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[dwex]

OK, I'm probably missing something very simple, but how do I create a smartlist that will do "play N random albums by artist FOO, no more than XX minutes, and play the tracks as complete albums"? Basically like pulling a handful of CDs from my rack and playing them straight through, one at a time.

MC 9.0.169, and I've read through all the help and examples therein...

Thanks
--dweex

[JimH]

I'm not any good on smartlists, but did you try the wizard button in the search window?  CTRL-F will get you there.

You want playback sorted by album, sounds like.

[dwex]

JimH said:

You want playback sorted by album, sounds like.

No, that's not quite it. If you sort by album,track# you almost get what I'm after, but it (obviously) sorts by album name. The issue is that what I'm looking for is "group by" album name, not "sort by" album name" - I want complete albums in random order. Maybe smartlists can't do this, and this is actually an enhancement request for 10.0...

Thanks.

--dwex

[Cmagic]

Hi dwex,

I tried playing with various combinations of [Full Albums], duplicates, sort and limits with no luck. The problem seems to be the limits modifiers that are needed to introduce randomness.
The initial intention for the [Full Albums] keyword was to retrieve a full album given a songname or more generally a string that's present in the album.

Anyway based on this I managed to do something that's no too far from what you want. Here is what I did :

Step 1 - Create a Smartlist that will return just one track from a random number of albums. Let's say we call this Smartlist "Random n" with the following rule : "Limit:4 tracks [Media Type]=[Audio] [Track #]==1"
This rule will return 4 random Tracks of type Audio with track# equal one. So it returns four tracks from four different albums, right ? At this point don't use the no duplicate modifier.

Step 2 - Create another Smartlist, let's call it "Random Full Albums" with the following rule : "[Media Type]=[Audio] Modifier:Full Albums Playlist: Random n"
What this rule does is to return complete albums for every single track that the first smartlist returns.
In this case each time you select the "Random Full Albums" Smartlist you'll get a given number (set by the first smartlist) of full albums. Now you just have to add some sorting behaviour of your liking. I thinks It's quite close to what you wanted.

Of course it's quite difficult to have any guarantee on the total number of tracks or duration of the resulting selection. If you add a limiter you will probably not have full albums.



On the example of the image the first smartlist returns only 3 tracks -> 3 albums in the second SL.


Have a nice evening (close to midnight here)

Christian.
---------------

[JimH]

Thanks, Christian.

[Cmagic]

No sweat Jim, that's pure fun  

C.

[fex]

Sounds like mathematic. Great job.

[bspachman]

I tried playing with various combinations of [Full Albums], duplicates, sort and limits with no luck. The problem seems to be the limits modifiers that are needed to introduce randomness.
The initial intention for the [Full Albums] keyword was to retrieve a full album given a songname or more generally a string that's present in the album.

Anyway based on this I managed to do something that's no too far from what you want. Here is what I did...

AWESOME!

I've been hoping for some clever soul to hit on the right combination of smartlist(s) to make this happen for a while!

Ideally, the "Shuffle" command would do it all automagically (like the Macintosh's iTunes & the iPod), but I'll use this work around for now!

Thanks, Christian!!

Brad

[jredders2]

OK, I started playing with this (cool idea) and I've run into a snag...

First, I created the following smartlist named "Random First Tracks":
Track #: =1  Sort: [Random]

So, now I have the first track from every album in a random order.

Next, I created another smartlist named "Random Albums":
Playlist: Random First Tracks  Modifier: Full Albums

This does give me full albums, but they're always in the same order!  And the order doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason.

I messed around a little bit, and found another way to get the same order.  Start with the following smartlist:
Track #: =1

Right-click on the column headers and remove sorting.  Notice the tracks seem pretty random, but the order never changes when you refresh the smartlist.  What the heck is it sorting on?

Basically, it looks like when you include a smartlist with Sort: [Random] in another smartlist, the Sort: field is ignored?

