Unless I’m missing something, to edit a playlist I have to:

• Switch to the playlist
• Load the play list in the play queue
• Drag/Drop songs to rearrange the order (a very erractic UI for that)
• To add music
  
  • Switch to the collection list
  • Locate the music in question
  • Drag it across to the play queue (again somewhat painful to position)
  • Rinse, Repeat
• Save the Play Queue – which *DOESN”T* update the original playlist, just creates a new one.
• Delete the old One
• Rename the new one to match

I'd be delighted to find I was missing a better way of doing this.

I'm with you on this. In 1.4 it was very easy to create and edit playlists, and to do so while listening to another playlist or even a random mix.

In 2.X it seems the only way to create a playlist is to work with the active playlist, set it up just as you like, save it, then clear it, start creating your next playlist, etc. Meaning you can't do what I just described above; you can't listen to playlist "A" or the Dynamic Mode while building/editing playlist "B". It's a big step backwards. Unless, like you, I'm missing something.

Also on a tangent.. am I the only one who reads the descriptions under "Dynamic Playlists" and has not a flying clue what they mean? "Proportional Bias"? "Fuzzy Bias"?

You can also drag and drop from the queue to the stored playlist (for me, the playlist window is updated afterwards with all playlist closed - but I guess this is just a bug)

Still double handling. It would be fair easier to be able to drag direct from the collection to the play list.

I see what you mean, and there doesn't seem to be a good way to fix it. Splitting either the Media Sources view or the Playlist view might work, but would probably require a lot of code (meaning it will never happen). A standalone dialog like the Cover Art Manager would work, but would be very redundant (and would mean the Media Sources playlist editing and the dialog playlist editing would eventually work in different ways).

habfan29 wrote:Also on a tangent.. am I the only one who reads the descriptions under "Dynamic Playlists" and has not a flying clue what they mean? "Proportional Bias"? "Fuzzy Bias"?

I had fun playing with those the other night. They mostly useful for ensuring that the songs chosen at random adhere to a certain genre (no punk intruding on your classical).

'Fuzzy Bias' just ensures that all the tracks put into the playness hae a similar trait (year, genre, etc), and there is a slider for how strictly this is enforced (i.e. not-at-all to all-the-time). This effects all songs, so generally you want to use something vague like genre or year.

'Proportional Bias' ensures that a specified percent of the songs loaded in the playlist have the same trait (year, genre, etc). This effects only some songs, so you will use something specific like artist or album.

When you combine rules, you can do stuff like listen to lot of Artist A (50% Proportional Bias), a little of Artist B (25% Proportional Bias), and a little random mix of a genre (25% Proportional Bias by genre, or strict Fuzzy Bias of genre if the two artists are also in the genre).

semper_non_sequitur wrote:'Fuzzy Bias' just ensures that all the tracks put into the playness hae a similar trait (year, genre, etc), and there is a slider for how strictly this is enforced (i.e. not-at-all to all-the-time). This effects all songs, so generally you want to use something vague like genre or year.

'Proportional Bias' ensures that a specified percent of the songs loaded in the playlist have the same trait (year, genre, etc). This effects only some songs, so you will use something specific like artist or album.

Hmm. That seems like a lot of explanation and I'm still not sure I get the use for it. The best random playlist generator I've ever used was in a music manager named madman. It's long deprecated (it depends on the original version of XMMS for pete's sake) so I finally had to abandon it. It allowed you to set up a list of scoring rules, for example:

5-star songs score +10.
4-star songs score +8.
1-star songs score -5.
New songs score +4.
Songs you haven't heard in a week score +4.
Songs you haven't heard in a month score +10.
Songs you heard in the last week score -10
Songs you heard in the last 24 hours score "never play".
etc.

Madman then dynamically computed a score for every song in the collection to generate the random playlist; higher score, more likely to get in the playlist. Fairly intuitive and it worked fantastic. I've never seen a music manager that's implemented anything close to this since.

Anyway. We'll see how the smart playlists work when they finally come back to Amarok.

Did you have a look at the Automatic Playlist Generator?

habfan29 wrote:Hmm. That seems like a lot of explanation and I'm still not sure I get the use for it. The best random playlist generator I've ever used was in a music manager named madman. It's long deprecated (it depends on the original version of XMMS for pete's sake) so I finally had to abandon it. It allowed you to set up a list of scoring rules, for example:

5-star songs score +10.
4-star songs score +8.
1-star songs score -5.
New songs score +4.
Songs you haven't heard in a week score +4.
Songs you haven't heard in a month score +10.
Songs you heard in the last week score -10
Songs you heard in the last 24 hours score "never play".
etc.

