Author Topic: Auto-playlist changes  (Read 18526 times)

OOmatrixOO

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I make a fresh installation of musicbee and now its works. But there is the problem with the track order what a2a wrote.

Steven

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This should stop the playlist re-sorting:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip

unzip and replace the existing musicbee files

OOmatrixOO

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Thank you Steven. Your patch fix the problem.

a2a

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Any consideration for 'live updating', for me this is what's needed to keep the list smart..?

a2a

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Auto-playlists keep changing and re-populating with different tracks/material every time you move away from the playlist.

Thought the experience was to be once the playlist is based on your criteria is does not change until the tracks it presents you with has their criteria changed?

For example, a test playlist with "genre = dance" & "playcount <1" - limited to 3 tracks only; MusicBee gives me 3 tracks, but if you move off the list and come back to it, the list is entirely different.

Also, even just staying on the list and playing a track to its end, the list then does not update with a new track given the playcount has changed to 1 and thus not fitting of said auto-playlist criteria?

Running Musicbee v3.1.6266

Steven

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disabling of automatic refresh is already supported in v3.1 as an option on the auto-playlist definition

a2a

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Yes, but if you disable auto-refresh, then there is no way for your auto-playlist to dynamically update once a track's criteria expire from it.

If you create an auto-playlist with auto-refresh disabled, all it does it generate a one-off list for you that then becomes static. The only way to get new tracks within it is to manually 'refresh' it from within the list.

It's frustrating and makes no sense when you configure it otherwise, only to navigate away from the list and come back and it's all changed again. I don't see how it's really usable?  :-\

The auto-playlist's don't 'live-update' on their own. If you move away from the list the entire contents change and if you turn off "automatic refresh" the tracks do not change  :( ?

Freddy Barker

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disabling of automatic refresh is already supported in v3.1 as an option on the auto-playlist definition


Hi Steven and all MB fans...

If we were voting on Auto-Playlist functionality, then my own preference would be for a real-time dynamic updating playlist.
Maybe as a separate entity from the current 'click to update' offerings??

So, for example, a playlist of 25 tracks, configured "not played in the last 50 days", as each track has finished playing, it pops out of from the top of the visible playlist and a new random track is added to the bottom...

Cheers and thanks very much for all your work and expertise  ;D

GermanKiwi

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Hi, I would like to request or suggest the following for the auto-playlist functionality:

1) When "Export static copy" is selected, it would be nice to be able to specify the sorting order in the exported copy. Currently I find that the sorting order is sometimes random, whereas I'd like to be able to sort the entries in the playlist alphabetically by filename. Perhaps a new setting which lets me choose which column or field to sort by, would be nice.

2) Currently in Preferences > Library, there are settings to control the path for exported playlists, whether relative paths are used, and mapping base file paths. I'd love to be able to override those default settings on a per-playlist basis. Sometimes I have an auto-playlist that I want to have exported to a static copy in a different location, or without relative paths, or whatever.

3) When "use relative paths" is enabled in the Preferences, and the static playlist is exported to the same folder as the source MP3 files, the playlist starts each line with:
    .\
I'd prefer that in this situation, each line would start directly with the file name, and not including the redundant .\

Thanks!

a2a

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disabling of automatic refresh is already supported in v3.1 as an option on the auto-playlist definition


Hi Steven and all MB fans...

If we were voting on Auto-Playlist functionality, then my own preference would be for a real-time dynamic updating playlist.
Maybe as a separate entity from the current 'click to update' offerings??

So, for example, a playlist of 25 tracks, configured "not played in the last 50 days", as each track has finished playing, it pops out of from the top of the visible playlist and a new random track is added to the bottom...

Cheers and thanks very much for all your work and expertise  ;D


Agreed - this is exactly what I'd love to have within the app.:

Any consideration for 'live updating', for me this is what's needed to keep the list smart..?



If MB would update the track only after its criteria has expired; this is how a smart playlist should operate in my opinion.

a2a

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Please could this be considered? Thank you :)

Steven

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For auto-playlists in MB, by default they always refresh as soon as files are edited/ added/ removed from the library and when a play count/ rating etc changes. If thats not the case can someone provide me an example auto-playlist is not refreshing on a live basis.

