Aliases/Shortcuts for Playlists

How's this for an idea (probably already submitted but still). I'd like to be able to copy a shortcut or a pointer to an exisiting playlist but be able to change the properties of the shortcut.

For example, imagine I have sorted my entire empeg contents by Complete Albums - By Artist/Artist/Album/Songs in Album. My top level playlist is Complete Albums - By Artist. I'd like to be able to make a copy (alias) of this to another playlist, say "10 Track Randomiser". This playlist has the appropriate properties to do 'as it says on the tin'. However, when I've changed the contents of the 'source' list, in this case Complete Albums - by Artist, I want that to be reflected in the Radomiser playlist.

Now, I've just tried doing this by creating a playlist, 10 Track Randomiser, underneath which I have copy/pasted my Complete Albums - by Artist playlist. I set the properties on my Randomiser playlist but they don't take effect, precedence is taken from the playlist within. This is probably because it's trying to Randomise at the level immediately below itself - but can't cos there's only one playlist in there.

Is this a valid request or am I fundamentally misunderstanding the playlist structure?

M

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MKII #080000528 - 40Gb Blue

Is this a valid request or am I fundamentally misunderstanding the playlist structure?

It sounds like you're misunderstanding the "Always Randomize" flag.

It randomizes only at its own level. For example, if it's filled with tracks, it will randomize those tracks. If it's filled with playlists, it will shuffle the playlists but not their contents.

Also, remember that when you copy a playlist in Emplode, you're copying a link to it, not making a duplicate of the playlist. So if you change one, the other will be changed, too. If you want to have two different playlists with the same name but different properties, create the other playlist by hand rather than copying it.

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Tony Fabris

Aha, you see, that's exactly what I mean! I shouldn't _have_ to create it by hand. That means that every time I add another song to my overall playlist I have to consciously add it to the randomise playlist too!

With complicated nested playlists this could get _very_ annoying very quickly. I understand that when I copy it is created as a link, this is obvious as when you make a change both lists go bold. What I want, and I now think it is a valid request, is tha ability to link to a playlist and have the option of treating it differently.

That would save soooo much time for a lot of folks who want to get clever with their playlists.

M

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MKII #080000528 - 40Gb Blue

What I want, and I now think it is a valid request, is the ability to link to a playlist and have the option of treating it differently.

Let me understand this. You want:

- To be able to make a link to another playlist so you don't have to individually edit it, but
- Be able to inidividually edit that link as if it were a unique playlist.

I think you're asking for two mutually-exclusive things. It's either a link (i.e., when you edit the link you edit the original, too), or it's a unique playlist that is separately editable. Which do you want?

I don't see how you could have both, unless they threw out the entire playlist code and started from scratch from the ground up with your idea in mind. I don't foresee that happening any time soon.

In the meantime, I'm sure there's a way to create a playlist structure that's simpler, easier to maintain, but is just as useful and does what you want it to do. Describe again what you want to do, from the perspective of a listener and his music (not from the perspective of a user and his playlists), and we'll try to figure out how the Empeg's current features allow you to do it most easily.

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Tony Fabris

Here goes ;):

I have a large collection of music. I like to be able to browse my music by artist, then album, then the songs in that album. So, I create a playlist which is called Complete Albums - by Artist. In there I place playlists (drag and drop) for each artist each of which contain the albums that performer has written/sung, etc.

For example it might look like this:

Complete Albums - by Artist --> Pet Shop Boys --> Very --> Songs from Very

or

Complete Albums - by Artist --> Natalie Imbruglia --> Left of the Middle --> Songs from Left of the Middle

For the above replace Songs for ... as the actual tracks within that album.

So, back to the problem at hand. As a listener I would like to be able to, say, take 10 tracks from my entire collection at random and listen to them. But I don't want to manually add/remove or generally edit this playlist when I add/delete songs to my empeg.

How can I do this?

M

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MKII #080000528 - 40Gb Blue

First of all, I'd suggest removing the "Complete Albums By Artist" level of the playlist tree and just sticking your artists in the root. Quicker to navigate that way.

As a listener I would like to be able to, say, take 10 tracks from my entire collection at random and listen to them.

What should it do when those ten tracks are done? Unless you want it to do something special at that point, you don't need a playlist to do it.

What I'd do is just press "0" on the remote to turn on shuffle, then hit play from the root playlist. When it's done playing ten randomized songs, I'd either choose something else for it to do, or keep listening to more randomized songs.

I'm still not clear on why a special playlist is needed for randomizing in your case. If you want to randomize albums but not the tracks within those albums, then tag your root and artist playlists as randomized while leaving the albums themselves sequential.

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Tony Fabris

I am affraid that what you want is not possible with the current fids/database structure. Every object has two files, the one with fid ending in 0 containing the object itself, and another, with fid ending in 1, an ASCII file with tags. Playlists themselves consist more or less of list of constituent fids. So, if you link list A->B to C, it can only be named C->B, since there is only one place (file with fid one greater than the one for playlist B) that contains tags (and title is one of them).

This is different than, for example, Unix filesystems, where fids correspond to i-node numbers. However, an i-node can have several corresponding directory entries, each containing (possibly different) filename.

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

I'm still not clear on why a special playlist is needed for randomizing in your case. If you want to randomize albums but not the tracks within those albums, then tag your root and artist playlists as randomized while leaving the albums themselves sequential.

Actually, I did think of a good application for this kind of aliasing. Not sure how to implement it, but here goes:

Imagine a playlist that consisted of entries like this:

N random track(s) from playlist XXX.

Then I could do things like:

One random track from playlist "Celtic"
Two random tracks from playlist "Rush"
One random track from playlist "Firesign Theater: Ads"
One random tracks from playlist "Clapton"

Put this on repeat, and it will splice in an ad for Bear Whiz Beer or Ersatz Bros. Coffee between after fourth track.

Basically what we need is a special kind of playlist that simply applies it's properties to playlists within it.

-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39

What I'd really like to see is a different Emplode icon for symlinks. Right now, when I create a link to a song or playlist, the icon looks exactly the same as the icon for the original (at least, after you've done a sync). This makes it difficult for me to tell or remember which one is the original. It may sound trivial, but when you have 18 GB of material and lots of stuff cross-referenced all over the place by genre, it gets aeasy to forget where you roiginally filed something. A symlink should have a different icon.

There is no original. All nesting relationships are symlinks.


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

There is no original. All nesting relationships are symlinks.

Another way of looking at it is that there are no symlinks: all links are hard links.

Peter

There is no spoon...

-Trevor

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Mk 2, Green 12GB 080000349

I was watching The Matrix this morning. The resemblance wasn't accidental .


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Another way of looking at it is that there are no symlinks: all links are hard links.

Even less than UNIX (or RSX or VMS) style hard links: there we have multiple directory entries per i-node (or file header, for those still remembering DEC OSes), where at least filename can be different. Please refer to my recent post suggesting multiple tag files per data file.

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green