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Author Topic: Smartlist Help Needed  (Read 1109 times)

PPatla

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Smartlist Help Needed
« on: November 24, 2021, 12:55:38 pm »

Hello,

I have a collection of Various Artists CDs, "CMJ Vol 5-140" and "CMJ CD 3-99" they were published by College Music Journal.  There are many remix and rarities on these CDs by some of my favorite artists and I was trying to make a smartlist that would allow me to add artists and have those pulled by these two collections.

When I make this smartlist with just one artist, say "radiohead" it works fine, when I add a second artist the smartlist comes up blank.

What am I doing wrong?

If I figure this out I was also going to do the same thing for my soundtrack collection where genre=soundtrack and then also look for rarities.

Thanks,
Pat
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zybex

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Re: Smartlist Help Needed
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2021, 03:20:01 pm »

When adding multiple rules, the default operator is AND. So you're saying:
[Media Type] is "Audio" AND [Album] contains "MCU" AND [Artist] contains "Cake" AND [Artist] contains "Radiohead"

This won't show any file because no files have an Artist called "Radiohead Cake" :)

You need an OR rule for the last step:
[Media Type] is "Audio" AND [Album] contains "MCU" AND ( [Artist] contains "Cake" OR [Artist] contains "Radiohead" )

You can create these by clicking on the blank window space to the left of the rule (where it says [Artist]). Hover the mouse there and a tooltip will show up with instructions. You also need to add the corresponding ")" to the right of the last rule to close the group. Use the mouse, don't type a literal ")".

There's also a wiki article with screenshots about this.
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PPatla

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Re: Smartlist Help Needed
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2021, 05:13:26 pm »

Thank you so much! This worked like a champ.

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blgentry

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Re: Smartlist Help Needed
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2021, 06:45:35 am »

Some notes on this:

1.  The OR operator functionality, which shows up as parenthesis can be activated simply by clicking where you want the parenthesis to appear.  If you click several times, it will cycle between OR "(" and AND "[" operators.  Make sure to add both opening and closing operators.  This is done right in the GUI, without having to use the Import/Export window.  Click in the same places that the "(" show up in the pictures in this thread.  I was shocked when I learned that this feature was in MC.  I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere or not.

2.  The functionality of matching on any from a list of artists is built right into the smartlist rules.  "Contains" matches a substring.  So if you put "george" there, it will match "George Howard", "George Winston", etc.  That's probably not what you are trying to do.
You are probably trying to match a specific list of artists by their specific names.  If that's what you want, then change "Contains to" be "Is Any".  That will bring up a list of all the artists in your library with check boxes.  Just check the box next to each artist you want to match.  You only need one "is any" line with all the artists you want to match on.

Brian.
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HaWi

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Re: Smartlist Help Needed
« Reply #4 on: November 28, 2021, 01:49:23 pm »

Some notes on this:

1.  The OR operator functionality, which shows up as parenthesis can be activated simply by clicking where you want the parenthesis to appear.  If you click several times, it will cycle between OR "(" and AND "[" operators.  Make sure to add both opening and closing operators.  This is done right in the GUI, without having to use the Import/Export window.  Click in the same places that the "(" show up in the pictures in this thread.  I was shocked when I learned that this feature was in MC.  I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere or not.

2.  The functionality of matching on any from a list of artists is built right into the smartlist rules.  "Contains" matches a substring.  So if you put "george" there, it will match "George Howard", "George Winston", etc.  That's probably not what you are trying to do.
You are probably trying to match a specific list of artists by their specific names.  If that's what you want, then change "Contains to" be "Is Any".  That will bring up a list of all the artists in your library with check boxes.  Just check the box next to each artist you want to match.  You only need one "is any" line with all the artists you want to match on.

Brian.

This is brilliant.  I was looking for this as well. Thanks for letting us know

Hans
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