(Somewhat) Random Playlist Generation

I thought it might be an interesting feature to change the method by which random playlists are generated. Adding themes were several songs at a time were either from the same year or genre or artist (but different albums) and the theme of the current subsection of shuffleplay was displayed.

Any thoughts on how difficult this would be? Do we have access to the code that randomizes the playlists? Do we know where the shuffled playlists are stored? Or where the pointer is that tells the player to use a shuffled rather than the primary playlist (asuming that is how it works).

Cheers,
Eric Fesler

You can do this yourself by creating a tree of playlists and using the "Always Randomize Contents" and "Play n tracks at random" features.

Incidentally, the "Play n tracks at random" should actually be named "Play n children at random" because the children can be playlists.

And if a child is set to "always randomize", it will only sub-randomize within its group, so you could very well create exactly the sort of thing your're talking about.

I realize that you could do something similar from emplode/jemplode by creating playlists ahead of time. It would involve a fair bit of work to do if you wanted it random.

I thought it might be a good general purpose feature to have more interesting random playlist generation in realtime. It is almost like a demo of the players capability to search by genre, artist year etc. Not something you would use?

Eric

The reason they added the heirarchical playlists and the "play n tracks" and "always randomize" flags to the playlists is precisely so users could create custom shuffles like this without having to create special-coding cases for every user's whim.

If I understand your request correctly, I think it would actually be pretty easy to set this stuff up with playlists. I don't think it would be very much work, especially in Jemplode where Mike added some features that will let you create heirarchical playlist groups from the soup views.

Give me some more details as to what sort of interesting groupings you would like to see. I'll see if I can give you step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

Yeah, I just created a playlist called "(ThreeFers by Year)", which will play randomized groups of three randomized tracks from any given year. Works really well, actually, kind of fun.

Took me approximately sixty seconds to do in Jemplode.

Give us a step by step on what you just created so I can verify if its the same as what I'm thinking of or if it's more useful. My brain is at super slow speed tonight, plus I'm not actually looking at j/emplode to think it all through.

Besides, before getting any fancier shuffling, I'd like for the player software to eliminate its sometimes annoying clustering.

Bruno

I'd like for the player software to eliminate its sometimes annoying clustering.

Well, the thing he was requesting in this thread was something that was deliberately clustered...

If you want the clustering eliminated completely 100 percent, give my "Equally weighted artists" playlist a try. Instructions are here. That playlist is guaranteed not to cluster. It's got other side effects, which just so happen to be the opposite of clustering...

Give us a step by step on what you just created so I can verify if its the same as what I'm thinking of or if it's more useful.

It's a variation on the equally-weighted artists thing linked above. A bit simpler, though.

Okay, the request was that you'd want the player to play small groups of songs that are thematically related. One of the examples given was to play a few random songs from the same year, then play a few random songs from a different year, and so on.

So, the "ThreeFers by Year" playlist creation went like this:

- Open Jemplode, connect to the player.

- In the root of "Playlists", create a new playlist called "(ThreeFers by Year)". Give it the properties of "Always Randomize Contents" and "Automatically Repeat".

- Select the YEARS soup view.

- Click somewhere In the right-hand pane to focus it, then select all of the years in that soup view by pressing CTRL+A.

- Select EDIT/COPY.

- Click on your "(ThreeFers by Year)" playlist.

- Select EDIT/PASTE.

- A whole bunch of new playlists just got created under "(ThreeFers by Year)".

- Click somewhere in the right-hand pane and hit CTRL+A to select them all.

- Select EDIIT/PROPERTIES

- Give them the properties of "Always Randomize Contents" and "Tracks at Random: 3".

At that point, you should be able to synch and play this new playlist. It should work fine, playing 3 random songs from each year. There is one caveat: You have to turn off shuffle on the player itself when you use this playlist so that it keeps the by-year clustering (which was the goal of this request).

The above procedure takes only about 15 seconds to do. The rest of the time is all loading and synching.

Thanks Tony,

I hadn't made the connection but that IS a very powerful feature. I still think it would be interesting if there was an improved shuffle that had a few selectable modes BUT you are absolutely correct that nearly everything can be acomplisthed as you just described.

That really is powerful. Now if we could get Jemplode to remember how those playlists were created so that when we add more music to our primarly list it gets automatically inserted apropriately into all our speciallized lists...OOOh...

