Auto Rating of Songs & Radio Announcer v5.02 [Script]

[MeMeMe]

I just discovered that if you Stop a song, or reach the end of a playlist and don't have Continuous Play on, the song doesn't get rated.
Is this by design?

Also: what happens if you interrupt playback of a song by double-clicking another song? Does rating still work?

[rovingcowboy]

i'll use which ever option sheet is there. mostly because my sister wants the ratings on her computer different then the 24 \ 7 computer's ratings.

so which ever you do is fine with me she will more then likely use the option sheet.

i will more then likely jump in to the code as i like to learn just what to mess with and what not to mess with some times it burns the fingers you know

[rovingcowboy]

I just discovered that if you Stop a song, or reach the end of a playlist and don't have Continuous Play on, the song doesn't get rated.
Is this by design?

refresh the playlist it might just have not refreshed for you.

[MeMeMe]

Phew, looks like you're right.
I tried the F5 to refresh, and it didn't update the rating. But when I started the next song it did. (I didn't notice the update earlier because I'd started a different playlist.)

[DiddeLeeDoo]

First time it runs, a datafile will be created, and as soon as the first song is over and done with, it will start working. + it will always rate the song you played last, and not the current one.

This is by design, to ensure that the current song do not get disturbed.

[Steegy]

It happens often that a friend comes by to listen to songs on my computer, to hear if a certain song is the actual version he's looking for. Or he just wants a quick preview of some of my songs.

Occasionally it happens that I want to find a nice piece of a song, so I jump somewhere to the middle of a song (like for trance music) and skip it immediatelly if it's not what I was looking for.

I expect that this skipping with AutoRateSongs would cause the rating to go down?
Is there an option to disable the script fast&temporarily ?
From what I understand from the options screenshot ( http://img227.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ons7zo.jpg ), this seems not to be possible yet. Can this be added please?

Cheers
Steegy

[MeMeMe]

While tweaking the number of plays I noticed something.
Let's say you assign plays as follows:
3 stars: 1
3.5 stars: 3
4 stars: 5
4.5 stars: 7

On this scheme, if a song plays twice, it gets a rating of 3.5 stars. If it plays 3 times, it stays at 3.5 stars. If it then plays a fourth time, it increases to 4 stars.
These numbers are not the numbers assigned to each rating - this might not be what the user expects. I'd recommend altering it so it behaves as you expect: the number assigned to plays is the minimum number of plays required.
This would probably also require having a variable for 5 stars.

[MeMeMe]

Steegy has raised something that concerned me too - but I forgot about it tonight.
This could be linked to the Mood selector: Could have Normal as we discussed, and also Disabled to disable both mood and rating changes.

A related question: the safe zone within which you can skip is normally 10 seconds. Is this always counted from the start of a song? let's say I start the song, listen for 3 seconds, then manually move the position slider to the middle of the song and listen for five seconds, and then skip, would this trigger the rating reduction?

[DiddeLeeDoo]

Valuable inputs here. Thanks!

Seconds is seconds.. no matter where or how you play the song... It all operates in Real Time, and the script do not care how you play a song.

Percentage played is the same thing.
Example: 4 minute song, and Stop set to 75% = 180 seconds.

Start Monitoring after 10 seconds
Stop Monitoring after 180 seconds for this 240 second song
All in real time from the time the song started.

Current Option Sheet wording of Playcount

Playcount Rating Calibration
Playcount of 1 rate 3.0 Stars
Playcount of 2 rate 3.5 Stars
Playcount of 3 rate 4.0 Stars
Playcount of 5 rate 4.5 Stars
Anything above will be rated 5.0 Stars

How would you solve this one, or the wording of it to make it understandable?

BTW, using Option Sheets it is simple to disable the rating system. All up, it's maturing

[DiddeLeeDoo]

Thinking about it, the word of is not very descriptive. Maybe

Playcount Rating Calibration
Playcount <= 1 rate 3.0 Stars
Playcount <= 2 rate 3.5 Stars
Playcount <= 3 rate 4.0 Stars
Playcount <= 5 rate 4.5 Stars
Anything above will be rated 5.0 Stars

Simply replace the world of with <=

Think I'll do that if no protest...

[MeMeMe]

Good to hear about the seconds.

Current Option Sheet wording of Playcount

Playcount Rating Calibration
Playcount of 1 rate 3.0 Stars
Playcount of 2 rate 3.5 Stars
Playcount of 3 rate 4.0 Stars
Playcount of 5 rate 4.5 Stars
Anything above will be rated 5.0 Stars

How would you solve this one, or the wording of it to make it understandable?

The way it's presented above, it looks like you have to play a song 5 times to get it rated as 4.5 stars, but actually you have only to play it 4 times because of the way the variables are checked.
There's no easy way to make that more intuitive without adding an explicit variable for 5 stars - that way the minimums can be clearly stated.
You would then have:

Playcount Rating Calibration
Playcount of 1 rate 3.0 Stars
Playcount of 2 rate 3.5 Stars
Playcount of 3 rate 4.0 Stars
Playcount of 4 rate 4.5 Stars
Playcount of 6 or above rate 5 Stars.

