caldvd;173321 Wrote:
> I've been recently trying the following plugins:
> TrackStat
> DynamicPlaylists
> RandomPlaylists
> and have been pleased with the results.
>
> I think I understand the basic concepts, however, I want to go deeper
> in my understanding of how and when to use each plugin. I've searched
> the forums but there is nothing definitive about how and when it makes
> sense to use each plugin.I have been thinking about making some sort of
> description about
different typical setups using these and the rest of my plugins. At the
moment there is not such information, the only available information is
the description for each plugin plus the discussions in this forum. In
the forum most of the discussions has been in the announcement threads
in the 3rd party plugins forum.
I will try to give you some sort of overview what each plugin do and
how they work together below.
caldvd;173321 Wrote:
> I'm not sure when to use DynamicPlaylists. Or what to do with them, if
> they are created. When I look at my display, and I'm browsing
> playlists, sometimes there is an M in the top right corner and I don't
> know what it means.The M means that you can hold the play button down for a
> while to access
information based on the selected item, for example an artist or album.
When holding play down for a while two things can happen.
1. You get a menu showing the different plugins or functions that can
be launched on the selected item.
2. If only a single plugin can be launched on the selected item it is
launched directly without the intermediate menu as in alternative 1.
My guess is that the M in your case indicates that you can get into the
TrackStat functionality in context of the selected element. On an artist
this means that you can browse the last tracks played by this artist or
browse the top rated tracks by this artist. The same is applicable when
holding play on another type of element in the browse menu when a M is
shown.
caldvd;173321 Wrote:
> I've gotten good results by going to TrackStat, and choosing a filter
> like, "recently added songs, but not played recently" and setting it to
> make play as a dynamic playlist. This seems like RandomPlaylist, but it
> must be different, I'm just not sure how.The difference is as follows:
- RandomPlaylist: Plays random songs from your whole library based on
the included/excluded genres you have selected.
- TrackStat("recently added songs, but not played recently"): Plays
random songs from your whole library, but it starts with songs you have
recently added to your slimserver library but excludes those you have
played within the last xxx days. You can change the number of days in
the server settings section for TrackStat in the web interface.
So the basic difference in this situation is the order the tracks are
played, with RandomPlaylist the order is random, with TrackStat it
isn't completely random instead its based on different type of
statistics.
caldvd;173321 Wrote:
> One of the things I read on the lists regarding RandomPlaylist that does
> not repeat tracks. I want to do this, but how can I be certain that it
> is not repeating tracks (it takes a long time to go through 5000
> songs).The only way you can be completely is to listen through all tracks and
not e each track played somewhere and after all 5000 tracks has been
played and the music stops go through the list and make sure you don't
find any duplicates. If it repeat tracks, there is a bug somewhere.
But, you should also note that it doesn't remember played if you hit
play again on the random playlist. If you just hit pause you will be
fine, but if you hit play on the random playlist it will start from the
beginning again so then it can repeat tracks from the previous time you
hit play.
As a side note, I'm probably not going to add any new functionality or
correct any problems in the RandomPlaylist since the same functionality
exists in the SQL Playlist plugin. The SQL playlist plugin now has a
user interface which is as user friendly as RandomPlayList, you no
longer has to know SQL and it is a lot more flexible with many more
options.
caldvd;173321 Wrote:
> Also, in RandomPlaylist it will play two tracks from the same
> artist/album back to back, which does not seem very random. I would
> like it if it would not play the same artist for at least x number of
> songs. So if it just played Bob Dylan, I'm not going to hear a Bob
> Dylan track for another few hours (if I'm randomly mixing 5000 mp3s and
> under 5% of them are Bob Dylan, should this be do-able?At the moment you will
> have to do write the SQL if you like to do this,
you will also need the SQL Playlist plugin. It will be quite
complicated.
However, there might soon be a solution that will work. The Custom Skip
plugin makes it possible to skip certain tracks, the next TrackStat
version after 1.35 will provide a new skipping filter through the
Custom Skip plugin that makes it possible to skip albums/artists/tracks
played the last xxx minutes. Skipped tracks will never be played so it
doesn't work exactly as you want but it should be quite close.
caldvd;173321 Wrote:
> My favorite way to listen to my music for the most part is by having all
> my songs (minus a few genres) on Random mix. I know I can do this with
> RandomPlaylist, but how can I enhance that using TrackStat and
> DynamicPlaylists?
>
> Any deeper knowledge or pointers to where I can read more about how
> these plugins work would be great. Furthermore, I'm not familiar with
> SQL and I'm hoping it is not needed to get the most out of these
> plugins.
Now some more information about what each plugin does in the next post
in this thread.
--
erland
Erland Isaksson
'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page'
(http://erland.homeip.net/download)
(Developer of TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse,
Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and RandomPlayList plugins)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31998
_______________________________________________
plugins mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/plugins
