getmusicbee.com
General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: outlawza on October 29, 2012, 06:16:22 PM
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Hi Steven,
My wish is for a color coding feature for songs.
What if colors could be read as hex codes contained in the comments section of an ID3 between # symbols?
e.g. A color coded song with a comment too could have a comment reading:
Relaxed feel, would be good for project xyz. #B7C8B6#
The ability to have a column category whose full field displays the color (if any) would be really cool.
A color palette like Directory Opus' would be cool too, with the ability to copy hex codes from already-color coded songs and with space for making several presets.
(http://i48.tinypic.com/15edde.jpg)
This would be useful for people who are constantly discovering and sifting through large quantities of music and for DJ's using MusicBee as an aid to Traktor/Serato/Ableton.
Perhaps there could even be an option to make the text of songs' names in playlists and/or now playing reflect the hex code in the comments.
I hope this wouldn't be too much work to implement, as I (and I'm sure many others) would benefit greatly from this feature, and add it to the list of reasons why MusicBee is the best tune-manager and player.
Keep up the good work, peace!
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Added "Highlighting" to thread title so it appears in relevant searches.
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+1
I think it would be a very great way of adding more information/more organisation in a library without adding new text.
... imagine if the songs in the main panel would have colours you could:
- colour them for a mood, for example red=more aggressiv music, green= more chilled tunes, etc.
- you could highlight songs as a reminder to listen to them more often/to skip them
- making differnt colours for different genres to have a quick overview in you library
- could be a good aid for tagging (for example all songs without implemented lyric = red)
I think the best idee would be the colouring of the font itself in the mainpanel
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While I think labeling tracks with colours may have some uses, using them for mood, rating, genre etc would only be duplicating tags that already exist (except less so, because you'd have to know that Red=aggressive, Green=chilled).
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+1!!!!!
I'd allow a lot of possibilities to choose among. For example:
- Instead of filtering by 'similar to artist', differents tones of colour according to how similar it is.
- Different colours according to rate or love.
- Different colours for top last.fm songs or how many listeners has this song in last.fm
- Different colours according to bitrate, lyrics implemented, mood, etc.
- Different colours according to the last time this song was played, or how frequently/rarely is it played, or when was it added.
- Using colours as a marker/reminder.
- Etc.
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While I think labeling tracks with colours may have some uses, using them for mood, rating, genre etc would only be duplicating tags that already exist (except less so, because you'd have to know that Red=aggressive, Green=chilled).
yes you're right but the good thing is that you'd see the chilled songs (green) in a playlist songs very fast. Instead of scanning the genre column you would just see direktly that the next few songs will be chilled songs. If you browse through your music, a red coloured song would directly catch your attention.
It would be an addition visual way of displaying tags/or whatever, but in much more direct way.
On top of that, it would be very inovative, or at least I dont know any program which has this function
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When I read all these different ideas, I could imaging a rule based coloring method similar to user defined filters but instead of filtering, one could define a color. In addition you could choose more than one method as active at the same time (first fit defines the color). Colors would just be used virtually during display but not stored in the files itselves. This way you hadn't to mark or copy anything manually.
However, the disadvantage of every coloring is, that you won't be able anymore to easily change the skin or use theater mode...
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Potential usefulness aside, this has the possibility of making MB look very ugly! :)
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It's a creative idea, and I wouldn't like to spoil a party.
But yes, here comes the 'but'...
Personally I think there are already more then enough options with using and filtering tagging genres, moods, occasions, ratings, filtering etc. etc.
Colors would be some 'fun' but will never have the finesse you can achieve with those existing option.
It might be used for some temporary marking, but later on I'm sure you'd want to fill and use the appropriate and common fields for them.
Characterizing a song by just 1 color I believe is impossible. (Maybe add a smell function too? ;-)
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It's a creative idea, and I wouldn't like to spoil a party.
But yes, here comes the 'but'...
Personally I think there are already more then enough options with using and filtering tagging genres, moods, occasions, ratings, filtering etc. etc.
Colors would be some 'fun' but will never have the finesse you can achieve with those existing option.
It might be used for some temporary marking, but later on I'm sure you'd want to fill and use the appropriate and common fields for them.
