Magic Nodes 4.2 w/ 380 masks & real GUI (2011-07-01)[MM2+]

[zephyr]

Hi.

Is it possible, using Magic Nodes, to see what artists (or album artists) exist in a location that DON'T exist elsewhere?

I'm after the easiest way to identify new media. So if a drive is connected, I have to add to the library still, but because MM works so well, with tree nodes, I could run this FIND UNIQUE MEDIA, giving it a path (H:\music\artists) and ideally another location (M:\all my music) and return details on which artists are ONLY found once. The opposite to finding duplicates?!

I have a HUGE collection of mp3s that are SUPPOSEd to be well tagged, sorted mainly by artist. To this I am trying to add NEW music (that doesn't already exist in that part of my collection) probably by auto-organising, once the tag data has been verified.

Any help welcome, as always many thanks

[BKKKPewsey]

Check out the node "artist with only 1 album with more than 4 tracks".
That eliminates most of artists on compilations only.

[rrfpacker]

I'm trying to modify a node that's already available and the collection drop down won't work; I click on the arrow and nothing happens.
I haven't tried to use this before so I can't tell you if it's a new problem. Using latest Monkey 4.0.3.1476. Below is the MN I'm trying to create...it seems to work just fine, however I want to choose a collection so I can control which genres are included. Thank you for any help.

<Group|Name:Album Ratings|Show tracks:No>\Albums with weighted avg. track rating < 3 stars and at least 5 rated tracks|Icon:Top level|Filter:Songs.IDAlbum In (SELECT IDAlbum FROM Songs WHERE Rating >= 0 GROUP BY IDAlbum HAVING Sum(SongLength * Rating) / Sum(SongLength) < 60 AND Count(Rating) >= 5)\<Album|Sort by:Avg(Rating)|Statistic:Count(All)>

[ZvezdanD]

I'm trying to modify a node that's already available and the collection drop down won't work; I click on the arrow and nothing happens.

You mean the collection drop down control is disabled, right? You should select Library (or any its sub-node) from the Position drop down first.

[rrfpacker]

Yes, I mean the Collection drop down is disabled, and thank you, your solution worked.

I know nothing about scripting, so please don't take my next statement as a complaint, I'm just trying to learn (Magic Nodes is way over my head). Does it seem weird that if I want to create an Album Rating node such as the one I want to create, I can't keep it with the other Album Rating nodes in MN? Is that the behaviour (the behaviour being that if I want to use a collection as a filter the node goes in that collection) that works best for MN?

Thanks again for your help and wonderful script.

[ZvezdanD]

Does it seem weird that if I want to create an Album Rating node such as the one I want to create, I can't keep it with the other Album Rating nodes in MN? Is that the behaviour (the behaviour being that if I want to use a collection as a filter the node goes in that collection) that works best for MN?

I am not sure that understand what you want. The default Album Rating group is under the Magic Nodes folder. You created a new node and decided to put it into some collection, so you got that node in the new Album Rating group under that collection. You could create several groups with the same name under different parent folders and I cannot see why such behavior is weird to you. I think it would be weird if it is opposite, i.e. after I assign a collection to one node from some group, if all other nodes from the same group move to that collection. Not only that it would be weird, but in that case there would not be a possibility to have several groups (or nodes) with the same name under different parents. However, if you want to move all nodes from the default Album Rating group from Magic Nodes to some collection, then you need to assign the same collection to all those nodes.

If you complain about the fact that using some filter with some node automatically assign that node to the corresponding collection, then you should know that such behavior is introduced with MM4. In MM3 you had a possibility to assign different MM filters to the Magic nodes wherever they are, in Magic Nodes folder, in Library, even in Playlists folder, but with MM4 you cannot have node with the filter of one collection outside of that collection. It would be totally weird if, for example, I have node with the Video filter placed into the Music collection, don't you think?

