Author Topic: Advanced "Gap Before" Usage  (Read 4638 times)

loubat

  • Guest
Is there any way to make a more intelligent "Gap Before..." behavior in the Playlist Mixer?  What I basically want to do is, take my "Recently Added" Playlist and throw it in a playlist with a couple of my favorite artists, and have the playlist heavily favor the Recently Added.  I've been able to sorta do that with Playlist Mixer, but no matter what proportions I work out in my head, I always end up with the favorite artists repeated in back to back tracks.

Is there any way to set a specific value such as, "Only play [Artist A] x times per x Tracks"?  I think the problem is that the program takes the "Track Count" field very seriously, lol, meaning that if you tell it 30 tracks by an artist, it's gonna cram those 30 tracks in whether it satisfies the "Gap Before..." value or not.  Which means you have to do some decent math to make sure your Track Count is in the correct proportion for "Gap Before" to work.  But at the same time, one of the Artists in my Recently Added is getting back to back plays because they are over-represented in the Recently Added playlist.

I guess this is more of a feature request, as I'm guessing there's not a solution based on what's already in the program.  So the feature request is basically, "Make Playlist Mixer satisfy the 'Gap Before' condition before the 'Track Count' condition."  Just have it truncate the playlist a couple tracks short of its intended length, instead of cramming all the tracks in all willy-nilly.  :)


(one of my old forums had code to resize large images, but can't remember it, was [imgw] or something, oh well :) )
Last Edit: April 08, 2015, 06:29:55 PM by loubat

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
Welcome to the forum!

I'm still not much help, but I can tell you that if you want to insert an image you can use [ img width=### ] (without spaces) to make it fit. :)
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

loubat

  • Guest
Thanks psycho!

I'm still fiddling with the Playlist Mixer and maybe I don't understand it at all?  My "Recently Added" playlist contains 396 tracks.  I've set the track counts to Artist A=30, B=20, and Recent=300, Gap=15, but the resulting Playlist is only 196 tracks long.  If I set Gap=0, I get the full 350 tracks requested.  The playlist length varies based on what I change Gap to, so it's obviously trying, but it's still not obeying the Gap value. *scratches head*

Sometimes I wish I hadn't changed my major from Computer Engineering way back when, and I could just write the code myself.  Seems like you just create an array(maybe?) with a size of whatever you made the Gap setting, so the array would remember the last 3 (if that was your Gap) artist played, query the array when picking the next artist, and if that artist is in the array, you'd throw it back in the draw pile and draw again.  With every track you move the 1st (or last, whichever direction you want to do it) out of the array and add the most recent artist to it.

Steven

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 34313
make sure you are using v2.5 as i recall there was a bug fixed in the mixer for the artist gap handling

loubat

  • Guest
Weird, I just downloaded MB from the MB website yesterday, but I'm running 2.4.5404....  Ah, I see the download page says to check the forum for the latest version, which is indeed 2.5.  Shouldn't that be fixed?  If it's not a Beta (or is it?), it should be the default download I would think.  I'll check it out and report back.  Thanks!

Edit: still getting the same kind of results.  :(
Last Edit: April 08, 2015, 07:51:30 PM by loubat

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
My understanding is that "gap before artist can repeat" settings still don't apply across playlist mixer cycles.  Is that correct?
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

Steven

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 34313
My understanding is that "gap before artist can repeat" settings still don't apply across playlist mixer cycles.  Is that correct?
looking at the code, yes that is the case.
Also MB makes 16 attempts to get a random file that meets the selection criteria and also the artist gap. If the artist gap still cant be satisified after 16 attempts then the track is selected anyway.

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
Thanks for clarifying. Would it be possible to have the gap enforced across cycles?  And what if your cycle is only 5 tracks but you want a gap of 10?  (I would expect the search for a different artist to remain as you describe)
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

Steven

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 34313
sure. Its not so trivial that i could make the change for v3.0 though

psychoadept

  • Global Moderator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10691
I'll put it on the wishlist
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)