AutoRateAccurate - Release 1.61 (10/11/2006) [MM2]

[Lsferreyra]

Hi Berny. As many people here, i'm just waiting for version 2.0 to use mm3. Your work looks, once again, spectacular, and let me congratulate you for it.
I just have a suggestion, or question: would it be a good idea to have an option to switch off the autocalibration? That is, i would like to implement a custom formula which gives a certain rating between 1 and 100, and i don't like it normalized with autocalibration. Would it be a possible option? If so, at least myself would be quite grateful!
Thank you again for your time.
Best regards,
Lucas

[Big_Berny]

Hi all,
I just wanted to say that there will probably be another delay since the propable bug in MM3 hasn't been fixed now.
But: In the meanwhile I did some theoretical work on version 2.5 as we learned some useful things about linear regression with multiple independent variables - exactly what I need for AutoRateAccurate. Probably I'll ask you some day about some informations (like ratings) about some songs of your library. Then I can create a formula based on that informations with an additional software (SPSS) and look if my idea works. But let's first finish 2.0.
EDIT: Another idea for a future version: Albumratings!

@Lsferreyra:
Hm... I don't think that I'll implement that because it would need changes which would the script make slower (and more complicated) for people who want to use the autocalibration. Personally I don't see any improvement in disabling this feature. Why do you want that?
But: If you disable "Autocalibration at start-up" it doesn't autocalibrates automatically and you could edit some lines in the ini-file. This should work perfectly for you!
If you want more informations on that just write me a message when 3.0 is finished.
So that I won't implement that but it's the main-feature of the whole script. Without that I had to script it completely different.

[LordHades]

Hi

Question, when you add a new album to MM and start playing it right away it gives a rating of 4 stars with played 1 and a rating of 5 stars with a played of 2 times.

Can it be changed that a new song is always 3 when it starts? or 2. I have a very large collection so most of my songs start with 2 stars (40%) of the database. It gets kinda messy now even stupid songs that i only play twice get 4 stars now at least hehe

btw the 5 star is 1%, and 4,5 is 2% and 4 star is 3% of the database so it's only a smal portion of the entire collection (30000+ songs)

Any idea how that can be changed or fixed? or a feature for the next release

[Big_Berny]

@LordHades: Good morning!
My script doesn't have a fix rating for new songs. It handles all songs the same and calculates a points-value for all of them with a formula which can be changed. Probably this formula isn't so good for you (as for others too it seems). The formula is something like this:
Points = PlayCounter * PlayCounter * PlayedPerDay
As you can see it also uses the PlayedPerDay to calculate the point-value (and then the rating). So if you have a new song the PlayCounter is low because you only played it once but the PlayedPerDay it's high because you maybe only had it one day.

In 1.61 you can change the formula by hand, but you have to change some lines in the code of the script. If you want more informations about that just write me a PM. By the way in the new version 2.0 of the script the formula can easily be changed through the options.

Big_Berny

[LordHades]

Wello,

Ok thanks for the headsup Berny. I'll use it like this then. Dont wanna change the script it works besides this small thingy like a charm and wanna keep it like that.

Goodluck with version 2.0!

[Lsferreyra]

Hi Berny.
As always, thanx very much x your answer!
I'll be waiting for the next version and, after analyzing it, I'll eventually ask you again for help. I just published my question for the remote case anyone had the same question
Best regards,
Lucas

[Big_Berny]

Hi guys,
just wanted to let you know about the status of AutoRateAccurate 2.0:
Unfortunately a bug in MM3 hasn't been fixed now so I have to wait first before I can continue. And since I have exams again in two weeks the new version will probably come after xmas. I'll try to complete it then so I can release it about new year but I can't promise because I have other exams at the beginning of january. Anyway: I really want to finish it because it's already a very long time I'm working on it. So don't get nervous, it will come for sure!

[LordHades]

hehe ok thanks for the update m8 goodluck with your exams!. I wont use MM3 without this script that's for sure and i can't find any other script that works properly

[Big_Berny]

Thanks!
It looks like we've found the problem. Thanks to jiri. But as I said since there are still some small things to do, I'll probably release it in some weeks.

Cya, have to leran again.

[LordHades]

Ok no problem i switched to MM3 anyways, mm2 was giving some problems. I'll just tag manual for a while !.

[Spazz]

Question and a comment. When is the skip track activated? When the skip button is pressed or the song stops. If it's when the song stops can there be an option to change it to just when you press the skip button?

[Big_Berny]

@Spazz: The track is activated each time a new songs begind before the old one has been finished. So when you pause it, there should be no problem. And when you stop it the skip will be counted if you immediately start a new song after stopping the old one.

Technical view: The script runs every time a song starts. Then it stores the time and the song-id. If a new song starts the script runs again and it checks if already the length of the last song lass passed since the time has been stored (=if the song has been played completely). If no, it increases the skip-counter. After that it stores the time again together with the new song-id.

[Spazz]

So if you finish a song and then hit the stop button after the 10 seconds has passed and leave for a few hours then the song would be counted as skipped? What if you've passed the 50 percent mark or whatever you set the maximum time to skip at?

[Big_Berny]

So if you finish a song and then hit the stop button after the 10 seconds has passed and leave for a few hours then the song would be counted as skipped?

No, because when you play the next song after some hours the script will rund and notice that some hours (=longer than songlength) have passed since the last time it run. AFAIK it's technically not possible to do it differently. But it would be nice if MM would have this function by it's own... iTunes has I think...

What if you've passed the 50 percent mark or whatever you set the maximum time to skip at?

I think the default is 80% but you can change it in the next version in the options. That means that it will not be countes as skip if the next song begins over 80% of the songlength later. It's quite difficult to explain...

Example:
You have a song A which is 100 seconds long. If you start it, the script will run and save the the current time (time a). When song B starts it checks again the current time (time b) and calculates the difference to the stored time. Now we have three cases:
difference time A & B < 10 seconds: no skip
difference time A & B > 10 and < 80 seconds (80% of songlength A): skip
difference time A & B > 80 seconds : no skip

So if you stop song A and wait some hours untill you play song B the time-difference will be higher than 80 seconds --> no skip.

I know that this feature could be improved theoretically but I don't know if it's possible technically since a script has no access to controls like 'next' or 'stop'. It's just possible to run a script when a song starts AFAIK. But it works quite good! It's just a little to conservative in some cases.

[doubleij]

AutoRate has been a huge help to me in just a few days on MM2. I hate rating songs myself, but I like to have them rated, so this was the perfect solution.

I just started running MM3 and I really miss AutoRate already! I'm glad to hear that a 3-compatible vers. 2.0 is planned. I will watch this thread. Thanks again!