Question on the 'Random' ability

[smelcher]

I have a long question on playing songs at random. As I have it now, if I click the 'Red' button while on top of an artist it will then select a few songs at random and queue them up. As far as I can tell it uses the setup in the config to choose a set of songs that fits into the "Default Random Period". At the end of those songs it will do it again if I have the "At the end of a random playlist" -- create new playlist. This is awesome functionality. However, I dont quite understand the "Jukebox mode wait time period" option. I feel as if this option should make the system wake up and start randomly choosing songs for me. I dont think my ML2 is doing that however. And if it were to do that, what set of songs would it choose from? Is it not working because I turned "Random always all/all" off?

I guess what I am looking for is this. Basically if my play list ends I want ML2 to randomly select some new songs for me. If I had previously choosen an artist and hit the red button, I think I would want it to continue choosing that artist to randomize from (which is what it seems like its doing). However, if I have manually selected a few songs and then the playlist runs out I would still like ML2 to randomly select some songs. However, I think I would want it to choose from a subset of my choosing. Possibly have it default to a specified playlist or something. I would want to avoid it randomly selecting from the entire collection. I have some music that is best not heard I never want the music to stop basically!


I apologize for this question if the system already does this but as I said it doesnt seem to be doing it for me.

[psycik]

the jukebox mode is if you start up ml2 and just leave if for a specified number of seconds it will just start playing random music.

Somehting like say you were playing a playlist and it gets to the end, it will just start up again by itself. Not relevant if you are using a random playlist.

I think for jukebox mode it actually takes it from all/all.

As for when playing randomly, I can't remember if selecting artist 'a' and hitting random playlist, if at the end of that playlist will it choose the same artist (if you've moved to someone else). It would have to be tested again.

Once solution for your music "not suitable" is to put that into another collection (i.e not the default one). This would mean unless you explicitly chosen your "other" collection, it would never be selected for random playlists.

[smelcher]

Ok. I will test it out further tonight.
However, if I could designate a "Default Random Playlist" to choose from if I leave the system idle that would be excellent. ...Or in the interest of being greedy, a set of playlists for the system to choose from.

I like your "collection" system but I do not really want to structuring move my music files. I would be nice if the software was independent of how the files were laid out. It would also rock the world of other music programs that I have that are depending on that path.
Come to think of it, what would be really neat is if the "Collections" were really just play lists. Ie you were not recursively looking through folders but instead load your DB from playlists. Ie I could create one "Collection/Play list" called "All". This m3u file would contain every single music file in my system. I could also create a "Collection/Play list" called XMas music. This m3u file would have all of my XMas related tunes. Likewise you could then have collections by name "Scott" or perhaps by "Easy Listening", "MyBuddy", "MyBrother" etc. Keep in mind, there would be overlap between the collections. Your database would then be keyed off of the current "collection" that you were in. The playlists themselves would have to exist of course. However, the creation of playlists is easily done with most music programs these days.
I realize this is a big change but perhaps its something to think about!

[psycik]

There's nothing stopping you from creating those playlists (but they wouldn't update with new music).

But untill I sort out the loading of them they'd be pretty painfull to use.

I thought about the structures for collections and it almost doesn't work for me either.

I think I could redesign them slightly by using a variation of the noindex.txt file - do you think that might get closer to what you proposed?

Say a collection called "EasyListening" would have a EasyListenting.col file in the directory and MyBuddy.col this means that tracks could appear in both collections and it's transparent to the structure of the music.

Then you could set EasyListening as the default or the random collection.

What do you think? It's kind of like a reverse playlist....

[smelcher]

Here is what I am thinking...
If I choose the ML2 plugin, it would then give me an option for which Collection I want to listen to. I am using the term "Collection" at this point but I dont think it is the same as your term. An example of my list of "Collections" could be "All", "Easy Listening", "XMas", "John" etc. These Collections would be specified from the config page. They could be made up of physical directories (recursively read) or individual playlists. When you load your DB it would load the physical collections as you normally do but it would load the playlists by reading the m3u file and loading the mp3's from that file. In your database you would now key the library with an additional "Collection" identifier. Note: these playlists that I am talking about are sort of different than the ones when you get inside the player. They are purely for loading the ML2. BTW - If you had two collections that essentially had the same songs, your DB would double in size.
...Now back to the beginning...I choose the ML2 plugin and get prompted for my collection. I choose "XMas". The screen then refreshes to the normal ML2 screen...ie with the artists on the left side and the albums on the top right etc. However, the artist/songs that you load up in these windows would only belong to the "XMas" collection. And you could also skip this screen if the user only had one collection anyways.
...Now the "Playlists" that you have on the secondary screen would remain "as is" I would think. They are fundamentally different I think that these new playlists I am thinking of.
...I think that the "Default Random" list is perhaps something different all together. Perhaps every "Collection" should have a "Default Random List". Ie. during XMas time I might want to just choose a default playlist that only contains XMas music. The system would know to choose this setting because I was already in the "XMas" collection.

I'm not sure if I understood your "filename.col" idea or not but I think it might be similar. You would go through the directories and build the Collection accordingly? The only thing is that we would not have to go into each folder and place a file. Instead we keep the work of creating the m3u externally. This would also give the flexibility of choosing which songs from the directory and not just having a boolean "noindex.txt" file to yah or nay a entire folder.

I'm sure I've probably just confused a few different things but let me know what you think. The jist of things is separating file structure from setup....I think. And to present subsets of songs via a new Collection system.

[smelcher]

Actually, the beauty of your solution is that you have already disassociated the physical layout of the music files with the organization in your plugin by using a database instead of the filesystem. Its a matter of filling in your table in one way or another. If you key your musiclibrary table by the new "Collection" idea all would just work I say that with a grain of salt but I dont think its an entire rewrite by any stretch.
Let me know your thoughts. I realize this is probably low in everyone's priority list but it might be interesting to discuss.

[smelcher]

As to not confuse the new terminology with your "Collection" terminology I would refer to the 'new' collections as "Libraries"