How can I....

…auto create a playlist. I have a lot of CD’s where I just rip and encode a few songs on, not the entire CD. I also have a lot of compilation CD’s. I don’t really want to go and create folders or playlists for each and every artist. Is there any way to load the single tracks onto the player and somehow have a playlist generated automatically somehow. I don’t really know how this would be accomplished but, some of you must have encountered the same situation. How did you handle it? I really don’t want to create a hundred or more playlists if there is an easier way.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Dave

How do you have them organized on your PC? What version of the software (Rio) are you running?

Any song HAS to be in a playlist in order for you to play it (I don't think you can even search for a song that isn't in a playlist - but I may be wrong on this).

One thing you could do is make a "Whatever You Want To Call It" playlist and put all of your songs in there. Then, you can just randomly suffle from that....

But, if you did a good job of filling out your ID3 tags, AND you are running 2.00beta11, you can go to the "Soup" View and it will have pseudo-playlists (folders really) for each artists or genres or album etc. You can then copy the contents of each of these and make artists folders...

I am running V2.00-beta11. I am running windows 98 on my PC. I already have a playlist for “Whatever you want to call it” with a lot of these tracks in it. If it was a compilation then I have it encoded using a folder named with the CD name.
I want to be able to keep that playlist. Though I also want to put a copy of each one of the songs by each artist that performs on that compilation into a sub playlist under ARTIST a-d for example.

“But, if you did a good job of filling out your ID3 tags, AND you are running 2.00beta11, you can go to the "Soup" View and it will have pseudo-playlists (folders really) for each artists or genres or album etc. You can then copy the contents of each of these and make artists folders...”

This is what I am trying to avoid. I would like to be able to just drag a song in Emplode from the soups view-artist into the playlists menu and have it create it’s own playlist using the ID tag using artist as a name of the playlist.

Dave

Rumor has it that the next Beta will allow you to access the Soup View playlist from the player software... So that may be what you want (and more?)

Easiest way it to use a utility such as MP3 Tag Studio to rename/organize the files properly on your PC's hard disk so that the songs go into artist/album/tracks folders.

Then, from Windows Explorer, drag and drop the group of folders onto the root "Playlists" item Emplode. Each folder and subfolder will become a playlist and sub-playlist.

FAQ entry is here.

I already have a playlist for “Whatever you want to call it” with a lot of these tracks in it.

Oh, you already have the tracks on your player, OK.

I assume the tags are filled out correctly? Then it's easy. You have to use Jemplode, though, because Emplode doesn't do this:

- Fire up Jemplode and connect to the player with Ethernet.

- Select the Artists/Albums soup view.

- Group-select the artists you wanna make playlists out of.

- Edit/Copy.

- Select the root playlists tree.

- Edit/Paste.

Jemplode makes a nice little playlist tree based on that Soup view.

Eventually, you won't need to do this and the Soup views will be playable directly on the player. But for now it's a good work-around.

Thanks for the help....just one more question. How hard is it to get my computer to recognize the player using Windows 98? I have never messed with the ethernet connection. I would consider myself a novice at networking, and that is an understatement.

Dave

Not sure if you checked it out, but here it the FAQ entry on setting up a network connection. If you are only connecting the empeg and your PC, you will need a crossover cable and a network card on your PC. I set it up on 98 and it's not that hard. Give it a shot and ask here if you run into any problems.

Eventually, you won't need to do this and the Soup views will be playable directly on the player. But for now it's a good work-around.

I think I have issues similar to Dave's. I now have what I would call "artist bloat" due to the way that I re-tagged tracks from compilations (changed from "various" to actual artist name). My artists playlist is filling up with one-hit wonders. I'm dependent on being able to play by soup view in order to be able to play some of these compilations by album title or to play tracks by year.

Ultimately, I expect that I may still drag tracks from soup view into new playlists (like drag all 1960-1969 into "60s"), but I hope that recreation of playlists will be minimized if soup-based play becomes available. For now, I'm holding off creating a lot of soup-derived playlists. Cross my fingers!