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chabig · Feb 9, 2003, 01:02 PM

I agree with you that the comment field allows a great deal of customizability with regard to smart playlists. But to use it effectively, we need some really good Applescripts that let use add and remove terms from the comments field without disturbing other terms that might be there.

Still, it would be better if Apple would make playlists smarter by allowing multiple groups of the 'any' or 'all' criteria.

It would also help if you could use a playlist itself in the criteria. Then you could have a playlist with artist A, a playlist with artist B, and a playlist that creates the combination of those two.

Chris

jimsmac · Feb 9, 2003, 02:05 PM

Originally posted by SpeedRacer:
Jimsmac... you'd need something common across both artists. Telling a SP to match ALL and having the artist have both Artist X and Artist Y is going to create SP that looks for songs with BOTH artists in it's tags. You could do this with a tag that contains ANY, but then you're SOL when you add in the "above X rating" criteria.

What you *really* need to do (if you really want to get technical) is to create a SP that contains only the common characters across both lists of songs you're looking to play. IOW, to create a playlist that features songs from both "The Beatles" and "The Beatnuts" above a rating of "2", you could create a SP that matches ALL conditions of an artist that contains "The Beat" and rating above "1".

If that didn't work you could look for commonalities or differences in any of the other tags as well (ex: the "Comment" field allows a good deal of customization to SP's that would otherwise not be possible)

There's a good deal of variability with SP's, it's just not immediately apparent from looking at the initial options.

HTH!

Speed

Thanks for this Speed. I currently get round this by telling the playlist to select either artist and then selected by my rating with a limit of x songs depending on how many 'good' songs the artists have between them. Not perfect but it nearly does the trick.

I'll take a look at the tags though for any other patterns.

clarkgoble · Feb 9, 2003, 04:05 PM

I'd like it to support context menus. That way I can right click on a playlist to pop up a list that will delete it.

I'd like nested playlists so I can have a playlist "Classical" and then perhaps three or four subcategories of classical.

Rendezvous would be nice, although not essential for what I do.

Better recording methods would be nice. Yes it supports Ogg and other formats via Quicktime plugins. But it can't record to such formats.

Other than that, it is a near perfect program. All the other requests I had I keep finding are already present.

Ed De · Feb 9, 2003, 04:44 PM

Sent to apple:

1. More MP3 tags - specifically, lyrics.
2. A way of linking an artist, an album or a single track to a web page (i.e. fan site, official band site)
3. When setting the album for a track, pull in fields such as total tracks, artist, year and genre based on other entries for the same album.
4. A 'remove duplicates' feature to identify and delete identical or very similar tracks
5. Add a 'delete from library' item to the contextual menu when working in a playlist.
6. Add a 'show in browser' item to the contextual menu when any track is selected. This would show the artist / album browser (if not already showing) and select the artist and album.
7. A 'tidy tags' feature to remove artist name and track number from the track name.

MrBS · Feb 9, 2003, 05:01 PM

Originally posted by SpeedRacer:
If that didn't work you could look for commonalities or differences in any of the other tags as well (ex: the "Comment" field allows a good deal of customization to SP's that would otherwise not be possible)

There's a good deal of variability with SP's, it's just not immediately apparent from looking at the initial options.

So you're suggesting that, for my "Smart" playlists, I tag each song in the comment field with "add to my smart playlist" and then have a smart playlist that filters for that. Sweet. That will save all kinds of time. Maybe in the next version of iTunes Apple will include a playlist where you can just drag the songs into it, instead of all these extra steps... oh, wait...

Seriously though, I use the comment fields to augment SPs a lot. Just to augment though. A lot of longer, otherwise excellent tracks have a "noPod" in the comment field. But to need to specifically tag each song to get it in a playlist is a step backwards from the old, dumb playlists.

~BS

ratlater · Feb 9, 2003, 05:19 PM

Originally posted by MrBS:

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Ya, I just tried it, works great.

I'd really like to know how you did that too.

...

~BS

The world anxiously awaits your enlightenment Star Wars guy.

...

-matt

faragbre967 · Feb 9, 2003, 05:50 PM

iTunes needs to update its library all the time. So if I delete a song from the Finder, iTunes knows it's not there anymore and puts that little excalmation point icon in the playlist. I've battled with keeping my playlists updated with what's actually on my computer for too long. Also, Rendevous and CPU usage should be updated.

oscar · Feb 9, 2003, 06:37 PM

Id like to see smarter playlists...
--Being able to change the target of songs, so instead of smart playlists using the library, you could use another playlist.

Having a search field in smart playlists, so i could do a better comment search.

Gene Jockey · Feb 9, 2003, 06:58 PM

Something I would like (and have sent to Apple) is the ability to have one physical music file show up as multiple entries in the Library. For example, say I have two party mixes that happen to have Love Shack on them. Right now, to have Love Shack appear appear as part of both albums, I need two copies of the mp3 on my hard drive. I have space for that, but why waste space when you could tell iTunes to do aliasing within the library for a single file? Just have the database in iTunes point to one file. Seems like it would be fairly easy to do. Just my idea...

