Author Topic: Add 'Complete Albums' as a criterion for limiting autoplaylists  (Read 13958 times)

aidanw

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I think i did misunderstand - so this isn't actually a "complete album = true" kind of filter - you still need to make up your own rules for determining what is a full album (e.g. >6 tracks, etc) but that this just helps view the results better?

beeing good

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Fish, how would MB know if an album is complete or not?

This isn't quite what I was hoping for. It is a definite improvement and quite useful. I was more after a way to list all my albums but in a random order, if I include all my albums with this new playlist feature then I just get all my albums listed alphabetically. I suppose this is dictated by the main panel sorting though.

This is good enough I guess, just have to keep refreshing for a new selection.

Anti

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> I was more after a way to list all my albums but in a random order, if I include all
> my albums with this new playlist feature then I just get all my albums listed alphabetically

Try again. I can get all my albums listed randomly using this new feature.
limit to: 100 GB | selected by: random | grouped by: album

beeing good

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Umm no, still not working for me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong....




Anti

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Thanks for the screenshot.

Yerp, you have to use a view that contains the # column *and* sort by it, before selecting 'play now':

In Album and Track view & Track Detail view, you have to click the # column each time, because it initially sorts alphabetically by album.
Artwork view can't be sorted by # for obvious reasons.

The above is almost the same as for 'normal' auto-playlists. The only thing that has changed is that the views initially sort alphabetically, so you have to click the # column each time. With 'normal' auto-playlists, the views remember the sort by # setting automatically.
Last Edit: July 18, 2011, 12:07:03 PM by Anti

beeing good

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I've realised that for me it is easier just to limit it to 21 albums (as many as fit in the screen space) and hit refresh if I need a new selection. It's a bit of hassle to manually change the sorting each time. For what I want it for this actually works better.

Anti

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The albums will still be displayed and played in alphabetical order though,
rather than the random order they were chosen, until you sort by #.

beeing good

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Yeah I realise that but by limiting to just a few I get a random selection, which is ok to be ordered alphabetically. With just one screen of albums selected randomly the sorting isn't very important as the random selection was what I was most important. It's not ideal, I would prefer a way to sort everything automatically randomly by album but it works for what I want.

Which brings me to ask if it is possible to implement a sorting preference in the auto playlist?

Steven

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the random sorting is only working well with Track Details view if its sorted in natural order ie. the # column.
For album & tracks and artwork view i will add a "Natural Order" sort option and for random playlists it would set the default sort to Natural Order

beeing good

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Sounds good Steven.

I'd like to ask something about auto playlists in general. What rules/conditions would i need to use to select only albums that have different names? At the moment I've set it to just 21 albums but I'm getting more than 21 sometimes because the album title is 'various' or something common like that (or if I use Artist or Album Artist I get lots of Various Artists albums).

Steven

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for random autoplaylists it now shows the tracks (or albums if grouped by album) in random order for Album & Tracks view (was always  working for Track Detail)
However for Artwork view its a bit harder and i will do that another time:
http://www.mediafire.com/?0gdcy53w1e50cmg

Steven

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i have made a go of doing this for the artwork view as well although i dont have time to test throughly and it shows the sort order label in the header bar incorrectly which i will fix another time
http://www.mediafire.com/?e55fr6k89ll54sp

beeing good

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This seems to work well art view, I will continue to test it but I haven't found any problems so far.

I got a bit of a shock with the new art work scaling  :o
That looks good as well though!

I think Random Album may be a good one to add to the default auto playlists in future versions. Aside from being a great list, I would imagine a lot of mediamonkey users would look for this one.

As always, many thanks.

Anti

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Seems to work great! This is another feature that I'm going to use all the time.
I can't believe two major wishes have been fulfilled in one day!

Cheers Steven!

beeing good

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I seem to be having a strange problem with this. Some albums play in the incorrect track order when I click to play the album. I'm using the latest beta.



It doesn't seem to be all albums and I can't see a reason why it is doing this. If I play the album through the main library panel the same albums play correctly.