-John

Edit:

If you do limit the number of tracks in the "Random First Tracks" smartlist as Cmagic did, you do indeed get random full albums.  You can also don't need the Sort: [Random] in this case, because limiting the number of tracks must automatically picks the tracks randomly.  So, it looks like my problem only occurs when you don't limit the number of tracks in the first smartlist.

[Cmagic]

You're right John,

In fact when no sorting is selected (RMC/Remove Sorting) there is still a strange default sorting. It's propabably related to some internale database ID.

Note that in the SL(SmartList) rules I proposed, if you increase the number of tracks in the first SL to a value close to the maximum of albums in your library, you'll end up in the situation you describe. Therefore It kind of mimics what dwex is looking for as long as the number of picked albums (set in the first SL) is much smaller than the total number in your collection.
Anyway that's quite logical and that's the initial purpose to randomly pick a reasonable numbers of album for a listening session (2 to 3 hours -> 3 to 4 albums).
It works quite well here with my ~700 albums collection.

C.

[dwex]

Anyway based on this I managed to do something that's no too far from what you want. Here is what I did :

Well, that's pretty neat. And pretty much seems to do "the right thing". A little hackish to have to create two smartlists to do this, but so be it. Works for me.

JR guys - suggestion for 10.x that smartlists be able to select full albums, or implement some sort of group-by attribute that can be used to do this in a more general way.

Thanks much
--dwex

[Kurt Young]

Rock on, CMagic!  Here's mine:

RFA Loader:
[File Type]=[mp3] -[Album]=[] [Complete Album]=1 ~n=1

RFA (Random Full Album):
playlistid==1024957017 ~a ~sort=[album],[track #]

Woo-oo-oot!

[kiwi]

What about having the Sort function take the field that you'd like to sort on.

Sort=[random(album)]

or Sort=[Random(artists)]   Sort=[Sequential(Date)]

Or something like that.

kiwi

[kiwi]

Hmm.

Interesting.

I am using the following playlist:
[Media Type]=[Audio] ~a ~sort=[Random]

and I seem to get random ordering for all of my albums.

What I did to get this was right click on the columns and set/select the following values/options:
Sorting-->Remove Sorting
Sorting-->AutoSave Sorting (unselected)
Sorting-->Sort by Track # for single albums (selected)

then
Save-->For this location

This gives me my entire music collection by album, ordered by track, with it the albums in a random order.

kiwi

[aussie1]

Very Cool!!!  Just what I wanted Kiwi!

[kiwi]

Does it work the same way for you?

[kiwi]

Awesome!

Edit: Initially, I thought this worked, but once you have selected genre's, it reorders the list the same way every time. oh well
I created a View scheme that uses the playlist above.  Now I can select based on genre (or whatever else) and get random full albums.  

I'm glad that someone posted about this, I would never have thought of doing this. Edit: even if I have to do it manually by selecting genre's in the playlists.

MC rocks! Still

kiwi

[aussie1]

Kiwi,

Rather than using a SmartList or playlist, try a View Scheme with View Scheme Properties for files set as:

[Media Type]=[Audio] ~sort=[Random] ~a [Track #]==1

Remove the column sorting as you did above.

Create a view pane with genre as the column.

Now, select a genre.  It will return the full albums matching this genre in a random order.  Does this work for you?

[MachineHead]

Kiwi,

Rather than using a SmartList or playlist, try a View Scheme with View Scheme Properties for files set as:

[Media Type]=[Audio] ~sort=[Random] ~a [Track #]==1

Remove the column sorting as you did above.

Create a view pane with genre as the column.

Now, select a genre.  It will return the full albums matching this genre in a random order.  Does this work for you?

This also works in a Smartlist. Just copied and pasted what you have here into a smartie and it works fine. Hitting Refresh changes the listings.

EDIT:

You can also throw a limit on this if you want to keep the list shorter because of a large collection.

[kiwi]

Yeah, that works.  That's awesome!

Thanks,
kiwi