However, there is always a possibility to use some filter even for Magic nodes outside of the corresponding collection of that filter. Here is the short guide:
- open the Options dialog box, choose Magic Nodes sheet and turn on the "Allow editing of SQL queries" and "when select a field node" options;
- make some simple Magic node which is placed into the collection whose filter you want to use, e.g. for the Music collection it could be Test|Child of:Library|Position:First child|MM filter:Music;
- expand that collection and select that new node -> you would get the Magic Nodes SQL Editor dialog box displaying the filter of that collection, e.g. for the Music collection it would be WHERE ( Songs.TrackType in (0,4) );
- you should copy part of that expression after WHERE (in this case it is Songs.TrackType in (0,4)) and use it in your Magic Nodes masks in the Filter qualifier, not matter what is the selected collection of those masks.

By the way, if you want to know what I am talking about, it is recommended that you read the PDF manual whose link you could find in the first post of this thread. It is obsolete, but still useful for understanding of the Magic Nodes mask's syntax.

[rrfpacker]

ZvezdanD...Thank you for a concise and timely response. You have gone above and beyond expectations!

On one hand, I thought it was weird that the node I was trying to create had to "go" somewhere else. On the other hand, your explanation makes it quite clear that being able to filter on specific Collections and have the node in the Collection is what makes Magic Nodes and therefore Media Monkey so powerful, and is the way to go. My ignorance of such things is why I ask "dumb" questions.

I have printed the Magic Nodes manual and have started to read it numerous times. After a few pages my eyes glaze over and my body shakes uncontrollably . I will try again to read and understand this most powerful script.

Again, thank you for all your help.

PS. I remember the filter acting differently in MM3 and I expected it to work the same in MM4. I agree the new way is better.

[RandomOracle]

This may be a stupid question, but is there a way to expand the "All" node that you can choose to add with the option "Show [All] Node"? This would allow "skipping" a level in deeper tree structures. For example, I have the following tree structure:

Code: Select all

+Music
++By Genre
+++0-5 Stars
++++All
++++Hard Rock
+++++All
+++++1960's
+++++1970's
++++++Cover
++++++Live
++++++etc.
++++Heavy Metal
+++3+ Stars
+++3½+ Stars
etc.


In some cases, I'm not interested in the "decade" level, but would like to browse all Hard Rock songs that have my custom tag "Live" (the last level). Alternatively, I might want to just skip the genre level and view all live songs from the 1960's. The problem is that although I can see all the songs regardless of the genre thanks to the "All" node, I can't expand the "All" node further and limit the songs by decade.

Is there a way to do this kind of thing currently? What I'm resorting to is to have more magic nodes, and more groups (By Genre, By Decade, etc.).

EDIT:

I also have another question. I currently store my custom tags such as Cover, Live, Instrumental, etc. in the Mood field. How could I go about making a magic node that can find me combinations of two or more of those tags? For example, I might want to look for cover instrumental songs or instrumental live songs, etc. I've tried the very simple Mood+Mood structure which doesn't work and I haven't had luck with Multi Mood either. A possible issue is that the tags in the Mood field are currently not in any specific order. Is there any possible way of doing this?

EDIT 2:

OK, I managed to solve the latter problem fairly well with a mask like this:

Mood test|Icon:Top level\<Mood>\<Multi mood|Split by:;>

This allows to me to select tracks which have two specific moods, or in this case, my custom tags. There's only a smallish problem in that this way the tags are shown twice like this:

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Mood Test
+Cover
++Cover
++Instrumental
++Live
+Instrumental
+Live
etc.


[MMuser2011]

How could I create a Node for this:
"Albums - Complete Albums with different cover sizes inside tracks"

Thanks to the script Calculate Cover Size I have stored the values in the custom field #1 with the syntax 401x399.

Every help would be appreciated!

[ScottBolton]

Can I concatenate tags together so that I see

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"2 - 2000 - Mi Reflejo"

rather than

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"Disc 2
2000 - Mi Reflejo"

I store the chronoligical album number in the Disc Number field; I looked into storing it in the Custom fields but I still can't join the fields together so the album appears all on one line.

[ZvezdanD]

Can I concatenate tags together so that I see

Code: Select all

"2 - 2000 - Mi Reflejo"

No, currently you cannot concatenate tags with Magic Nodes, but you could get the next format "2 - Mi Reflejo (2000)" or "2000 - Mi Reflejo (2)". Please read the PDF manual and the description of Sort by and Statistics qualifiers.

