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[herebedragons69]

I just installed MC21. Very Excited. I just tried something that has been giving me trouble in MC20 as well.

When using Playdoctor on a song I am getting many duplicates from the Album the song originates from.

For instance. I just PlayDoctored a Track from FKA twigs new ep M3LL155X. THere are 6 songs on that ep. PlayDoctor loaded all 6 songs from the album  a total of six times. There are no other duplicates.

See attached screenshot.

[BradATIMA]

This seems to be an intentional feature of Play Doctor. I tried running a similar test and got similar results (duplicates of numerous songs). The amount of duplicates I got seemed to depend on the song rating and other factors related to the match quality. Running Play Doctor seems to always result in a playlist of at least 100 songs. At the moment, I don't think there is a way to prevent duplicates (aside from using search criteria that will build a playlist of more than 100 unique titles).

I tried going into the options and creating a rule to modify the results to exclude duplicates of the same name (as well as other methods); however, the situation continued to occur. It's possible that Play Doctor builds the playlist by initially following the rules and then moves on to further populate the list, without using the result modification(at least the exclude duplicate one), until it reaches 100 items, resulting in duplicates anyway.

I hope this helps,
Brad

[ferday]

interesting, as this is not the behaviour i see.  just making 3 random play doctor lists with 3 different random seeds, i get no duplicates at all and it's rare that there is even two tracks from the same album

it must be some sort of limitation with how play doctor searches versus the tagging / ratings on your files...?

[BradATIMA]

Were there a lot of songs in the library you had it select from? Was it able to populate a list of 100 songs without duplicates or did it actually build a list with less than 100 songs?

When I ran this test, Play Doctor only had a library of roughly 150 songs to select from. This library also had plenty of diversity in the types of songs. I should have mentioned this before. That's why I started to think that it was forced to fill the list with duplicates. It was left with less than 100 songs that it could pull in order to build the playlist, which forced it to fill the rest of the playlist with duplicates. I believe that with a library of thousands of songs, this issue would be very unlikely, unless something about the search criteria only pointed to a very small, distinct sampling.

What still kind of puzzles me is why dameonjamie only got duplicates from that one album. I can understand that it might weigh more heavily if they're more closely related to the search criteria when making duplicates, but even when I tried this, I would still get duplicates of everything. More specifically, when doing a search for "Green Day," I would get about six to eight duplicates of Green Day songs, and a couple of duplicates from songs by other artists from the same genre. The amount of duplicates I got seemed to depend on how I rated the song and how closely it was closely related to the search criteria.

One other issue that ended up puzzling me during this test was that it seemed to be ignoring the result modification rules I was setting. At one point, to test it out, I tried to modify the results to exclude duplicate album names. If I were to do this with a smart playlist, I would only get one song from an album, but with Play Doctor, I was still getting multiple songs from one album. This makes think that it possibly overrides rules when the resulting playlist is too short. Does that sound reasonable?

[pfm555]

I  create and use playlists extensively.  Play Doctor is a great feature of JRiver.  In my experience it does not matter whether you are pulling from a small database of 1000-2000 songs as in the case of my office or 40,000 as in the case of my home. You are going to get duplicates. Play Doctor would benefit if It had a remove duplicates button like when you create a playlist has but only if it removed all duplicates. JRiver currently removes only duplicates that have the same name and only if the duplicates are on the same album. I have made feature requests in both 20 and 21 for just this issue. As stated in my requests I am not a programmer and so I don't claim to know how complicated this may or may not be. The way I suggested It should work is remove by name. The user could have two options to check. the first would be file type i.e  flac, wma or mp3 and second by date i.e. earliest or latest. So for example, if you take three albums, the original album that the song appeared on  and two greatest hit albums. The original album(released in 1975) and one of the greatest hits (released in 2001) are recorded in flac and the remaining greatest hit album (released in 2010) is recorded in mp3. If you select flac as you preferred file type and earliest as your date preference it removes both songs from the latest released albums and keep the song from the earliest album. I think this would benefit all who use playlists, Play Doctor and Dr. Who.

[blgentry]

I've tried Play Doctor a half dozen times and it works "ok".  Nothing special for me.  I always feel like I'm missing something; I've read the wiki and the linked forum posting two or three times.