--Josh

DavidHossack · Feb 9, 2003, 07:02 PM

Originally posted by Gene Jockey:
Something I would like (and have sent to Apple) is the ability to have one physical music file show up as multiple entries in the Library. For example, say I have two party mixes that happen to have Love Shack on them. Right now, to have Love Shack appear appear as part of both albums, I need two copies of the mp3 on my hard drive. I have space for that, but why waste space when you could tell iTunes to do aliasing within the library for a single file? Just have the database in iTunes point to one file. Seems like it would be fairly easy to do. Just my idea...

--Josh

You can have one MP3 in several playlists now. Why would you want two copies of it?

MrBS · Feb 9, 2003, 07:18 PM

Originally posted by Gene Jockey:
[B]Something I would like (and have sent to Apple) is the ability to have one physical music file show up as multiple entries in the Library. For example, say I have two party mixes that happen to have Love Shack on them.[B]

The library just points iTunes at the physical music file (and keeps track of last played, ratings and stuff like that). If you want to have it in a playlist, just drag it into the playlist. It's not 'used up', it's still in the library. Drag it to your second party mix. If you want it in the same playlist twice, just drag it in twice.

~BS

Gene Jockey · Feb 9, 2003, 09:17 PM

Mr BS & DH -

I'm not referring to playlists. I mean I want to have two different Library entries for the same file. So if I have an album with a song on it, and another album with the same song on it, I want to browse the library by album and see the song listed under both albums but only have one copy of the actual mp3. That make more sense?

--J

Superchicken · Feb 10, 2003, 01:13 AM

Gene Jockey... for all intensive pourposes it's probably easier for those of us who have multiple entries, IE one album and a greatest hits album, to just have two MP3s...

vmpaul · Feb 10, 2003, 02:01 AM

1) 'Dockling' that listed Playlists so I could switch between them.

2) Rendezvous support (and soon, I can't wait for this feature)

3) A 'remove duplicates' feature to identify and delete identical tracks

DavidHossack · Feb 10, 2003, 04:14 AM

Originally posted by Gene Jockey:
Mr BS & DH -

I'm not referring to playlists. I mean I want to have two different Library entries for the same file. So if I have an album with a song on it, and another album with the same song on it, I want to browse the library by album and see the song listed under both albums but only have one copy of the actual mp3. That make more sense?

--J

A remove duplicates would do this. I had this a while ago but the tracks were subtley different. I deleted one manually.

CarpetFluff · 06:13 AM

Originally posted by SpeedRacer:
If you drag over to your iPod tracks that are already there, it will simply skip over them and only copy over the ones that are not on the iPod already. I used to do manually drag over as well, but Smart Playlists greatly reduce the need for this.

Speed

I see what you mean! smart! I've tested this and I can create multiple playlists with the same songs in them and it only adds one copy of the songs to the iPod.

Useful to know, although I would still like to know what songs are already on the pod it's good to know that if I add a song twice it doesn't use up any more space!

The thing is, if I'm using iTunes and I hear a song I love I think 'hmmm, do I have this song on my iPod?' I could then just add it to a playlist just in case but I'd rather know by looking at the track.

tooki · Feb 10, 2003, 05:50 PM

In the spirit of the new forum definitions, I'm moving this to the Software forum.

tooki

memento · Feb 11, 2003, 10:21 AM

Originally posted by Gene Jockey:
Something I would like (and have sent to Apple) is the ability to have one physical music file show up as multiple entries in the Library. For example, say I have two party mixes that happen to have Love Shack on them. Right now, to have Love Shack appear appear as part of both albums, I need two copies of the mp3 on my hard drive. I have space for that, but why waste space when you could tell iTunes to do aliasing within the library for a single file? Just have the database in iTunes point to one file. Seems like it would be fairly easy to do. Just my idea...

--Josh

amen. I have the space too, but why waste it when you don't have to.

DavidHossack · Feb 11, 2003, 02:32 PM

A new interface will be in iTunes 4. New Buttons, new search box etc.

vmpaul · Feb 12, 2003, 05:16 PM

Bookmark feature for long files.

010111 · Feb 12, 2003, 09:06 PM

itunes :

1 - i also would like "smarter" playlists... i have run into the same problems... annoying.

2 - rendevous support.

3 - contextual menu item to delete a track from the library/ipod when in playlist mode. this is soooooo annoying. also one when deleting a playlist from an ipod to delete all related tracks except those used in other playlists would be *very* nice.

4 - freaking playlist folders. how hard would that be to make? i realize everyone organizes things differently... but shouldn't folders in the playlist list be an option? and making the folders a playlist of playlists would be cool too.... so if you click the top folder and hit play... it plays *all* the playlists within it.

5 - some sort of smart/dumb playlist that combines the features of both normal and smart playlists into one playlist... i like making an auto-updating artist-based smart playlist but some tracks (like live recordings) are crap that i don't *want* in the smart playlist... but do want in the library... and it's a pain making a rule to specifically exclude one file... and is silly.

6 - notification of the track being on the ipod already.

ipod:

1 - MP4 support. then i will convert my whole library over. that would nice.

2 - gapless playback / crossfade playback ... seems like they have enough memory in the ipod to get this to work... whats the deal?

3 - the *option* to continuosly play. like when playlist #5 ends... go onto playlist #6.

4 - audio recording would be really cool. especially if a variety of interfaces were available by 3rd parties... that is... not just a built-in 1/8" minijack.

5 - a preset line-level out setting... useful for connecting to stereos... vs. guessing each time.