Topic: smart shuffle? (Read 4301 times)

Gregg D · « **on:** February 11, 2002, 10:20:24 am »

I love media jukebox. It is by far the best player organizer I have come across yet. There is a feature that i would like to added if possible. It would be like a smarter shuffle. I am in the AV system installation business and this would be a great feature for my customers. What I would like to see added would be a way to "rank" each song say from 1-10, with maybe a default of 5. Depending on the ranking media jukebox would create a shuffle playlist that more heavily emphasizes song that have higher rankings. The advantage of this would be more popoular songs ("10's") would get played more often, and songs that are liked but should not be heard quite as often not won't. What do you think?

ZRocker · « **Reply #1 on:** February 11, 2002, 10:29:59 am »

I think you should add this request to the wish list at \http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/wish_list/wish.pl .

dragyn · « **Reply #2 on:** February 11, 2002, 11:13:45 am »

There's already the rating system (0-5). Maybe you can make smartlists to show 3-5 and then shuffle that.

JimH · « **Reply #3 on:** February 11, 2002, 11:30:25 am »

Gregg,
Nice to have someone from the "real" audio business here. Let us know where we've gone wrong.

The ratings dragyn mentioned are in MJ8, now in beta, and available in a thread on Interact here.

Matt · « **Reply #4 on:** February 11, 2002, 12:59:26 pm »

Hey Gregg, hang with me because this just became possible, but it's not super simple. (requires tomorrow's build of MJ8)

Let's say we want 100 songs -- 10 bad ones, 30 normal ones, and 60 great ones

Make a playlist group like: "Our Crazy Experiment"

Then make three child smartlists:

Bad Songs: rating=1,2 ~n10
Normal Songs: rating=3 ~n30
Great Songs: rating=4,5 ~n60

Now when you click on "Our Crazy Experiment" you'll see what you want.

Also, for this to work right, you of course need that many songs in each cluster. (i.e. 60 songs that are "great")

Hope that makes some sense...

-Matt
(p.s. again, this won't work until tomorrow's build)

dragyn · « **Reply #5 on:** February 11, 2002, 01:37:32 pm »

This is cool. I'v been playing with it a little bit.

Matt · « **Reply #6 on:** February 11, 2002, 01:51:28 pm »

Dragyn, it only sort of works today.

It'll work better tomorrow for searches-in-searches. (smartlists referencing other smartlists)

Also, you can do ~t74 to limit to a CD's worth of music, etc.

Later.

-Matt

dragyn · « **Reply #7 on:** February 11, 2002, 02:02:50 pm »

ok, I don't get that technical with searches in searches.

BTW: My email isn't working. Haven't got any messages in the last day or so. Not sure if you saw the email I sent to you but I can't recieve anything. They cut me off from talking to anyone but myself.

Gregg D · « **Reply #8 on:** February 11, 2002, 04:48:19 pm »

Can I get a copy of the beta software and try this out. Also I appreciate your help. FYI, I was using PCDJ but they don't seem to care about my ideas and they barely answer the email. Keep up the good work. I would love to be a beta tester.

Gatobrit · « **Reply #9 on:** February 11, 2002, 04:54:17 pm »

See the thread v8. build 203. Follow the link and off you go.

Scronch · « **Reply #10 on:** February 11, 2002, 05:01:35 pm »

Matt, can the ~n operator be applied to genres? If so, then we would have our "genre-weighted playlist", right? Scronch

Gregg D · « **Reply #11 on:** February 11, 2002, 06:09:05 pm »

Matt - Can you explain the smart lists a little more. I have made a playlist group, then added the 3 smartlists the put in the search parameters. But I keep getting a message that asks me to select songs. It would seem I am missing something.

Thanks,

Gregg

Matt · « **Reply #12 on:** February 11, 2002, 06:43:38 pm »

Hey Gregg,

As you look at each individual smartlist, you'll see a list of what's in it.

The smartlists I listed assume that you've rated your tracks. (they start as ? and can be assigned a 1-5 rating)

Maybe play around with the wizard "Add Rule", "Edit Rule" to get a feel for it.