The interface is strictly that box on top of the Playing Now list right?  With the options button.  So PlayDoctor *is* part of Playing Now, not separate?  So I can't build a playdoctor list outside of playing now correct?  I don't think so, I'm just checking to make sure I'm not missing part of the interface.

To your point, PFM, about duplicates:  Since it's part of Playing Now you can use all of the tools of Playing Now to alter it.  Remove Duplicates removes "pure" duplicates of same song, same album, same artist.  But you can also do things like this:

Type ~dup=name in the search box.  That will show you all duplicates of Name in Playing Now.  Then you can remove the ones you want to keep.  Or type ~nodup=name to have it automatically remove (randomly) the duplicates.  Though it gets more awkward if you wan to replace Playing Now with the displayed "nodup" list.  You can do it, but it's a not exactly elegant to get there.  Note that ~dup and ~nodup can take multiple arguments, so you can really tailor your duplicate detection and removal.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Search_Language  (search for ~dup)

Brian.

[JimH]

You can right click on a track or a playlist and choose Play with Play Doctor.

Play Doctor on the wiki

[vbphil]

I just installed MC21. Very Excited. I just tried something that has been giving me trouble in MC20 as well in MC21.

When using Playdoctor on a song I am getting many duplicates from the Album the song originates from.

For instance. I just PlayDoctored a Track from FKA twigs new ep M3LL155X. THere are 6 songs on that ep. PlayDoctor loaded all 6 songs from the album  a total of six times. There are no other duplicates.

See attached screenshot.

I'm getting duplicates in Doctor as well in MC 21.

With an empty Playing Now I enter a song title in the Doctor window. It builds a list of 100 songs, from thousands in the library, according to that song, which it puts first in the list, and any rules I've created. It will duplicate the sample song 8 times, more or less. I've added a modifier to delete duplicates but that doesn't work.

There are even more duplicates than just the sample song noted above. If I select all 100 songs and send them to a new Playlist and then remove duplicates from the playlist I'm ending up with 63 songs. So obviously there's many duplicates in the 100 songs picked by Doctor. Not a good thing.

In the Doctor options I have "Some Variety" checked, if I check "Lots of Variety" I get fewer duplicates. I guess Doctor is having trouble finding a sample of 100 from my library given the sample song without using duplicates. If the Modifier would work to remove duplicates that would be good, or, not produce a list of 100 songs if it can't find 100 based on the Variety factor checked.

[Arindelle]

not sure on this but if you have enough to fill out 100 different songs and if you fill out no dupe criteria in the options (rules) of Play Doctor you cna avoid duplicate songs ... but if you have like I do lots of songs tagged with multiple genres and you restrict the Play Docotr search to "some variety" only one or two albums come up ... then it seems to override the no dupe expression ... just use no duplicates of name doesn't work for me but no dupes of artist and name does, if the list can be populated with enough matches.

I know it more genre sensitive tan anything else, but I seem to remember there is more "magic" going on ... like external database matches?? is it using Yabb btw for this? 

[vbphil]

So the Modifier settings in the Play Doctor options is not working for removing duplicates. To remove duplicates from the play list generated by Play Doctor just use the Player drop down menu found in the Playing Now window and select "Remove Duplicates From Playing Now". This is quicker than sending the playing now list to a playlist and removing duplicates from the play list that I mention in an earlier post.

[Matt]

Just a note that Play Doctor has really aggressive filtering for duplicate files.

It generates a match score for each file, and just kills the match score if the file was chosen recently.  The odds of using the same file twice in a row are reduced by 9.609e-8.

[Arindelle]

Just a note that Play Doctor has really aggressive filtering for duplicate files.

It generates a match score for each file, and just kills the match score if the file was chosen recently.  The odds of using the same file twice in a row are reduced by 9.609e-8.

Matt, I'm' sure that's true, but isn't it "by file"?

I have over 25 versions of All Along the Watchtower ... 7 of them are by Jimi Hendrix, I find that if I don't want to hear multiple versions of the same song over and over again, I need to add extra filtering rules, via the options.  In Jazz its much worse for some "standards". Just using no dupes for the track name doesn't work for me.

[Matt]

Matt, I'm' sure that's true, but isn't it "by file"?

