Author Topic: Add "Work" and Possibly Other Fields to the Auto-DJ Random Sort Capability  (Read 10137 times)

ArthurDaniels

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Hi Steve,

Currently, Auto-DJ supports random sorts by either Album or Track.  My request is to open up the random sort options to include the Work Field and any other fields you believe to be appropriate.

Adding the Work field will support an Auto-DJ random sort to pick up full compositions, rather than just single tracks, when a classical composition spanning more than one track (a symphony for example) is selected during the random sort.

Thanks for considering this request.

Best,

Art

redwing

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+1

Great idea! One thing I'd like to add is it may require an additional tag selection box. So most people would be fine with the current select by setting - either track or album. If the user wants to select a combination of tags instead, that should offer "Album Name" instead of "Album" so that it could override the album definition setting which is set in Preferences> Grouping.

This would also allow adding virtual tags to the grouping setting without worrying about UI freeze since they will be used only for generating playing tracks list rather than for display. Hope this option could be available both for playlists and Auto-DJ.

psychoadept

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+1

Adding this feature to Auto DJ and Auto Playlists would largely eliminate the need for "keep tracks in order when shuffling" setting (and would be much easier to maintain)
Last Edit: October 31, 2017, 11:58:10 PM by psychoadept
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Steven

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I am not familiar enough with classical music to be sure so I will ask a stupid question.
If grouping by work, is it the right thing to also include the album ie. is a work name by itself enough to ensure uniqueness and if not, would including the album name as part of the grouping criteria be desirable?

redwing

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I think that depends on how album name is tagged. Usually album name is given by performance (that's how they are published but with lots of duplicate name, e.g. "Beethoven: Symphony No. 5"). So for users who don't have detailed tags, including "Album Name" may help to ensure the same work getting split by performance. For others, they might select 'Work", "Album Artist", "Artist", "Year", "Conductor" tags together instead of "Album name" to ensure grouping each performance for the same work.
Last Edit: October 31, 2017, 10:57:46 PM by redwing

Steven

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/uoyqusdsqprxg1h/MusicBeeTestCustomImage.zip?dl=1

i have added: work and grouping to the random sorting option in the auto-dj.
It includes also album artist/ album for now so let me know how well that works

redwing

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It works for me because it's the same as selecting album, album artist and work (or grouping) for album definition.

But it may not work for others depending on how their files are tagged.

Still I'd like to see it allowing to select a combination of tags (especially year, artist and custom/virtual tags).

vzell

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Still I'd like to see it allowing to select a combination of tags (especially year, artist and custom/virtual tags).

+1

Steven

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One of the things the current implementation does is force the sorting in album/track order for each randomly selected work ie. once a work is randomly selected, MB will include all tracks for that work/album, in order of the track numbers of files associated with that work. How would you see it working for where say the user chooses a custom tag. Do you think it makes sense to still attempt to sort the tracks for each randomly chosen work?

psychoadept

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I haven't tested this yet, but really excited about it.  I think it makes sense to keep things in order.  I can't think of a case where you would want to keep tracks together but not in order, although I'm sure there are a few edge cases.
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redwing

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Yes, I think sorting in album/track order is essential with whatever combination of selected tags. Otherwise, the user would have to enable "keep tracks in order when shuffling" setting for all source tracks.

ArthurDaniels

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OK, guys, I have downloaded and installed the updated version.  I have been working with the new Work selection mode.  I am not exactly achieving the results hoped for - but perhaps that is because I do not fully understand how to set all of the options in the Auto DJ menu.

My first question is:  How to set the "Initial List Size" and "Maintains ___ number of tracks"?

When I started this Wish List request, my desire was to have Auto DJ sort a random selection by the Work field to capture all tracks which have the exact same name in the Work field.

Here are some examples:

1.  Beethoven Symphony # 5 - I have several Albums containing this symphony.  Each of the Albums also contains another and different Beethoven symphony.  This symphony has four movements and each movement typically occupies one track - so, four tracks have the same Work name.

