggesting they shouldn't add a "no duplicates" processing step as suggested.  If it was there, I'd probably turn it on (and it would make using the lower variability settings more useful), but I really don't see it that much, unless I seed from something very "unique" in my Library.

Fair enough. We managed to get very different results with somewhat similar settings (your variety setting was more "variant" than mine it's true). I find that "lots" doesn't give me very good results (all over the map); I really like the results I get with "more variety", except for the dupes.  But that's the only obvious difference.

Thanks for taking the time to do some testing, though; looks like I'm going to be living with "lots" of variety for the time being  

[glynor]

I guess part of my point was if we can figure out what triggers it, maybe a better solution is a tweak to the algorithm, rather than a dumb "no dupes" post-processing step (reducing the length of the list).  But, to do that, you have to figure out under what conditions the problem occurs, and when it doesn't.

Fair enough. We managed to get very different results with somewhat similar settings (your variety setting was more "variant" than mine it's true). I find that "lots" doesn't give me very good results (all over the map); I really like the results I get with "more variety", except for the dupes.  But that's the only obvious difference.

Yeah, I keep the "default" one set to Lots.  Perhaps because I felt (long ago at some point, perhaps influenced by beer, when that option got set last) it was too "constricted".  Perhaps because I was annoyed by dupes.  I can't remember.  I don't even know what the defaults are (I've had stuff in there since before there were options).

I will say, though, that I really like how it works out with Variety set to Lots, and further "constrictions" in the rules.  I have a bunch of saved Play Doctor lists, and I use these the most (particularly because I can use them through JRemote with a touch of trickery).  I've explained these elsewhere, but for example, I have one that is:

Name: The Girl/Boy List
Search: Aphex Twin
Variety: Lots
Search:

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Audio] -[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Podcast],[Other] -[Rating]=1 [Genre]=[Electronic],[Electronic\Ambient],[Electronic\Drum And Bass],[Electronic\Dubstep],[Electronic\Electro Swing],[Electronic\House],[Electronic\Industrial],[Electronic\Trance],[Experimental]
And others...

Name: Some New, Some Popular
Search: Blank
Variety: Lots
Search:

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[Audio] -[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Other],[System],[Test Clip] playlistid==643011798,=658284581,=194281342,=398063784 ~mix=1000,20%,{playlistid==643011798},20%,{playlistid==658284581},,20%,{playlistid==194281342},40%,{playlistid==398063784}
Those playlists point to some "top hits" Smartlists of different varieties (by total number of plays, by rating, etc) and to one "recently imported" Smartlist.

These work pretty brilliantly.

One thing I would very much like to see with Play Doctor is a new setting, in addition to Variety, to set the bias for Discovery vs. Hits (which you could get from the Rating and Number Plays fields, of course), something like my "New and Popular" list described above.

iTunes Radio has this setting, and I it works pretty darn nicely.  It is a simple three-point slider (kind of like the some, more, lots setting we have now for Variety) but it slides between "popular/hits" and "new discovery" mode.  Of course, they're using aggregate iTunes Match and Genius data to consider everyone's statistical information, probably bias from "the Industry", and sales in iTunes.  That gives them a much richer data set to mine than any one user's Library (no matter how well tagged).  But, I think they probably already have some arbitrary weighting to this kind of "category" built into the Play Doctor algorithm.  It would be very handy to be able to more easily "bias" it, just a touch in either direction, towards more "high-rated" tracks and (in other cases) towards more "unknown" ones.

In any case, with those results and that kind of search, I'd say that it does need some kind of tweak.  I guess I just didn't notice because I've been keeping mine set on Lots for my "pick a song and seed" mode Doctor usage.

[groovyd]

Guessing at this, in any circumstance, without knowing the details of the system used and the algorithm at hand is naive at best and obnoxious at worst.  And, it just makes the developers angry and less apt to listen to you

I am a programmer and I know what it takes... as an aside.  I really don't expect them to listen to me.  They will or they will not sell their product eventually based on whether people appreciate it and are willing to look past their limitations or not.  As it stands I am sure I will not be upgrading to the next version until these things are fixed. I may be obnoxious, other people are as well.

[groovyd]

I guess part of my point was if we can figure out what triggers it, maybe a better solution is a tweak to the algorithm, rather than a dumb "no dupes" post-processing step (reducing the length of the list).  But, to do that, you have to figure out under what conditions the problem occurs, and when it doesn't.

A dumb 'no dupes' step is really all I would like to see.  Sometimes the dumb things are the smartest things.

[Matt]

Play Doctor already is very unlikely to repeat.  So if it's repeating, I think it means the set of files to choose from is too small.  The Genre value is important, so check that.