I have over 25 versions of All Along the Watchtower ... 7 of them are by Jimi Hendrix, I find that if I don't want to hear multiple versions of the same song over and over again, I need to add extra filtering rules, via the options.  In Jazz its much worse for some "standards". Just using no dupes for the track name doesn't work for me.

Oh boy, 25 versions of the same song is a tough one.

Because if the match score is picking that song it's going to really pick that song!

I'm not really sure how to get around that.

[Arindelle]

Oh boy, 25 versions of the same song is a tough one.

Because if the match score is picking that song it's going to really pick that song!

I'm not really sure how to get around that.

Yeah sure, Can't see what you guys could do about that. Frankly I don't mind. Seem to happen a lot more in Jazz than in Pop/Rock .... as long as I use at least ~nodup=[Artist],[Name] at least I only have 1 Hendrix version, (don't mind listening to  versions by Dylan, Bill Perry, Eddie Veber,  Taj Mahal) etc.  In jazz, you get all sorts of dupes especially if there are alternate takes then I add Album to the rule. I'm glad the options+rules are saved, its not a big deal. Set it and forget it. Or just click on another song.


Actually I use that locate "Name" that you put a shortcut in not to long ago a lot .. its a lot of fun sometimes. 

[vbphil]

Just a note that Play Doctor has really aggressive filtering for duplicate files.

It generates a match score for each file, and just kills the match score if the file was chosen recently.  The odds of using the same file twice in a row are reduced by 9.609e-8.

In theory but in practice I can't seem to get duplicates to be removed by setting a Modifier in the Play Doctor options. What don't I understand or is it broke? If I select the Import/Export button in the Play Doctor options it shows the Search term being used. Here it is. you can see that the no dupes modifier is in the statement but it doesn't remove the duplicates from the play list generated by the Play Doctor.

-[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Podcast],[Test Clip] -[Genre]=[Christmas],[Classical],[Comedy],[Test] -[Album]="Christmas" -[Album]="Holiday" [Rating]=>=4 ~nodup=[Album],[Artist],[Name]

[Arindelle]

In theory but in practice I can't seem to get duplicates to be removed by setting a Modifier in the Play Doctor options. What don't I understand or is it broke? If I select the Import/Export button in the Play Doctor options it shows the Search term being used. Here it is. you can see that the no dupes modifier is in the statement but it doesn't remove the duplicates from the play list generated by the Play Doctor.

-[Media Sub Type]=[Audiobook],[Podcast],[Test Clip] -[Genre]=[Christmas],[Classical],[Comedy],[Test] -[Album]="Christmas" -[Album]="Holiday" [Rating]=>=4 ~nodup=[Album],[Artist],[Name]

are you saying that you have duplicates of the same track from the same album? 

To be confirmed, but the way I see it, it has to populate 100 tracks and genre is key ... so if the song you pick has a genre like Ambient Techno and you have 2 cds of this kind of electronic music, you're going to see some dupes.  It looks like that populating a list to 100 tracks takes precedence over the nodupe rules. Is this how it works Matt??

[vbphil]

are you saying that you have duplicates of the same track from the same album? 

To be confirmed, but the way I see it, it has to populate 100 tracks and genre is key ... so if the song you pick has a genre like Ambient Techno and you have 2 cds of this kind of electronic music, you're going to see some dupes.  It looks like that populating a list to 100 tracks takes precedence over the nodupe rules. Is this how it works Matt??

Yes duplicates of the same song from the same album. I described the behavior in an earlier post. I agree it might have trouble populating 100 without repeats for some obscure song and it does vary depending on the variety setting you've chosen in the Play Doctor options.

I've also noticed, when you're playing the Doctor play list it keeps adding more songs to the end of the list as it plays it's way through the play list and it's not always adding a duplicate, so, it's able to find more matches that it didn't find when it first created the list.

I've also tried setting a modifier to limit the list to say 25 songs but that acts real screwy. For some reason that limits what songs it initially recognizes to create a play list from and it doesn't even limit the list.  ~n=50

Basically I don't think the Play Doctor has been thoroughly debugged, or, I have no idea how it's suppose to work, or my installation is broke. I'm usually pretty good with software as I'm a 63 year old nerd with computer experience dating back to the first Commodore PET.