Now, if I have three different recordings of  this symphony and each recording has four tracks identically named "Beethoven Symphony # 5", then I assume that all 12 tracks would be included if the random Work sort finds Beethoven Symphony # 5.

But, then the question is: How would this particular example Work sort be affected by the two track settings "Initial List Size" and "Maintains  ___ number of racks"?

2.  Here is a completely different case:  An opera such as Turandot is a single Work which spans two CDs and has many tracks (let's say 30 total tracks for example).  In my library structures, all 30 of these tracks have the same Work name "Turandot" and all tracks are contained within one Album named "Turandot".  So, the Work selection process must capture all 30 of these tracks to play the entire opera as a random selection.

Once again, the question becomes:  How do the "Initial List Size" and "Maintains ___ number of tracks" settings affect this situation?

Steve, thanks for tackling this feature and I look forward to understanding how to use it to achieve a random Work selection.

To avoid being sidetracked as you look at this issue, I am not concerned about the Work Selector finding all tracks with the same Work name, even though, as in my first example, three different versions of the same work would be selected.  I can easily fix that problem by slight alterations to the name of the Work for each recording.

The fundamental need is to capture a complete Work, regardless of the number of tracks the Work contains, so long as the Work has the same exact name for all tracks comprising the Work.

OK - here is a quick update.  I set the "Initial List Size" to 100 and then set "Maintains 100 number of tracks" as a test - then did a preview sort.  Several long works were in the list, but I noticed that at the bottom of the list, there was a work which contained only two tracks, even though the actual work contains more than two tracks.

So, it appears to me that the list stops at 100 tracks in this case, regardless of the fact that the last work selected has more tracks than were selected.  The Maintains 100 tracks became a limiter.

Otherwise, the Work selector functioned as intended and captured all related tracks for other works in that particular preview effort.

Seems to me that the Maintains XXX number of tracks limiter must need to be disabled when we are trying to sort by Work so that the last Work in the list contains all of its associated tracks.

If this action is not possible, the Work sort still has great value because I can just eliminate the last Work from the "Playing Tracks" column.

Great work, Steve!!!

Art
Last Edit: November 02, 2017, 09:53:52 PM by ArthurDaniels

Steven

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I think that depends on how album name is tagged. Usually album name is given by performance (that's how they are published but with lots of duplicate name, e.g. "Beethoven: Symphony No. 5"). So for users who don't have detailed tags, including "Album Name" may help to ensure the same work getting split by performance. For others, they might select 'Work", "Album Artist", "Artist", "Year", "Conductor" tags together instead of "Album name" to ensure grouping each performance for the same work.
i have now additionally included support for virtual tags only ie. the user can choose "select by" one of the virtual tags
The results will sort the files matching each randomly selected virtual tag value by album track

redwing

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@ArthurDaniels;

Initial list size and the number of upcoming tracks setting won't affect what tracks and how they get selected. It only affects the number of tracks included in playing tracks list. But for a practical reason, give a big number if you have lots of tracks in one 'work". The benefit is you can use "play next album" hotkey (set up the hotkey in Preferences> Hotkeys) when you want to skip to the next work. But if the number of upcoming tracks is very small, you will have to keep pressing the hotkey to skip the multi-track work when it could be done with one click with a big number of upcoming tracks.

If you choose "random select by work" mode, the selection gets split by Album Name / Album Artist / Work.
So if you have five albums with the same album name "Beethoven: Symphony No. 5", it depends on whether each album has a different album artist. If all have the same album artist, all five albums will be selected for the work. If different, just one album will (randomly) get selected for the work.

So if you want each work split per performance, use a different album name or album artist per performance.
Last Edit: November 02, 2017, 09:59:43 PM by redwing

redwing

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i have now additionally included support for virtual tags only ie. the user can choose "select by" one of the virtual tags
The results will sort the files matching each randomly selected virtual tag value by album track

Does this include Album Artist / Album Name too just like Work & Grouping?

BTW the link wasn't updated.
Last Edit: November 02, 2017, 10:11:53 PM by redwing