There is still the disadvantage that you need to either bookmark the playlist or hear the same initial 15 tracks whenever you select it...oh or go to shuffle the forward then unshuffle. (we need macro's)

Cheers, (rambling)
Eric

There is still the disadvantage that you need to either bookmark the playlist or hear the same initial 15 tracks whenever you select it

If the properties are set up correctly as I stated, the initial 15 tracks will always be random, just like the rest of the playlist. Not sure what you mean.

Yep. I just followed your instructions (prior to reading your reply) and discovered that the playlist is in fact internally randomized. VERY POWERFUL (did I mention that already) and in fact exactly what I was looking for. If we could get a way of storing the methods for generating playlists (so that we could pass them around) that would be cool.

Tony, you're a stud. (or so I hear)

Thanks again,
Eric

Thanks! Glad it worked out for you.

Sorry to drag out this thread but two more questions occured to me.
1. If one of these custom playlists encounters a wendy filtered track what happens (player plays 3 different songs from that year, player plays 2 songs then moves on, player crashes) Nice to know why also.

2. It seems that these playlists include the stuff I would usually like to exclude from such playlists (audio books, test cds). Does that mean I did not flag them correctly (flagged the top playlist as "ignore as child." or is this a limitation of either empeg or jemplode?

Thanks yet again,
Eric

If one of these custom playlists encounters a wendy filtered track what happens

Good question, I don't know. Want to try it and find out, then report back to us?

It seems that these playlists include the stuff I would usually like to exclude from such playlists (audio books, test cds).

Yes, that is a side-effect of grabbing the files from the soup. If you've got any "ignore as child" stuff, you have to hand-delete it from your custom playlist if you've created the list using the steps I outlined above.

Does that mean I did not flag them correctly (flagged the top playlist as "ignore as child." or is this a limitation of either empeg or jemplode?

No, I'm sure you've done everything right. The limitation isn't technically Emplode's or Jemplode's. The limitation is that you can only flag playlists and playlist entries "ignore as child". Since this procedure grabs the files from the soup, then none of those child flags apply.

On my player, it only took me a moment to scroll through and kill the all the stuff that I didn't want in the list.

Not sure I am understanding how the "play n tracks" feature works. I just started messing around with this, and I simply want to play all my music randomly. My playlists are set up as Artist/Album/Track. So if I want to randomize everything, I would set "n" to a very large number. Is this correct?

Thanks
-Ted

I just started messing around with this, and I simply want to play all my music randomly.

Then ignore everything said in this thread.

To play all music randomly, turn on Shuffle, then press the bottom button on the player's faceplate three times.

Saying "there's no place like Cambridge" is optional.

I already knew about the shuffle, but i was hoping to be able to randomly play everything only when playing the top-level playlist. I keep forgeting to turn off shuffle when I go and play an individual album, so this way, I'd never have to deal with turning shuffle on or off.

thanks
-t

I asked this one before, and the answer I received was ``no'', with a smattering of ``why would you want to do that?''.

If one of these custom playlists encounters a wendy filtered track what happens (player plays 3 different songs from that year, player plays 2 songs then moves on, player crashes)

Player selects three non-wendy-filtered songs -- unless there are fewer than three such songs, in which case player has to select all of them.

Nice to know why also.

I'd say it was probably due to our high personal standards of professionalism and earnest desire for good quality software

Peter

I already knew about the shuffle, but i was hoping to be able to randomly play everything only when playing the top-level playlist. I keep forgeting to turn off shuffle when I go and play an individual album, so this way, I'd never have to deal with turning shuffle on or off.

So turn shuffle off, and mark the top-level playlist "Always Randomise". Does that do what you want?

Peter

Hi.

I can't exactly say why, but I certainly would like to do that.

cu,
sven

PS: Even though the player is extremely nice already, I am really wondering why neither "deep copying" nor the various possible "always randomize" versions weren't implemented by now. They have both long before been proposed and discussed, and no obvious reason was given why neither was implemented.

Hi.

As stated before, it doesn't. He wants the _complete_ playlist to play at random, not only the topmost layer (with sub playlists playing as a block each)

cu,
sven.

So turn shuffle off, and mark the top-level playlist "Always Randomise". Does that do what you want?

It doesn't do what I want. I want a way to mark the top-level playlist as "Turn on Shuffle", as distinct from "Always Randomise", whereby selecting it turns on shuffle mode (rather than simply randomising the contents). This means that I can then turn shuffle off again.

jEmplode 33 allows deep copy of playlists.

Mike