Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sygnus21]

Ok, hopefully I'm missing something, but is there a way to view recently played songs? Sometimes I play "DJ" (for myself) and would like to go back and see what I played and make a playlist. With that I can't seem to find such a feature available. If this isn't available I request it be added. It should be a simple list listing the last songs played.

Thanks.

[budloveall]

Yes, there is. Under the Playlists choice in the left side pane, you should find "Recent Playing Now's". That should get you what you're looking for.

You're Welcome!

[marko]

"Recent Playing Now's" will be there if that feature is turned on, but, doesn't MC perform automatic cleanup of those? If you want a permanent and consistant list...

Press F9 to create a new smart list.
In the top field, name it Recently Played
In the bottom left, press the "Import/Export" button
Paste this in there...

Code: [Select]

[Media Type]=[audio] [Last Played]=<31d ~sort=[Last Played]-d
Then "OK" your way out. If you want to tweak how "recent" you want the list to be, edit that setting before you press OK for the second time.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you want to get all crazy and OCD, how about a view scheme to track these stats for all media types...


You can find view files for this, and similar for date imported, attached to this post.

-marko

[EnglishTiger]

On my "Purity Skin" setup it's labelled "Recently Played" but it has a self-refreshing limit of the last 100 Tracks.

[marko]

Thanks ET. I have to be honest, I was sure that this would have been there, somewhere, by default, but I don't have access to my 'default' library today.

[sygnus21]

Thanks marko and EnglishTiger,

First off, yes, their is a "Recently Played" list. I was just looking in the wrong place and I never thought to look under "Playlists".  And it is customizable, and you can change the number of tracks from 100 to 200 (or probably more). I changed from 100 - 200.

That said, the one issue I can't figure out it sorting. Currently the tracks are grouped by Albums....

Example I play 3 tracks (10, 2, and 3) from Artist A, Album A, then 2 tracks 2,5) from Artist B, Album A, then go back to Artist A, Album A and play 3 more tracks (5, 1, .  The "Recently Played" list will first display the Artist/Albums/tracks - Artist A/ Album A /Tracks 10, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1; Artist B / Album A / Tracks 8, 5, 1 (sorted by last played date). 

While this gives me an "idea" of the tracks played recently, I don't have a "true" order which the songs were played. I can't seem to get it sorted to where the "tracks" are listed in last played order.  Here's an example....


How to solve?

Thanks.

[Dawgincontrol]

In standard view go to Audio>Files

Select "Last Played" on the header (if it's not there right click the header and put it there).

Clicking this will put all files in order of when they were played.  Click again and will sequence them the other way and vice versa.

[EnglishTiger]

Alternatively you could simply add the "Last Played" tag/field to the Existing Playlist and then tell the playlist to sort on "Last Played (z-a)", by clicking on the column header, which would then list the tracks in reverse order of play, i.e. the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

[RoderickGI]

How to solve?

Your screenshot example show tracks reverse sorted by [Last Played] Date & Time. It looks correct. It doesn't match your written description. Check what is happening again.

[sygnus21]

Your screenshot example show tracks reverse sorted by [Last Played] Date & Time. It looks correct. It doesn't match your written description. Check what is happening again.

The problem was I didn't want album groupings - grouping as in If I play song 1 from Album A, then song 5 from Album B, then go back to Album A and play song 10, I want to see A1, B5, A10 (the order the songs were played in). NOT an album group like Album A, songs 1 & 10, Album B song 5  - which is not the order the "songs" were played. 

Anyway I got it sorted with this configuration....



Thanks to all for their help.

[RoderickGI]

G'Day Sygnus21.

It's great that you got your View working. But a couple of notes.

The [Last Played] field is actually a Day Number and is specified to sixteen decimal places. So it specifies a Date and Time to a fraction of a second. Therefore any sort by the [Last Played] field, and any automatically created Date field in MC, is going to be entirely unique. You will never get two files that have exactly the same [Last Played] value, though you might see the value formatted such that it doesn't look unique.

Therefore, your second Sort by the [Last Played] field is all that will have any effect. The extra sorts you included after "Last Played (z-a)", which are "Name (a-z)", "Track # (z-a), and "Filename (z-a), will have no effect on the result at all, as they aren't independent sorts, but "nested" or concatenated sorts.

But the whole second sort is redundant anyway. MC has already sorted by the [Last Played] field. As evidence, the screenshot in your Reply #5 shows the tracks sorted strictly by the [Last Played] field. It appears that there is some Album grouping, but there isn't. That is just the sequence you played the tracks, in groups for several Albums.

The "Limit number to" and "Sequence" rules don't change the sort at all.