Characterizing a song by just 1 color I believe is impossible. (Maybe add a smell function too? ;-)
But you don't need to characterize a song with a color. You can stablished a list of rules that you can freely apply.
For example, you want to know which songs are more listened in lastm. So you apply this rule of colours and you get this:
(http://i47.tinypic.com/2v0iah2.jpg)
Then you think... hey, didn't I mark some songs because I wanted to learn them with the guitar? So you change to 'markers' rule:
(http://i47.tinypic.com/4mdqe.jpg)
And then you wonder which songs you're listening less, so you change to a rule of colours according to frequency:
(http://i50.tinypic.com/etwmz5.jpg)
And those are only a few options... ;D
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Indeed creative and lots of possibilities.
Trying to think for other people (a very bad habbit ;-) I thought it to be kind of a gimmick which would probably not be used in the long run.
Never mind me ;-)
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The ability to have a column category whose full field displays the color (if any) would be really cool.
While having a coloured column/icon for basic marking of a track that needs attention, ie. lyrics missing, not rated, etc would, IMO, be a good idea as a visual reminder, but extending it beyond that basic idea would be difficult.
If I had a track marked tempo=fast=255,125,0 (orange); mood=energetic=255,0,0 (red); occasion=workout=255,0,255 (magenta)
would MB show all 3 colours as a gradient, pick only the first colour or do a blend of all the colours that hopefully wont match a colour that is already tagged for something else?
And I'd agree with SimonBRT, it has the potential to make MB very ugly, very quick
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The ability to have a column category whose full field displays the color (if any) would be really cool.
While having a coloured column/icon for basic marking of a track that needs attention, ie. lyrics missing, not rated, etc would, IMO, be a good idea as a visual reminder, but extending it beyond that basic idea would be difficult.
If I had a track marked tempo=fast=255,125,0 (orange); mood=energetic=255,0,0 (red); occasion=workout=255,0,255 (magenta)
would MB show all 3 colours as a gradient, pick only the first colour or do a blend of all the colours that hopefully wont match a colour that is already tagged for something else?
And I'd agree with SimonBRT, it has the potential to make MB very ugly, very quick
Not necessarily. The same you have a 'Configure Layout' button that allows to change between 'Artwork view', 'Track view' and so, you could have another one that allow to change between different options, one of them, of course, would be 'no colours'. Imagine an additional 'Configure colour' next to the 'Configure layout' button, something like:
(http://i49.tinypic.com/2vx21wx.jpg)
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Imagine an additional 'Configure colour' next to the 'Configure layout' button...
I think I get what you're proposing :-\
If I take my original concern
If I had a track marked tempo=fast=255,125,0 (orange); mood=energetic=255,0,0 (red); occasion=workout=255,0,255 (magenta)
would MB show all 3 colours as a gradient, pick only the first colour or do a blend of all the colours that hopefully wont match a colour that is already tagged for something else?
rather than tag each individual setting with a colour, I would tag the range?
So, using the colours from your mock-ups (red, green, blue), if I used a filter to find a track that had;
tempo=fast; mood=energetic; occasion=workout; I could have MB show no matches in the skin default colour, 1 match as blue, 2 matches as green and 3 matches as red.
Is this correct?
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I imagine any implementation would look something like the Conditional Formatting rules introduced in Excel 2007:
(http://images.devs-on.net/Image/amncZBAgewsXe7Ag-Region.png)
Excel's colouring rules are a bit complicated, so in this example, I've used the option to display an icon next to the relevant value. That could even be another possibility for people worried that all the coloured text and/or rows will make their MusicBee look a bit funky.
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Imagine an additional 'Configure colour' next to the 'Configure layout' button...
I think I get what you're proposing :-\
If I take my original concern
If I had a track marked tempo=fast=255,125,0 (orange); mood=energetic=255,0,0 (red); occasion=workout=255,0,255 (magenta)
would MB show all 3 colours as a gradient, pick only the first colour or do a blend of all the colours that hopefully wont match a colour that is already tagged for something else?
rather than tag each individual setting with a colour, I would tag the range?