Then, if you feel like that makes sense, try the ~n10 or ~n80 trick in the smartlists. Like I said though, this won't really work right until tomorrow.

When you click on the playlist group, all you're saying is "hey, show me all the files from all the playlists / smartlists in this group"

Just holler if you have any other questions.

-Matt

(p.s. yeah Scronch, you can make any kind of fancy weighted playlist you want -- but it's not all that friendly of a system yet)

Gregg D · « **Reply #13 on:** February 11, 2002, 06:58:10 pm »

Matt - I forgot to add the "n" after the "~". Thanks

I now see that when I do this I am given a list of the number of songs I specified 10 bad 30 medium and 60 great. I guess from here I add all those lists to the now playing and I've got my shuffle of 100 mixed songs. Right?

Matt · « **Reply #14 on:** February 11, 2002, 07:00:04 pm »

Yeah Gregg,

Or else right-click on the playlist group and pick "Play"

Or else make another smartlist that includes those three smartlists (using the wizard) and play that smartlist

Take care.

-Matt
(remember, it won't give you the expected results until tomorrow's build)

Bryan · « **Reply #15 on:** February 12, 2002, 05:28:38 am »

Is someone working on a document that lists these Tips & Tricks for later reference?

Bryan

Cmagic · « **Reply #16 on:** February 12, 2002, 06:20:30 am »

Yeah,
Smartlists rules are getting interesting and we'll definitely need some sort of documents, tips'n tricks on that.
By playing with ~n### and ~t### I just found out that MJ actually
performs a random pick among tracks from the whole library.
I created a "One Hour list" (~t60) and each time I play it I get
different songs. A feature I asked a few month ago Next Page

thanks folks, you're great !

leonidas · « **Reply #17 on:** February 12, 2002, 06:56:25 am »

here, try this

make sure shuffle is set to "on" in playing now

right-click on media library and select play

click on playing now and scroll down to see the songs that will potentially play during the time span you plan to listen (you may have to estimate)

delete the ones you don't feel like listening to or that don't fit the mood

go on about your daily routine and enjoy the music

(if you really want to make this proceedure overly complicated: rather than right-clicking on the media library, right-click on a sub-folder [eg year or genre] and select play)

Leo

Matt · « **Reply #18 on:** February 12, 2002, 09:21:21 am »

As long as we're talking about confusing, hidden features, try this one:

Search: "my fav song" ~a

It'll give you whole albums. Cool when you know that one song you want from the album.

-Matt

KingSparta · « **Reply #19 on:** February 12, 2002, 10:00:13 am »

i am wondering one day if there will be some weard key combo, and maybe there is a packman game somewhere inside MJ

leonidas · « **Reply #20 on:** February 12, 2002, 10:03:24 am »

are there easter eggs?

Scronch · « **Reply #21 on:** February 12, 2002, 10:48:58 pm »

No pacman game, but I hear there'll be a hidden Packer logo. Matt's an in-the-closet Green Bay fan.

(Did you hear Iowa may get a pro football team? But the NFL may not go for it, because then Minnesota will want one, too.)

Doof · « **Reply #22 on:** February 13, 2002, 04:06:12 am »

Scronch> Try this : |PLS|genre=[Rock] ~n3

Doof · « **Reply #23 on:** February 13, 2002, 05:23:50 am »

Matt> Playlist Groups aren't honoring the ~n or ~t rules. I tried the example you used below, and while each individual smartlist is created correctly, selecting the entire group shows every song that would fit into those smartlist, rather than being limited by ~ rules.

Gatobrit · « **Reply #24 on:** February 13, 2002, 05:59:19 am »

Doof - I love your rule. Wow! It will change the way I use MJ and how I listen to my library.

Matt - what other "Special Limits" are there???

Matt · « **Reply #25 on:** February 13, 2002, 06:33:01 am »

Matt> Playlist Groups aren't honoring the ~n or ~t rules. I tried the example you used below, and while each individual smartlist is created correctly, selecting the entire group shows every song that would fit into those smartlist, rather than being limited by ~ rules.

