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[BartMan01]

Well I am finally at the point I was worried about.  We now have two different people with different tastes and different handhelds using the music in my library.  My concern is how to handle ratings.  MC only has one rating field, and that is the field that it passes to the handheld.  I could set up custom fields, but then they would not sync to/from the handheld and would require numeric entry (instead of stars).

The only solution I can think of that will work is as follows:
Set up two different libraries, one for each user (con - now I have two libraries to manage as I add, move, delete, update, etc. tracks, build playlists/smartlists, set up a process to handle duplicates, and more that I probably can't think of right now).
Set both libraries to NOT store ratings in tags (huge con - now if my library gets lost/corrupted I lose ALL of my ratings).

Now each user can rate the same tracks and have those changes sync back and forth from their handheld.  Unfortunately I now have to do EVERYTHING twice as I manage major structure changes to my libraries.

Anyone doing something similar and have any thoughts or suggestions?

Edit:  Guess I forgot the feature request (assuming there isn't an already easy way to handle this that I am missing):
Ability to specify which field gets passed as 'rating' to the handheld, and the ability to use the 'rating' stars on custom fields.

[marko]

Just from reading your post, and not actually trialling anything here, can't you do like you suggest and set the rating to not be stored in the file, and then get the auto-import feature to take care of everything else?

The only point where I can see this approach falling over is, if, for example, you use your (presumably the main) library for "managing major structure changes" and rely on auto-import to keep the second library up to speed, you may find the "fix or remove broken links" erm, feature, gets a little slap-happy, removing files from the database and re-importing them from their new location as totally new files, rather than fixing the 'broken links'. This would obviously result in the loss of not only ratings, but any other database only info such as [date imported], [number plays], [last played] etc. etc.

How often do you do "major structure changes"? Having settled upon a file naming template I'm happy with, I've not done any major restructuring work for years. Back in the day, I do remember chopping and changing things quite a bit, but realised that stability and continuity in this area is a pretty fundamental requirement for managing a large-ish library, at least for my mind anyway. I quickly worked out something sensible that worked for me and stuck with it, it's never hindered me, and I've never looked back.

Incoming music, be it ripped or downloaded, all lands in one central directory for previewing and tag checking, and once that's done, MC's  rename from props tool is used to move the files over to the media drive beside the rest of my audio. Auto-import does not watch the main audio drive, only the incoming directory.

If you were able to adopt a similar workflow, so that once files arrived in their final resting place, that's where they'd stay, you could pretty reasonably use your own library for managing the media, and set the secondary library to watch the main resting place for any new files you placed there. Depending on your own particular environment, and whether or not it could adapt to that kind of scenario, and how you arrange/educate the other user(s), the theory feels sound enough for a test run.

As for library corruption, you shouldn't need to worry about that if you make regular library backups, something which MC also does automagically. So, you can rely on those, or make your own scheduled backups using dedicated backup software.
FWIW, I only store [artist], [album], [name], [date], and [comment] in my file tags, trusting the rest to the library, and find MC to be a lot nippier as a result.

All of that is only a suggestion, because I believe, that as things are at the moment, everything else you asked about falls under the heading of "Feature Request" and as such, could potentially take a while to be realised, if at all.

regards,
-marko.

[hit_ny]

MC only has one rating field, and that is the field that it passes to the handheld.  I could set up custom fields, but then they would not sync to/from the handheld and would require numeric entry (instead of stars).

..and there lies a possible solution.

- Create two numeric custom rating tags for both your users, say
[Name of user 1]
[Name of user 2]

In the user data section of these tags
Data Type Integer
Values 1;2;3;4;5 (to ensure only these values are used for rating)

- Customise Playing now to include (both of these customised fields) and remove the default ratings column. When either user rates music, have them enter in ratings for their field only. To make things easier, have them select all tracks and set them to 3, this way they only have to modify exceptions, a 2 or 4 & 5. Click a track's ratings column, F2, type rating, Enter

- Create two smartlists for each user with that users customised rating field and the default stars rating field.

When syncing a users ipod, go to that user's smartlist and just before syncing, copy from that users rating field to the default rating field.

Hopefully just one library to maintain this way.

No stars any more i'm afraid, but i think this should allow for the day when JRiver offers custom ratings fields. Just copy from the old custom ratings tags to the new custom stars field.

[grahamk]

In our library everything goes in rated as a 2.

If it really sucks it gets dropped to a 1.

If I really like it I rate it a 3.

If my wife really likes it she rates it a 4.

If we both agree it gets rated a 5.

So if a song rated 4 is playing and I agree it's really good I can promote it to a 5, but I cannot downrate a 4. My wife can promote 3's to 5's, but she can't downrate a 3. It took a while to train my wife, but we have it down pat now. :-)

I wish I had more granularity, but on the whole this method works well for us - and now we've been doing this for a couple of years the list of songs rated 5 is a darn fine playlist. :-)

Graham

[BartMan01]

When syncing a users ipod, go to that user's smartlist and just before syncing, copy from that users rating field to the default rating field.

That assumes no changes were made to ratings on the iPod itself.
The process would need to look more like:
Before hooking up handheld - copy user field to ratings
After syncing - copy ratings to user field.

Not difficult for me to do, but the other user would not remember to do this.

The 2 library route will probably be the most user friendly solution (for the other user).  I may set up the custom rating fields, but just use them to periodically back up the ratings to the tags.

[hit_ny]

Oops, you're right of course. Its possible to do but i can't see the solution described above as working for anyone else but yourself managing it.

I've seen the custom stars ratings  fields request come up over the years but there  never seems to be any answer from JRiver's part.

Maybe if you could describe how it should work from a user's perspective.

What i understood so far, is *if* custom ratings were allowed, then it would be trivial, you would need some way to designate which of the ratings fields were to be sync'd to the ipod and all would be good.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Graham K

An interesting approach, tho i wonder what the arguments must be like..

she defnitely thinks its a 4 but you think its a one but willing to compromise with a two and vice versa

[BartMan01]

How I would see it working from a users perspective:
1)  Add an option to custom Integer fields either in 'Edit Type' or as a check box to use 'stars'.  The field would also need to be restricted to the entries that 'star' entry supports (currently 1;2;3;4;5) when this option is selected.  Or, alternately make a new field type called 'Ratings' that uses the stars and limits you to 1-5.

2)  Add an option to handheld options for something like "Library field for ratings", and have it default to the standard ratings field.  If the above 'stars' option is added, this option could be restricted to only show those fields that use the 'star' interface.

I know people have asked for 1/2 stars or '10' total star choices too, but looking at this from a handheld perspective, the iPod (at least) only supports 5 stars at whole star increments.

Then custom views/view schemes could be built by the user to 'use' these fields.

[hit_ny]

I know people have asked for 1/2 stars or '10' total star choices too, but looking at this from a handheld perspective, the iPod (at least) only supports 5 stars at whole star increments.

I'm one of those ppl, iTunes can support half stars, it's not clear as yet whether the iPod can too. There is no way to set the half stars from within iTunes, without resorting to external scripts.

http://www.omninerd.com/2006/02/10/articles/47

Ha!, version 6.0.2 of iTunes, has the ability to see half-star ratings

Always wondered whether the iPod allowed one to add a custom numeric field in it,  like with MC ?

[BartMan01]

Interesting.  Well, 'easy' solution here too:
Have a 'Round Ratings' (or something like that) option with the following choices:
Round 1/2 stars up.
Round 1/2 stars down.
Do not round.