So, using the colours from your mock-ups (red, green, blue), if I used a filter to find a track that had;
tempo=fast; mood=energetic; occasion=workout; I could have MB show no matches in the skin default colour, 1 match as blue, 2 matches as green and 3 matches as red.
Is this correct?
That could be one rule. But there's no limit to the kind of rules you can make. Imagine something like 'similar to [Artist]' plus 'bpm > 160' and you get coloured songs that are similar to some artist and that are 'fast' (better for a party, for example).
And red, blue and green was a basic stuff to make a mockup quickly. The good thing would be to be able to stablish you own range of colours (for example, degrees from colour A to colour B) that could fit, this way, with the skin you usually use. For example: if you're using this skin: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=7659.0 you could stablish a range of colours related to the browns used in the skin.
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In my oppinion, the advantages of a coloured song is that you can highlight ONE proporty of a song:
If I had a track marked tempo=fast=255,125,0 (orange); mood=energetic=255,0,0 (red); occasion=workout=255,0,255 (magenta)
would MB show all 3 colours as a gradient, pick only the first colour or do a blend of all the colours that hopefully wont match a colour that is already tagged for something else?
With too many colours in one song or with a blending of colour :
- you could get confused with the meaning of many colours
- you would not see directly which colour the song has, so you wouldn't have the effect of seeing directly why the song is marked.
-With many different colours in one song you would have the same problems as with the written tags: Too much information for a fast recognization of the "special property" (like slow BPM, no artwork) you're looking for
But I realize that it would be great to have different "colour-rules" at the same time but that there would be interferences for songs which would apply for 2+ colourrules.
Possible Solutions:
- Have a colour priority list, so that a song, even if it applies to two colour rules would one show one colour rule dependet on the priority list
- colour the tags if you had more than one colour rule applying to the song (A song which is slow would have the BPM tag-field coloured blue; if the genre is IDM, than IDM would be coloured red)
- To make some Tags BOLT instead of two colours, so that a song which is slow would be completly blue; and if the genre is IDM, than IDM would be written in BOLT)
Also I would like to say that i really like Gregs mashup with the Drop-down Menu
Potential usefulness aside, this has the possibility of making MB look very ugly! :)
if youd had custom colours you could make them even look nice in the skin. I get you're point, but even if it would be ugly, for me, usefullness is more important than a good-looking skin.
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i'm not opposed to doing this as text colours, but just as a suggestion - would it be better (and less ugly/distracting) is any matches were displayed as an coloured icon in the left side of the main panel where the playing track speaker displays (like the category icon in MS Outlook)? That way you could also have 2 colours displayed in the icon where there are multiple matches
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i'm not opposed to doing this as text colours, but just as a suggestion - would it be better (and less ugly/distracting) is any matches were displayed as an coloured icon in the left side of the main panel where the playing track speaker displays (like the category icon in MS Outlook)? That way you could also have 2 colours displayed in the icon where there are multiple matches
Let's make it visual. I'm not using exactly icons but I think it gets the general feeling.
[Full Text]
(http://i47.tinypic.com/2v0iah2.jpg)
[Icons]
(http://i50.tinypic.com/if90mx.jpg)
By the way, +1 for [Full Text]. I think you get the info in a very quick look, that is more useful.
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By the way, +1 for [Full Text]. I think you get the info in a very quick look, that is more useful.
yes, I agree that the coloured text conveys the information quicker and is easier to 'scan' than numbers/icons, but, just call me "thick" and get it over with, because without a better idea of the mechanics of how the colours will be applied, especially regarding multiple matches, I find it hard to agree with more than 'those colours look good' :-\
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i'm not opposed to doing this as text colours, but just as a suggestion - would it be better (and less ugly/distracting) is any matches were displayed as an coloured icon in the left side of the main panel where the playing track speaker displays (like the category icon in MS Outlook)? That way you could also have 2 colours displayed in the icon where there are multiple matches
+1 for this, i think this would be the perfect combination of a) a clean layout and b) the advantage of colourcodes even if there are muliple colour rules apply.