For v3.1 an option was provided so MB takes a once only snapshot of an auto-playlist and preserves the files and sorting. Its mainly intended from my point of view to preserve files in auto-playlists that have a random aspect to selection/ sorting. As of now the snapshot doesnt update but i think there is an argument to say that if a file no longer meets the non-random parts of the selection criteria eg. rating < 3 and now the files' rating is 4 then the file should be removed from the snapshot but let me know if you disagree

edit: actually there was a bug with live refreshing. This should fix it:

http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip
Last Edit: March 14, 2017, 10:58:14 PM by Steven

psychoadept

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I'm good with that change
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

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

a2a

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For auto-playlists in MB, by default they always refresh as soon as files are edited/ added/ removed from the library and when a play count/ rating etc changes. If thats not the case can someone provide me an example auto-playlist is not refreshing on a live basis.

For v3.1 an option was provided so MB takes a once only snapshot of an auto-playlist and preserves the files and sorting. Its mainly intended from my point of view to preserve files in auto-playlists that have a random aspect to selection/ sorting. As of now the snapshot doesnt update but i think there is an argument to say that if a file no longer meets the non-random parts of the selection criteria eg. rating < 3 and now the files' rating is 4 then the file should be removed from the snapshot but let me know if you disagree

edit: actually there was a bug with live refreshing. This should fix it:

http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip

What I'm experiencing is that an auto-playlist keeps changing its contents every single time you move away from the list. I generate a list based on particular criteria and then move to e.g. "now playing". For whatever reason I return to the playlist and see all the contents are different. I just cannot comprehend that behaviour; because now, what is loaded in the player and what the auto-playlist is showing me is totally different.

What I strongly think should be the case is that that list remains 'as it was generated' until the tracks inside of it no longer meet the criteria. Examples have been stated above, but essentially, if one sets a criteria and a track no longer meets that it should dynamically disappear from the list and a new track is added in its place: it is just like the iTunes "Smart Playlist" type behaviour.

If I uncheck "automatically refresh the matching tracks" and listen to a track in the list that has e.g. "not played in the last day" the list does not then remove that track; it stays there despite having a play count of 1, today. In iTunes, that tracks disappears from the list and is replaced with another track that meets the playlist criteria.

So in MB, you generate your auto-playlist - it gives your results. But you move away from that list and return only to find all of those tracks are entirely different, just doesn't make sense? Have also used the latest patch as linked above and find it doesn't work?

theta_wave

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Static autoplayists is such a terrible idea.  If one uses itunes, jriver media center or mediamonkey, the behavior in those programs is that smart/autoplayists automatically refresh, hence their name.  Now, adding a new Jazz album doesn't show up in my Jazz autoplaylist like it did last week.  Please revert back to the long-held standards set forth by those programs and their ilk.  If a user wants autoplaylists to have customized behavior that is entirely different from the norms set by those and other music managers, let them set it themselves rather than making it as the default for everyone.  Or better, said user can simply export the auto-playlist as a STATIC playlist if so desired.

This was a nasty surprise and I'm mad at myself for catching this just now and not disabusing this idea earlier.  Now, a user has to manually edit each xautopf to include "LiveUpdating="True"" (392 xautopf's for me) to re-establish traditional and expected behavior for autoplayists in MB. >:(

EDIT: Actually, I made this post in light of a bug in 6284 concerning old autoplaylists created in 3.0 (99.9% of mine) where previously dynamic autoplaylists are now defaulted to static autoplayists: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=21340.0

EDIT 2: Basically, the old autoplaylists didn't have 'LiveUpdating' in the second line of their associated xautopf settings, so the bug treated that omission as 'LiveUpdating="False"' and created .snap playlists en masse (391 .snap's, ~85MB total).  This bug has been corrected in 6286 and the superfluous .snap files automatically removed.

That doesn't change my mind of having an option of static autoplaylists since the solution to that is simply exporting a static playlist from the autoplaylist at the desired time.  Having an option for static autoplaylist will simply confuse users in the future.  I don't see why people would want to shoe-horn static playlist behavior into autoplaylists.
Last Edit: March 18, 2017, 08:12:59 PM by theta_wave