by Pitney » Sun Oct 01, 2017 3:44 pm
As iTunes is the gorilla in the room that MediaMonkey wants to supersede, it needs to do a much better job of importing iTunes playlists. Here is MM's big fail along with one related suggestion.
1. MM imports the iTunes playlists but doesn't maintain the criteria that was used to create the playlist!! In other words, once in MM not only can't the playlist criteria be edited (other than changing the playlist name) but the playlist is frozen. For instance, if I have a Beatles playlist and later add a Beatles song to my collection it won't show up in the converted (dumb) playlist. That's because instead of converting the iTunes SMART playlist to an MM AUTO playlist it converts all iTunes playlists to normal (dumb) playlists. In short, MM imports the iTunes playlists as frozen, fixed entities and doesn't pick up the criteria.
2. In the AutoPlaylist/Advanced "Search Criteria", unlike iTunes SmartPlaylist, you can't apply "All" to some criteria and "Any" to other criteria, it's one or the other. That is very limiting because there are many situations where I want to specify "All" to some criteria and "Any" to other criteria. For instance, using a Beatles example, let's say in my collection there are many individual Beatles songs along with entire sides of CD's. Plus there are songs by the individual Beatle artists. And now I want a Beatles playlist that only has individual songs (no sides of CD's) and also includes songs by the individual Beatle artists.
In iTunes it's easy, the 1st criteria specifies ALL "Track Length" is less than 10 (or whatever) minutes. Following that is criteria with ANY of the following rules: artist is Beatles, artist is John Lennon, artist is Paul McCartney, artist is Ringo Starr, artist is George Harrison. That simple playlist setup cannot be done in MediaMonkey since it requires that either "All" or "Any" that must apply to all the criteria.
As iTunes is the gorilla in the room that MediaMonkey wants to supersede, it needs to do a much better job of importing iTunes playlists. Here is MM's big fail along with one related suggestion.
1. MM imports the iTunes playlists but doesn't maintain the criteria that was used to create the playlist!! In other words, once in MM not only can't the playlist criteria be edited (other than changing the playlist name) but the playlist is frozen. For instance, if I have a Beatles playlist and later add a Beatles song to my collection it won't show up in the converted (dumb) playlist. That's because instead of converting the iTunes SMART playlist to an MM AUTO playlist it converts all iTunes playlists to normal (dumb) playlists. In short, MM imports the iTunes playlists as frozen, fixed entities and doesn't pick up the criteria.
2. In the AutoPlaylist/Advanced "Search Criteria", unlike iTunes SmartPlaylist, you can't apply "All" to some criteria and "Any" to other criteria, it's one or the other. That is very limiting because there are many situations where I want to specify "All" to some criteria and "Any" to other criteria. For instance, using a Beatles example, let's say in my collection there are many individual Beatles songs along with entire sides of CD's. Plus there are songs by the individual Beatle artists. And now I want a Beatles playlist that only has individual songs (no sides of CD's) and also includes songs by the individual Beatle artists.
In iTunes it's easy, the 1st criteria specifies ALL "Track Length" is less than 10 (or whatever) minutes. Following that is criteria with ANY of the following rules: artist is Beatles, artist is John Lennon, artist is Paul McCartney, artist is Ringo Starr, artist is George Harrison. That simple playlist setup cannot be done in MediaMonkey since it requires that either "All" or "Any" that must apply to all the criteria.