Where Do I Find Filters In MediaMonkey 4?

[dypsis]

Are filters still available in MediaMonkey 4 guys?

If so, where do I find it?


Thanks...

[KJIACC]

I believe that the best filter in MM and at the same time one of the best of its advantages - it's amazing functionality of autoplaylists

[Lowlander]

Filters have become Collections in MediaMonkey which can be set under Tools > Options > Media Tree or File > Manage Collections. The big difference is that Collections can always be visible in the Media Tree (former Explorer Tree).

[dypsis]

Thanks.

[kiwichick]

"Filters have become Collections in MediaMonkey"

So I can't right-click/filter-on, right-click/filter-off anymore? Now I have to create a collection for every single filter I had in MM3? Am I reading something wrong here?

"Collections can always be visible in the Media Tree"

'Can' always be? Isn't it more like 'have to' always be? If right-click to filter is no longer possible then they'll have to be visible all the time in order to access them. I'll have library nodes all the way from here to Africa. Please tell me it's not so

[Lowlander]

Yes as Collections are Filters every Filter becomes a Collection.

Under Tools > Options > Media Tree you can disable/enabled Collections as you wish. Collections allows much quicker access to Filters than Filters provided as they can always be shown in the Media Tree (former Explorer Tree).

[nynaevelan]

"Filters have become Collections in MediaMonkey"

So I can't right-click/filter-on, right-click/filter-off anymore? Now I have to create a collection for every single filter I had in MM3? Am I reading something wrong here?

"Collections can always be visible in the Media Tree"

'Can' always be? Isn't it more like 'have to' always be? If right-click to filter is no longer possible then they'll have to be visible all the time in order to access them. I'll have library nodes all the way from here to Africa. Please tell me it's not so

I'm confused what you mean here, first let me start off by saying I never used the right click on/off feature, in MM3 I used the filter nodes script to manage jumping around in my filters. Can you give some more info on how you used filters in mm3? Also, filters are now collections, so you would not need to create a collection of a filter, your collection is what used to be your filter. As for the visible part, you do not have to have them all visible, just have the ones visible that you would use the most. I have several collections whose only purpose is for scripts and magic nodes so those do not need to be seen. I also have some that I would not use frequently so those are not visible.

Personally, I like this new feature, it eliminates the need for me to use the filter node script and it makes visible nodes which I find relevant.

Nyn

[rusty]

kiwichick,

Also, remember that in MM4 you can place different Collections (=filters) within different tabs.

re. the complaint that you would have too many filters in the tree, it sounds like you're using filters as auto-playlists? i.e. I would expect that most people would have not more than e.g. 10 filters, and would use auto-playlists for specific playlists. If not, can you explain how you're using it?

Thanks.

-Rusty

[nynaevelan]

kiwichick,

Also, remember that in MM4 you can place different Collections (=filters) within different tabs.

re. the complaint that you would have too many filters in the tree, it sounds like you're using filters as auto-playlists? i.e. I would expect that most people would have not more than e.g. 10 filters, and would use auto-playlists for specific playlists. If not, can you explain how you're using it?

Thanks.

-Rusty

Rusty:

Let me start off by stating I am not like most people with that said I currently have 46 collections, 18 are primarily for scripts such as Tagging Inconsistencies, Magic Nodes and Adv. Dupe, 13 are for auto DJ, 2 are for editing purposes, 2 are specifically for Christmas music and the last 11 are for daily use. Of these 46 collections only 3 are visible in the Media Tree. And as you've stated I have 3 tabs that are always open that points to three of my different nodes, the other is for daily use. I am sure there are many who use autoplaylists to do the same things that I use collections for but I only use autoplaylists for playing and editing, of which I currently have 98 autoplaylists and 241 static playlists for music alone, which are used for either editing or ap playlists to generate playing playlists. I do not want to think about how that list will grow once I have all my videos in MM and finally get around to actually playing those. Yikes, to think this list is the streamlined version... After counting up all of those I forgot what point I was trying to make, but Kiwichick as you can see I am an extensive user of both collections and autoplaylists and I am sure once the sorting of tabs are possible I will probably become a more extensive user of those also, so my point is you need to decide which ones you want to see and how you want to use them all, but it can be accomplished and without your tree looking tooooo crowded and have it ordered to how you want to see it. Here is what my MM currently looks like:


mm4 by nynaevelan1, on Flickr

Nyn

[Anamon]

The way I experience it is actually not filters becoming collections, but filters being removed altogether. You can no longer choose a selection and then a filter—a two-level process—but can only choose one of your collections, of which you will always see all tracks.

I have used filters before. I have my music divided into several separate collections, and I used filters to exclude certain tracks or albums from a collection. For example, I had a filter "Full albums only", which would hide any albums of which I did not have all tracks (because I didn't like some of them and so didn't rip them), or a filter "No hidden tracks after silence", so that it would not play tracks with a long silent period in them before a silent track. So if I only wanted to hear full albums from one of my collections, I could choose that collection and then apply the "Full albums only" filter.