In my oppinion dots would look better than the MS Oulook "round" squares but I like the genreal idea :)
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i'm not opposed to doing this as text colours, but just as a suggestion - would it be better (and less ugly/distracting) is any matches were displayed as an coloured icon in the left side of the main panel where the playing track speaker displays (like the category icon in MS Outlook)? That way you could also have 2 colours displayed in the icon where there are multiple matches
Agree, and if the colour is defined by IF-THEN-ELSE clause, there will be only one match, if you get what I mean.
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i have done a basic implementation:
- highlighting rules are defined in the Tags(2) preferences
- only the first matching rule is applied
- the colour is displayed as a block in field "Highlight" - the field can be displayed as any column
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
one thing i probably will enhance is to allow each rule to be named, and to be able to quickly select the active rules eg. if you have named rules for Rock and another for Metal want to switch between highlighting just Rock tracks to just Metal tracks
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i've made the change so you can now specify which rules are active
and by right clicking in the "Highlight" column in the main panel you can directly open the Highlight rules dialog
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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Very nice Steven, this will be handy.
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i've made the change so you can now specify which rules are active
and by right clicking in the "Highlight" column in the main panel you can directly open the Highlight rules dialog
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
Really nice. And you were right. It looks better that way than colouring the whole line.
By the way. Bugs.
- The artist 'similar' feature doesn't work (for me).
Ideas.
- Top tracks from an Artist or Top trakcs from Similar to an Artist?
- Saving and loading set of rules? I even would propose some predefined set of rules for newbies :) (it's not that intuitive)
Another thing. Using the rule 'Comment has a value' is perfect to introduce any note in the comments tag and using it as a marker. It could be interesting to give the chance to show this tag as a kind of 'post-it' note...
EDIT I didn't read the 'make hightlights active' post. Discard the saving and loading proposal, though the predefined set of rules for newbies could be still a nice idea...
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...predefined set of rules for newbies could be still a nice idea...
Newbies won't be looking for ways to colour code their music.
To put it another way:
I think "Huh. What the hell does this coloured box mean and how do I get rid of it?" will be asked much more often than "Okay, music imported. Now, how can I assign a coloured label to my favourite Justin Bieber tracks?".
Just sayin'... :P
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By the way. Bugs.
- The artist 'similar' feature doesn't work (for me).
thats fixed for the next update
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this has the fix, also now if you single click the "Highlights" column header it opens the settings dialog
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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I like the current subtle implementation of highlighted tracks (as opposed to full row colouring, coloured text etc). :)
A couple of points:
if you single click the "Highlights" column header it opens the settings dialog
For consistency, shouldn't that sort tracks so that tracks of the same colour are together, and uncoloured tracks are last?
It also just occurred to me that being strictly rule based, there's no way to highlight an arbitrary selection of tracks - to follow up for tagging, listening, or syncing for example. Not sure how you would go about that, but given the colours aren't useful outside of MusicBee you could just store the assigned colour in the database and use it to override any rule-based colours.
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this has the fix, also now if you single click the "Highlights" column header it opens the settings dialog
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
Thanks! :)
Btw, bugs:
- The firs rule always applies, no matter is highlighted or not.
- New rules without a name are not saved. It would be good to set a name by default, "new rule" for example, to avoid people setting rules and discovering they vanished after saving it.
- Changing the percentage of similarity according to last.fm doesn't change the hightlighted similar artists. Shouldn't it be more hightlighted ones with higher percentages? ???
Sorry ::)
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the first issue is fixed for the next update
- Changing the percentage of similarity according to last.fm doesn't change the hightlighted similar artists. Shouldn't it be more hightlighted ones with higher percentages? ???
can you explain some - how are you changing the %?
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the first issue is fixed for the next update
- Changing the percentage of similarity according to last.fm doesn't change the hightlighted similar artists. Shouldn't it be more hightlighted ones with higher percentages? ???
can you explain some - how are you changing the %?
In the AutoDJ tab > Track selection > Track from artist rated by last.fm by last.fm as more than x% similar
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At first I thought I wouldn't use this but found that it's really handy when playing tracks from Last.fm/Ex.fm/Jamendo since the filters in AutoDJ don't affect them and I can't edit their tags. So I've added some rules to highlight tracks that are longer then 10 minutes or shorter then 30 seconds + Highlight tracks by artists that are "stuck" in my recommendations because of a redirect of the artist page on Last.fm and it's soo much better.