Madman then dynamically computed a score for every song in the collection to generate the random playlist; higher score, more likely to get in the playlist. Fairly intuitive and it worked fantastic. I've never seen a music manager that's implemented anything close to this since.

Anyway. We'll see how the smart playlists work when they finally come back to Amarok.

Something like that would be very nice. The play list generation in Amarok strikes me as... haphazard and unfinished.

Generating play lists "manually" by searching and adding to a "static" play list doesn't work so well, because the search function is unfinished. For example, there is no way to search for, say "tracks not played in the last week". (But, for some reason, you can search for tracks added in the last week.)

Dynamic play lists was the feature that got me hooked on Amarok. But they are confusing at best. I'd very much like to be able to ask for, say "tracks with rating >= 4 stars OR tracks with rating >= 3 stars not played the last week". But that's not possible.

Plus, with dynamic play lists, I sometimes get the same track showing up three-four times. It is, however, possible to specify "no tracks played since <date>". Interestingly enough, tracks that do not meet this condition will be added to the play list if their disqualifying play happened since Amarok was last restarted (i.e, the same track may be added multiple times in a single session, even if the first play of the track should have disqualified it from being added again). If you exit Amarok and restart it, tracks played during the previous session will no longer be added to the play list, if they don't meet the selection criteria.

2.3.1 brought us a third way to generate play lists. One that lacks many of the track selection mechanisms of the other two, and adds a few twists of its own, which it's not sharing with the two other.

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation to why Amarok sports three mutually incompatible, seemingly unfinished, ways of selecting tracks. It is, however, somewhat perplexing. It seems to me as it would make a lot of sense to create one, shared, set of primitives, and then use them to implement track selection consistently in all three.

'played:>8d' brings you the songs not played during last week.
'tracks with rating >= 4 stars OR tracks with rating >= 3 stars not played the last week' is not possible, because it is not logical.
Apart from that, you're right and the documentation/handling for fuzzy/biased based playlists needs more attention.

m0nk

Dieter Schroeder wrote:'tracks with rating >= 4 stars OR tracks with rating >= 3 stars not played the last week' is not possible, because it is not logical.

Not logical? Really? Perhaps you meant, "not a reasonable thing to ask", or, "more complex than Amarok can do right now." But, "not logical?" Surely, you don't mean, "not a Boolean expression"?

allenpl wrote:

Dieter Schroeder wrote:'tracks with rating >= 4 stars OR tracks with rating >= 3 stars not played the last week' is not possible, because it is not logical.

Not logical? Really? Perhaps you meant, "not a reasonable thing to ask", or, "more complex than Amarok can do right now." But, "not logical?" Surely, you don't mean, "not a Boolean expression"?

yah, I don't get the answer either - your request made perfect sense to me.

Perhaps with brackets for extra boolean goodness?

Code: Select all

(tracks with rating >= 4 stars) OR (tracks with rating >= 3 stars AND NOT played the last week)

Dieter Schroeder wrote:'played:>8d' brings you the songs not played during last week.
'tracks with rating >= 4 stars OR tracks with rating >= 3 stars not played the last week' is not possible, because it is not logical.
Apart from that, you're right and the documentation/handling for fuzzy/biased based playlists needs more attention.

m0nk

Wow, had no clue that "played" even existed. It doesn't show up in any doc I've seen, nor in the filter-UI.

Dieter Schroeder wrote:'played:>8d' brings you the songs not played during last week.

I've now tried this, but it results in an empty list when tried in the track browser?

my fault. newly added in git. Will be in 2.3.2
See ChangeLog:

Code: Select all

   * Filtering: added default presets to the drop down menu of the collection
      search widget.
    * Filtering: track format can now be used as filter keyword in the
      collection browser, e.g. "format:flac".
    * Filtering: track file size can now be used as filter keyword in the
      collection browser, e.g. "filesize:<12" for tracks under 12Mb;
      "filesize:25" for tracks that are between 25 and 26Mb.
    * Filtering: tracks that were added to the collection since/before a
      certain time can now be filtered using, e.g. "added:<1w".
    * Filtering: added ability to filter last played date in the collection
      browser, e.g. "played:<3d".

m0nk

Dieter Schroeder wrote:my fault. newly added in git. Will be in 2.3.2

Well, it's something to look forward to, then.