Yeah, that's why I kept saying it won't work until the next build. Hopefully tonight, but can't promise...

Matt - what other "Special Limits" are there???

What ones do you want Next Page

Later.

-Matt

Doof · « **Reply #26 on:** February 13, 2002, 06:39:06 am »

I wondered if that's what you meant. But I thought that since your own example wasn't working, then maybe it wasn't what you meant. Next Page

Anyway...

How about a size limit for data CD burns? Maybe a ~sXNNNN where X is the unit (b = bytes, k = kilobytes, m = megabytes) and NNNN is a value? I'd say that megabytes is all you'd really need, but why not finetune it if it's not too difficult? Maybe make just ~s return megabytes by default?

|PLS|genre=[Rock] ~sm700 would return 700 MB's of music of genre Rock, for instance.

Gatobrit · « **Reply #27 on:** February 13, 2002, 12:14:38 pm »

Matt - Special limits - what ones do I want???

* only include 'n' song/s per artist in the smartlist / playing now (would increase the "shuffleness" in the example Doof gave of limiting # of songs)

* lower (upper too?) limit on track length in hh:mm (I have some intro / exit songs from albums that I want to listen to when I'm listening to the album but otherwise I don't need.

Tempo. Auto-analysis of tempo would be neat - like replay gain analysis I suppose. Select the songs you want by tempo. I know this has been requested / discussed / kicked around before but this would be really neat.

Other than these I think some kind of weighting (more of this genre than that genre etc.) but then we're back to playing more "catagory 5" songs (my favs) versus catagory 1 - see Gregg D's original post.

dragyn · « **Reply #28 on:** February 13, 2002, 12:55:29 pm »

>lower (upper too?) limit on track length in hh:mm

you can do that now but it's in second format.

length=>60 -> tracks longer than a minute

Gatobrit · « **Reply #29 on:** February 13, 2002, 01:00:47 pm »

Dragyn - that for the tip on track length. We need a manual or something for this thing...

Doof · « **Reply #30 on:** February 13, 2002, 02:38:06 pm »

Okay, in the vein of user friendliness, can I suggest the following?

Now that MJ has the ability to this fancy smartlist stuff, how about making it easier to use?

I was just thinking that since you have the "Add Rule" button with Artist, Genre, etc, that maybe you could also add in a "Limit" option that brings up a dialog box with 4 check boxes (or however many limiters we end up with) with one of those up/down incrementer things (I can't remember the technical turn for it) next to it. So you could just check the box for Number and bump the count thing up to whatever number you want. And it could allow you to check multiple limiters as well.

What do you think?

Doof · « **Reply #31 on:** February 13, 2002, 02:43:31 pm »

Is this a bug, or am I confused about what this should do?

I have |PLS|genre=[Metal] ~n60 ~a

What I expect is to have a list of no more than 60 Metal songs, filling that list with full albums (until towards the end, obviously if it can't - and maybe then it should just cut the list shorter than a full 60)

What's happening is... well, it's not that. It doesn't seem to be much different than if I just left the "~a" off.

Matt · « **Reply #32 on:** February 14, 2002, 04:32:38 am »

Now that MJ has the ability to this fancy smartlist stuff, how about making it easier to use?

Not sure if we'll have time to expand the search wizard for version 8.0... we'll see.

|PLS|genre=[Metal] ~n60 ~a

This will get all your metal music, then get the full album for each track, and finally take 60 random tracks from the result. Since all the files in an album typically have the same genre, ~a probably doesn't do anything in this case. Try something like name=? ~a and you'll see.

Later.

-Matt

Scronch · « **Reply #33 on:** February 14, 2002, 09:30:04 am »

That is so cool.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: smart shuffle? (Read 4301 times)

Gregg D

dragyn

dragyn

dragyn

Gregg D

Scronch

Gregg D

Gregg D

Bryan

leonidas

leonidas

Scronch

dragyn

Scronch