[ZvezdanD]

How could I create a Node for this:
"Albums - Complete Albums with different cover sizes inside tracks"

Thanks to the script Calculate Cover Size I have stored the values in the custom field #1 with the syntax 401x399.

You could modify some of the existing "Albums with multiple ..." masks, e.g. "Albums with multiple Genres" - just replace Genre in the Filter expression with Custom1.

[ZvezdanD]

is there a way to expand the "All" node that you can choose to add with the option "Show [All] Node"?

I don't understand why you would want that when the parent node already displays all nodes that its [All] sub-node could display. In fact, I am thinking to remove that option from the next version of this add-on as redundant. The "All" node could be found inside of the Location and My Computer native folders anyway, but not inside of e.g. Artist or Genre or any another built-in MM folder.

I currently store my custom tags such as Cover, Live, Instrumental, etc. in the Mood field. How could I go about making a magic node that can find me combinations of two or more of those tags?

Did you try the "Multi-item Mood" node from the "Multi-item fields" folder?

[RandomOracle]

is there a way to expand the "All" node that you can choose to add with the option "Show [All] Node"?

I don't understand why you would want that when the parent node already displays all nodes that its [All] sub-node could display. In fact, I am thinking to remove that option from the next version of this add-on as redundant. The "All" node could be found inside of the Location and My Computer native folders anyway, but not inside of e.g. Artist or Genre or any another built-in MM folder.

I can display them by clicking the parent node, but if the "All" field was expandable, I could essentially "skip" a tree level if I wasn't interested in narrowing down my tracks by that criteria, but would like to narrow them down by a another criteria in a deeper tree level. My previous post described my idea in a little more detail.

I currently store my custom tags such as Cover, Live, Instrumental, etc. in the Mood field. How could I go about making a magic node that can find me combinations of two or more of those tags?

Did you try the "Multi-item Mood" node from the "Multi-item fields" folder?

This doesn't really help me as it displays things like "Cover; Acoustic; Live" and "Live; Acoustic" as separate nodes. What I'd like to get is a way of finding out all songs that have, for example, both "Live" and "Acoustic" in the mood field in whatever order and with any other items. However, my previous solution works well enough.


By the way, am I right in assuming that there's no way to use Magic Nodes to get m3U playlists that would get automatically updated? I mean, you can put a magic node under the playlist tree, but if I understand correctly, this node has to manually updated by refreshing it with "Refresh Magic Node"? And "Export M3Us/Create Playlists for Child Nodes" automatically exports playlists only under "Playlists".

[ZvezdanD]

My previous post described my idea in a little more detail.

Sorry, but I still don't understand what you want. If I have, for example:

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Pink Floyd
  + Dark Side of the Moon
  + Wish You Were Here
  + Animals

why would I want to get this:

Code: Select all

Pink Floyd
  + All
  |   + Dark Side of the Moon
  |   + Wish You Were Here
  |   + Animals
  + Dark Side of the Moon
  + Wish You Were Here
  + Animals

I currently store my custom tags such as Cover, Live, Instrumental, etc. in the Mood field. How could I go about making a magic node that can find me combinations of two or more of those tags?

Did you try the "Multi-item Mood" node from the "Multi-item fields" folder?

This doesn't really help me as it displays things like "Cover; Acoustic; Live" and "Live; Acoustic" as separate nodes.

I don't know what really helps you, but I just gave you an answer to your question "How could I go about making a magic node that can find me combinations of two or more of those tags?" which the suggested mask exactly do, i.e. it displays tracks that have two or more items in Mood field.

I mean, you can put a magic node under the playlist tree, but if I understand correctly, this node has to manually updated by refreshing it with "Refresh Magic Node"?

Yes, that's right. MM programing interface doesn't allow creating of auto-playlists by scripts.

And "Export M3Us/Create Playlists for Child Nodes" automatically exports playlists only under "Playlists".

Yes again, but maybe that would be changed in the future with allowed automatic export of Magic nodes as well.