Thanks for making this :)
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- Changing the percentage of similarity according to last.fm doesn't change the hightlighted similar artists. Shouldn't it be more hightlighted ones with higher percentages? ???
its refreshing ok with the new percentage for me - are you sure its not working (maybe the bug with the active filters was confusing your test results)
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this has the fix for the active filters:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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if you single click the "Highlights" column header it opens the settings dialog
For consistency, shouldn't that sort tracks so that tracks of the same colour are together, and uncoloured tracks are last?
Shouldn't left-click sort the column and "Highlight Editor" be an option on right-click?
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- Changing the percentage of similarity according to last.fm doesn't change the hightlighted similar artists. Shouldn't it be more hightlighted ones with higher percentages? ???
its refreshing ok with the new percentage for me - are you sure its not working (maybe the bug with the active filters was confusing your test results)
Last patch applied and still not working.
I took a couple of screencaps. This is a AutoDJ preview. The Corun's song appears:
(http://i45.tinypic.com/15q93ch.jpg)
But when I refresh the Music Library, same track playing as you can see, this same song appears unhighlighted (rules for highlighting is similar artist to playings track).
(http://i45.tinypic.com/2ajyjqu.jpg)
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if you are refering to the sidebar only, i expect it wont react immediately and the change would only display when the now playing list is repainted (eg. minimise/restore musicbee, add files etc) but i can do something about that.
if you also mean the main panel then it works fine for me and i have no idea why it wouldnt work for you.
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if you are refering to the sidebar only, i expect it wont react immediately and the change would only display when the now playing list is repainted (eg. minimise/restore musicbee, add files etc) but i can do something about that.
if you also mean the main panel then it works fine for me and i have no idea why it wouldnt work for you.
Well, as Jack Lemmon said (more or less), nothing is perfect ;D Thanks anyway!
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I just tested the feature and I really like it :)
And I absolutely agree with the solution of coloring just a square instead of the full row.
But for one purpose I'd prefer to have the full row colored (the textcolor I mean). That's when I want to "grey out" specific tracks. When I want them to fade out a bit, so that they're out of focus, visually more in the background - do you know what I mean?
The way the dead links look like.
And believe me, I wouldn't dare to color the whole row in something like red or green! Because the tidy GUI was one of the primary reasons for me to switch to MB.
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I just tested the feature and I really like it :)
But for one purpose I'd prefer to have the full row colored (the textcolor I mean). That's when I want to "grey out" specific tracks. When I want them to fade out a bit, so that they're out of focus, visually more in the background - do you know what I mean?
The way the dead links look like.
I like this idea - but I think it could work better as a wish/feature separated from this. I'm thinking it could be a setting in Edit > Find or custom searches in the search field, like a checkbox "Gray out tracks that don't match" (rather than showing only matching tracks as it is now).
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i've already done this for the next update - its been done as a check box to include the colour for text colouring.
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if you are refering to the sidebar only, i expect it wont react immediately and the change would only display when the now playing list is repainted (eg. minimise/restore musicbee, add files etc) but i can do something about that.
this has the change as described:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
also i have added a +text? checkbox. When ticked the text is coloured
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As the OP I just want to say: thanks so much Steven!
I want to use this feature to create visual cues for the key of songs, as well as create bookmarks for my now playing list and and and, this is awesome!
Also, the ability to assign colour by any rule is a far better implementation than my concept.
Great work, donation time!
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Just curious and looking for some inspiration - what rules are you guys using together with this feature? :)
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Just curious and looking for some inspiration - what rules are you guys using together with this feature? :)
Quite unspectacular but very important for me - I use it to grey out tracks which I only have as 20 second "previews", and not as full length tracks. I assigned the genre "Preview" to them and the rule is as simple: [Genre] [is any of] [Preview] with this result:
(http://i45.tinypic.com/990uv9.jpg)
It works just perfect :)
Providing a rule-based formatting system is really a great thing und a unique feature among music-managers, I think.
