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Author Topic: Smartlist Help  (Read 1488 times)

Jamil

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Smartlist Help
« on: March 30, 2013, 10:18:46 am »

I am currently evaluating MC18.  It has many features that I am looking for in audio playback.

One thing I am currently evaluating is the Smartlist feature.  Here is what I want to do:

Create a new Smartlist that:

  • includes audio tracks
  • selects tracks that have not been played in the last 30 days
  • includes the genres of Jazz, Big Band and Classical
  • if the genre is Classical for a given track, only include it if it has a five star rating
  • randomize the track list

The software is intuitive enough that I have figured out how to do everything but bullet #4 above.  I will need help with this.  My guess is that I must do this with a custom expression? I was not able to find any examples on the wiki page.

If anyone has a couple minutes to lend a hand, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

mark_h

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Re: Smartlist Help
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2013, 12:26:59 pm »

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Last Played]=>30d ([Genre]=[Big Band],[Jazz] or ([Genre]=[Classical] [Rating]=5)) ~sort=Random

Does that work for you?

With smartlists you can create OR and AND operations, as above, or by clicking outside the expressions in the smarlist wizard to generate the required operations.

Explained here.

So you see where the brackets are in the wizard (outside the expressions?) - click the wizard there to rotate through the available options.  Or you can build them by hand by clicking on "import/export" and altering the text there (copy the above and paste into the import box for example).
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MrC

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Re: Smartlist Help
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2013, 12:37:06 pm »

See attached, which translates to :

[Media Type]=[Audio] [Last Played]=>30d ([Genre]=[Jazz],[Big Band//Vocalists] or ([Genre]=[Classical] [Rating]=5)) ~sort=Random

The UI for entering AND or OR grouping needs some love.  Aside from being invisible, it is often difficult to enter complex expressions as MC keeps removing the grouping and the grouping is often required to select from fields that have been previously narrowed by earlier rules.  But, they get removed when you add a new rule, so you have to keep adding them.  Use the Import/Export area when possible.
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Jamil

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Re: Smartlist Help
« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2013, 12:53:05 pm »

Thanks so much to the both of you.  This was a bit tricky.

I used the Edit Smartlist UI to enter everything up to Genre.  Next, I added a custom new rule where I pasted in this as is:

([Genre]=[Jazz],[Big Band//Vocalists] or ([Genre]=[Classical] [Rating]=5))

After this, I set Modify results to shuffle.

I got the results I was looking for.  As you noted, when I go back to edit the Smartlist, things have changed not making it clear exactly what it is doing.  I would have to save the conditions some place else for later reference (or modification).

Thanks again for the help.
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