Basically, the default "Recently Played" Smartlist did exactly what you want. I will note though that you are using;
"Number Plays" "Is not" "<empty>"
which can have slightly different results to
"Number Plays" "Is not" "0"
because of the way Mc evaluates empty fields. Generally <empty> does mean 0 (zero) though, so the Smartlist will work fine. But what you really want to see is tracks that have been played before, and hence will have a positive number in the [Number Plays] field, so using "Number Plays" "Is not" "0" is better, or maybe even;
"Number Plays" "is greater than" "0".

Have a great day. Enjoy the music.

[sygnus21]

G'Day Sygnus21.

It's great that you got your View working. But a couple of notes.

The [Last Played] field is actually a Day Number and is specified to sixteen decimal places. So it specifies a Date and Time to a fraction of a second. Therefore any sort by the [Last Played] field, and any automatically created Date field in MC, is going to be entirely unique. You will never get two files that have exactly the same [Last Played] value, though you might see the value formatted such that it doesn't look unique.

Therefore, your second Sort by the [Last Played] field is all that will have any effect. The extra sorts you included after "Last Played (z-a)", which are "Name (a-z)", "Track # (z-a), and "Filename (z-a), will have no effect on the result at all, as they aren't independent sorts, but "nested" or concatenated sorts.

But the whole second sort is redundant anyway. MC has already sorted by the [Last Played] field. As evidence, the screenshot in your Reply #5 shows the tracks sorted strictly by the [Last Played] field. It appears that there is some Album grouping, but there isn't. That is just the sequence you played the tracks, in groups for several Albums.

The "Limit number to" and "Sequence" rules don't change the sort at all.

Basically, the default "Recently Played" Smartlist did exactly what you want. I will note though that you are using;
"Number Plays" "Is not" "<empty>"
which can have slightly different results to
"Number Plays" "Is not" "0"
because of the way Mc evaluates empty fields. Generally <empty> does mean 0 (zero) though, so the Smartlist will work fine. But what you really want to see is tracks that have been played before, and hence will have a positive number in the [Number Plays] field, so using "Number Plays" "Is not" "0" is better, or maybe even;
"Number Plays" "is greater than" "0".

Have a great day. Enjoy the music.

Hi, RoderickGI

First, while I get what you're saying... to a point, I'll say that the method that I have currently set up works for me. And, I'm not looking to drill down to song 200 or even 100 - that was just a number I threw in to see if the list would expand.  Anyway I'm just looking to get the recently played "songs" for that day (or session) so 30 at most would be good. 

Anyway, NO, the default list did NOT do what I wanted because it grouped songs played under albums. Note in the first image for example how the "Albums" are grouped (also shown in the "Album" column). Those songs were not played in that order!!!. Now in the second image (my settings) note how the Teena Marie albums are broke up and not grouped (also seen in the "album" column). Instead the actual order of songs (Name column) played is listed without grouping them under albums.

The "Default" way would have had all the songs from the Teena Marie "Irons in the Fire" album grouped under that album, and the songs from the Teena Marie "It Must Be Magic" grouped under its album (as shown in the first image) even though that was not the order those "songs" were played. That was my issue.

Thanks. 

[RoderickGI]

sygnus21, if you don't want to see what I'm saying, that is fine.

But what I am seeing in both your images, in Reply #5 and #9, is that the View is primarily sorted by the [Last Played] field, in descending order. The first sort in your Smartlist is used for selecting the limited number of files. The second sort sorts the selected files again, and once the sort on [Last Played] is applied, no other sort in that group makes any difference. The second sort group isn't required at all. There is no Album grouping, even though it looks like there is. That is a coincidence. Either you played those tracks in that sequence, or the [Last Played] field isn't working in MC... and it is working. The evidence is right there in your images. If you look at the Last Played times and the duration of tracks (Reply #5) you can see the times all work out correctly. There are no gaps for non-selected files, and all times progress as expected.

The Limit function does theoretically select a number of random tracks, so it could have been selecting tracks from specific Albums which then looked grouped, but in my testing with the default "Recently Played" and a custom Smartlist I created, that didn't happen. It selected the most recently played files in reverse order.

I also noted that the default "Recently Played" Smartlist had additional sorts somewhat like yours, but not by [Last Played] first, which MC seems to have added in at some stage. Or it could have been me. But removing the additional sorting left the Smartlist working correctly. However the default "Recently Played" Smartlist does get some special attention, as evidenced by its special icon colouring and position in the Navigation bar. So there could have been something screwy going on, but I can't replicate it.

I don't care if you use the Smartlist as you have created it, but I wouldn't want other readers to think what you have done is necessary, because it isn't.

[sygnus21]

I don't care if you use the Smartlist as you have created it, but I wouldn't want other readers to think what you have done is necessary, because it isn't.

First off the fact that I didn't get what you were saying has nothing to do with anything other than that fact that I didn't fully grasp what you said. Period! And that the fix I found works for me. Period!!!

With that I'm not here to convince you that my solution works for me. Only that I found a solution that works for me. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant. If another poster finds the info helpful, great. If not that's OK too. 

Thanks.