The above would be very nice.

Edited to add: I didn't see your post above before sending this. The <= does make it clear - for those who understand the symbols, anyway. I know too many people who don't know them, though admittedly they aren't using MediaMonkey
As a more speculative feature - less important - it would be nice to have a listing of every star rating from 0.5 to 5.0, with the option of a user choosing which settings the script chooses (on the Option Sheet).
This would allow a lot of customisability. For example, some users might want, for instance, to just use integer stars (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and for the rating to drop, say, 1 full star per 3 plays.

I've tweaked my version of the script to make the default 1.5 stars, and have the 1 play = 2 stars, with the other stars going up from there.

BTW, using Option Sheets it is simple to disable the rating system. All up, it's maturing

It would be nice not to have to navigate to the Options, then pick an option sheet, then click on option on that page. (For the other settings, the option sheet is good - but for this, you might want to switch it on and off a bit more easily.)
Much nicer if we could just click a button on a toolbar, or use a keyboard shortcut.
My reason for wanting this is different from Steegy's. One thing I do when getting a new album is to listen to it repeatedly over a couple of days - to decide which songs I like. This will skew the initial ratings for these tracks.

[DiddeLeeDoo]

It's late here in the jungle down under, so I'll read your post in the morning.
Like the script is maturing, I guess the script will mature on you too.

Valuable inputs, and I appreciate them, but I believe if you let the script mature on you, you'll realize the logic already build into the script.

[rovingcowboy]

Good to hear about the seconds.

Current Option Sheet wording of Playcount

Playcount Rating Calibration
Playcount of 1 rate 3.0 Stars
Playcount of 2 rate 3.5 Stars
Playcount of 3 rate 4.0 Stars
Playcount of 5 rate 4.5 Stars
Anything above will be rated 5.0 Stars

How would you solve this one, or the wording of it to make it understandable?

The way it's presented above, it looks like you have to play a song 5 times to get it rated as 4.5 stars, but actually you have only to play it 4 times because of the way the variables are checked.
There's no easy way to make that more intuitive without adding an explicit variable for 5 stars - that way the minimums can be clearly stated.
You would then have:

Playcount Rating Calibration
Playcount of 1 rate 3.0 Stars
Playcount of 2 rate 3.5 Stars
Playcount of 3 rate 4.0 Stars
Playcount of 4 rate 4.5 Stars
Playcount of 6 or above rate 5 Stars.

The above would be very nice.

Edited to add: I didn't see your post above before sending this. The <= does make it clear - for those who understand the symbols, anyway. I know too many people who don't know them, though admittedly they aren't using MediaMonkey
As a more speculative feature - less important - it would be nice to have a listing of every star rating from 0.5 to 5.0, with the option of a user choosing which settings the script chooses (on the Option Sheet).
This would allow a lot of customisability. For example, some users might want, for instance, to just use integer stars (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and for the rating to drop, say, 1 full star per 3 plays.

I've tweaked my version of the script to make the default 1.5 stars, and have the 1 play = 2 stars, with the other stars going up from there.

BTW, using Option Sheets it is simple to disable the rating system. All up, it's maturing

It would be nice not to have to navigate to the Options, then pick an option sheet, then click on option on that page. (For the other settings, the option sheet is good - but for this, you might want to switch it on and off a bit more easily.)
Much nicer if we could just click a button on a toolbar, or use a keyboard shortcut.
My reason for wanting this is different from Steegy's. One thing I do when getting a new album is to listen to it repeatedly over a couple of days - to decide which songs I like. This will skew the initial ratings for these tracks.

mememe

what you are seeing is the fact that any number under the set number
is going to be givin the rating according to the amount between the set amunts you have posted in your message.

it is the code near the bottom that does this.

playcount <= playcount 3_0_0_ =
ar rating of 50

which is 2.5 stars.

that way the counts between the set numbers will have the proper rating working their way up in the play count.

if that was not done. and like in the orginal code where it was not done.

then changing the amount of plays to get the starts, to out of a sync count such as you postes.

1 = 3 stars

4 = 3.5 stars.

and so on. when the else = 100 stars came up in the orginal code.

it gave the play counts of 2 and 3 , the 5 star rating because they had no programed rating so the code used the else if rating

which was corrected by giving the playcounts that were not hard coded with a number of stars the ratings below the hard coded numbers.

so it is to do that.

[MeMeMe]

mememe

what you are seeing is the fact that any number under the set number
is going to be givin the rating according to the amount between the set amunts you have posted in your message.

Yeah, I understand how it works, but that's only because I read through the code. I initially didn't grasp it, and I'm sure most people will misunderstand.
The "any number under the set number" is the bit that's counter-intuitive. You (or at least I) expect it to be over.
The change from "of" to "<=" in the option sheet does make it a lot clearer, though.

[DiddeLeeDoo]

Actually I think making something understandable is just as challenging as scripting really. One thing is making something that works, and other thing is to make it intuitive.

I believe the larger software companies test new programs on "non-programmers’ to see if they can navigate in their new program.

Guess it doesn't help that my native language is not English, so any help is highly appreciated.

Still doing Option Sheets here… takes time..