This is no longer possible without forcing me to create an exponential amount of new auto-playlists. Auto-playlists are functionally just as powerful, but they seem to be fixed to either a specific collection or the entire library. That means that I can no longer choose "My Vinyl rips" or "My CD rips" collection and then filter by full albums; I would have to create 3 new auto-playlists, "Full albums only", "Full Vinyl albums only", and "Full CD albums only", instead of just one filter. This is a very simple example but in fact, with each collection or filter concept you want to add, the number of auto-playlists necessary to achieve the same functionality at least doubles.

Please someone tell me that there is a simpler alternative I overlooked

[nynaevelan]

The way I experience it is actually not filters becoming collections, but filters being removed altogether. You can no longer choose a selection and then a filter—a two-level process—but can only choose one of your collections, of which you will always see all tracks.

I have used filters before. I have my music divided into several separate collections, and I used filters to exclude certain tracks or albums from a collection. For example, I had a filter "Full albums only", which would hide any albums of which I did not have all tracks (because I didn't like some of them and so didn't rip them), or a filter "No hidden tracks after silence", so that it would not play tracks with a long silent period in them before a silent track. So if I only wanted to hear full albums from one of my collections, I could choose that collection and then apply the "Full albums only" filter.

This is no longer possible without forcing me to create an exponential amount of new auto-playlists. Auto-playlists are functionally just as powerful, but they seem to be fixed to either a specific collection or the entire library. That means that I can no longer choose "My Vinyl rips" or "My CD rips" collection and then filter by full albums; I would have to create 3 new auto-playlists, "Full albums only", "Full Vinyl albums only", and "Full CD albums only", instead of just one filter. This is a very simple example but in fact, with each collection or filter concept you want to add, the number of auto-playlists necessary to achieve the same functionality at least doubles.

Please someone tell me that there is a simpler alternative I overlooked

How did you set up these filters in MM3 that you are not able to do the same in MM4? I must be missing something because I have not noticed any change in the previous filter behavior of MM3. There were a few new features added but I have not seen anything removed?

[nohitter151]

Please someone tell me that there is a simpler alternative I overlooked

It sounds to me like you were in fact using filters as how autoplaylists were meant to be used. I don't quite see why autoplaylists won't work in this situation? If it's a matter of taking up too much space in the media tree, do you realize that you can nest playlists?

[Anamon]

No, what I described is in fact impossible to do with auto-playlists, because they are collection-independent. I think I simply got a bit confused with the terminology of media types/collections/filters. I am also no longer 100% sure how I did this in MM3, or if I maybe hacked something together there.

I think my first example is still the simplest to understand: with the old system I had 2 collections (vinyl, CD) and 1 filter condition ("full albums only"). If I wanted full vinyl albums only, I switched to the vinyl collection and activated the filter. If I wanted full CD albums only, I switched to the CD collection and activated the filter. With the new system, I have to create 2 very complicated auto-playlists for this: one which copies all the filter conditions for vinyl albums and all the filter conditions for "full albums only", and another which copies all the filter conditions for CD albums and all the filter conditions for "full albums only" once more. That is a lot of bad redundancy, and hence both additional work and potential for inconsistency. It's not that extreme in this toy example, but consider adding a new filter condition (4 auto-playlists), and another (6 auto-playlists), then a new collection (9 auto-playlists), and then a fourth collection (12 auto-playlists). And if you want to change just 1 filter condition, you have to adapt 4 auto-playlists.

MM3:
Collections: CD, Vinyl
Filters: Full albums only, Limited editions, Artist seen live

MM4:
Collections: (no longer of any help if I want to apply additional filters)
Auto-playlists: Full CD albums only, Full vinyl albums only, Limited CD albums, Limited vinyl albums, CDs from artists seen live, Vinyls from artists seen live

As I said, it's quite possible that I missed or misunderstood something, so if anyone knows how I can achieve the same thing without adding every filtering condition an exponential number of times, I'd be happy to hear it.

[nynaevelan]

I guess therein lies my confusion, how do you create either a filter or an autoplaylist with native MM that will select whether an album is full or not? I always thought to get this info I would have to use magic nodes. How are you accomplishing this part?? Can you explain what steps you used in MM3 to produce your two filters?? I assume to get the collections you have them labeled somewhere whether they are cds or vinyl??

Nyn

[Anamon]

I guess therein lies my confusion, how do you create either a filter or an autoplaylist with native MM that will select whether an album is full or not? I always thought to get this info I would have to use magic nodes. How are you accomplishing this part?? Can you explain what steps you used in MM3 to produce your two filters?? I assume to get the collections you have them labeled somewhere whether they are cds or vinyl??

Nyn

That's correct, these were filters based on how I tagged my files. I have a special value for the Quality field which designates rips I made myself, and a custom source field that designates the source format. So I had my Vinyl collection as Quality=Original rip and Source=Vinyl, etc.
Incomplete albums I manually tagged by adding an '[Incomplete]' to the album comments, and the filter looked for that tag. This can be done automatically and more cleanly using MagicNodes of course, but in MM4 these suffer from the same limitations as auto-playlists in that they cannot be made to dynamically depend on the active collection, which is already a filtering of the library.