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I've just assigned different colours for different file types.
Useful to me because if it's an OGG file, I know it's a track I've ripped myself and therefore good quality.
Also makes it easier to identify ASX files which are referencing other files.
It would be nice to highlight tracks that are missing replay gain info, but Track Gain isn't an option on the rules list. :(
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this has a fix for when selecting colour coded track text:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_1/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip
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Just curious and looking for some inspiration - what rules are you guys using together with this feature? :)
Only just exploring this feature but it seems very powerful. I've set up 128kbps files to be shown in red (which I intend to replace with better quality versions) and two other colours to show tracks in two playlists I sync my Sansa Clip to.
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This thread is difficult to find for a new user, suggest adding highlighting rules to the title
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This thread is difficult to find for a new user, suggest adding highlighting rules to the title
Made it so.
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Thanks Zak :)
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I wonder why this feature is located under Tags(2) instead of Layout section of Preference?
Might be hard to find.
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I think it's a little fuzzy as to where it goes. I think it belongs right next to filters, personally. They're different versions of the same idea.
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It think it depends how you use it, if have enabled the highlighting column you could understand it like a virtual tag.
But if have that column hidden and use it to colour the text then it can be understood like something in layout.
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True, it technically can work as a highlighting "tag." I'd still advocate for putting it right next to Filters, because the use the same system to set up and someone might decide that one or the other works better for their needs.
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Not sure if this would be wanted by everyone, but I'd like it if the highlighted track's Star Ratings were the color of the specified highlight.
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Is there any way to highlight songs whose title=30 characters? Another program truncated a bunch of my tags, so this would be pretty useful for me.
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Is there any way to highlight songs whose title=30 characters? Another program truncated a bunch of my tags, so this would be pretty useful for me.
Create two virtual tags:
Virtual1=$Replace(<Title>,$Left(<Title>,30),)
Virtual2=$Replace(<Title>,$Left(<Title>,29),)
Create a highlighting rule:
match:all
Virtual1 has no value
Virtual2 has a value
It will do the job.
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Is there any way to highlight songs whose title=30 characters? Another program truncated a bunch of my tags, so this would be pretty useful for me.
You can also use:
Title matches RegEx: ^[^\r\n]{30,30}$
straight into the highlighting rules
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Is there any way to highlight songs whose title=30 characters? Another program truncated a bunch of my tags, so this would be pretty useful for me.
You can also use:
Title matches RegEx: ^[^\r\n]{30,30}$
straight into the highlighting rules
That did the trick, thank you so much (:
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With "Auto Size All Columns" command, the current default width of highlight column looks too narrow (3-5 pixels depending on the side panels state). How about doubling it up?
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One of the unresolved issues with highlighting feature is how to display the field for tracks meeting multiple rules. Currently only one color can be shown for tracks, and if a track meets multiple rules, color of the higher-order rule applies to it. Thus there's no way to know if a track highlighted with a certain color meets other rules as well.
How about splitting the color bar into pieces when the tracks displayed on the main panel with highlight column enabled are meeting more than one rule? If there's a track meeting three rules, then all bars for displayed tracks would be split into three pieces of different colors. The order of color would follow the order of the rules. This way, the user would be able to identify tracks meeting multiple rules.
It would look something like this:
(http://i.imgur.com/FqsP5px.png)
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splitting the color bar into pieces when the tracks displayed on the main panel with highlight column enabled are meeting more than one rule
+1
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One feature that would be great to have would be to build upon the text-highlighting and have the ability to only highlight certain text. For example, one may wish to highlight strings in a title matching the format of Title Name (feat. so and so) to visually separate the featured artists from the track's actual title.
You already have the RegEx implemented, so we're halfway there.
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That's already possible.
For your example, create a virtual tag like this:
$If($Contains(<Title>,"(")="T",$Split(<Title>,"(",1),<Title>)$If($Contains(<Title>,"(")="T",{font: Segoe UI;Bold;9}{color: 255,212,109}" ("$Split(<Title>,"(",2),<Title>)
This will simply search and match if there is a left bracket in the title.
Obviously you will need to tune the formula for other cases and requirements.