Thanks Zvezdan, this should help me a lot.

When going through new music I have collected, getting it into a playlist so it gets into my play rotation and doesn't get forgotten is an important step for me that I have been struggling with MM5.

In addition to "S" for the Sxxx playlists of music I listen to while skiing, I use a few other prefixes like "L" for Light, "D" for driving etc.. So it won't be too cumbersome to extend your idea to my other categories.

MikeGahrns wrote: ↑Mon Jun 20, 2022 1:21 pm My main playlist organization scheme is essentially groupings of 50 songs for activities where I use my music... e.g. Driving, Skiing, etc. Each time I create a new playlist, of a specific type, I increment its number.

For example, my Ski playlists are named S001, S002, S003, etc., my Driving playlists D001, D002, ....

As my library expands and I keep adding new songs and playlists, the playlists continue to increase. So it is not just a case of creating an auto playlist to check if a song is in say in 5 playlists. Every time I add a new playlist like S112, I would have to go back and update the auto playlist rule to include/exclude the newly created playlist. Essentially I need a way to determine if a song is not in any playlist. With MM4 playlist in main window and its setting of the Custom1 field to include the playlist names, I can easily determine this with an Auto playlist criteria Custom1 doesn't contain 'S' means that the song isn't in any of my Ski playlists...

Hi Mike,

I don't know how your hierarchical structure of playlists looks like, but I am wondering if you could do what you want with the Inherit Child Playlists addon. It cannot solve your request "to determine if a song is not in any playlist", but it might be used to determine if " the song isn't in any of my Ski playlists".

Let say that you have this:
+ Ski
++ S001
++ S002
...
++ S112

If you set the Ski playlist to inherit its children, you could create an auto-playlist with the criterion Playlist is not Ski and you will get files that are not in any Sxxx playlist. And, the mentioned addon will automatically update the Ski playlist whenever you add or remove any of its children.

Nice job Erwin.

Being able to to see a column view of which playlist(s) a song is in is a key feature for me. And I like the intuitive way you can quickly add/delete the song from all the playlists it is in. Combining both of these features is slick.

I'd love to see something like this natively in MM5.

And if not natively, if you or anyone else get an MM5 add-on to add this functionality, I would be a user! (and would be happy to help test).

by MikeGahrns » 21 Jun 2022, 09:42
But if can't go natively in MM5, having an add-on that combined "Playlist Manager" and "Playlist in Main Window" would be the next best thing

I managed to optimize the "PlaylistManager" for MM4. It also behaves like "Playlist in Main Window" behaves.
As a hobby programmer, I solved this in about 3 hours.
Unfortunately I don't have a second monitor. So I can't test this.
Only makes sense up to about 30 playlists.

Erwin, wow! I really like what you have posted. I think it would be extremely helpful and intuitive for playlist management and would love to see something like this native in MM5. But if can't go natively in MM5, having an add-on that combined "Playlist Manager" and "Playlist in Main Window" would be the next best thing. And I could also see Drakanite's undock panel being useful to undock the "Playlist Manager Panel" for those with multiple monitors.

Just to make sure I understand correctly what you posted, as you scroll down to a different song in the list view, is the "Playlist Manager for One Song" panel updated with checkmarks with the playlists that the selected song is in. And if I want to add that selected song to more playlists, I would simply add a checkmark next to the playlist(s). Similarly, I would remove checkmarks to delete the selected song from the playlist(s). This would be a very slick and efficient way to quickly assign songs to playlists.

A suggestion and a couple of questions:

Suggestion: Rather than a simple Ja/Yes if the song is in a playlist, list the playlist(s) that the song is in, with each playlist name separated with semi colons like "Playlist in Main Window" does. This gives a nice overview table view of all the playlists involved without needing to select each song individually.

I realize that this column might get quite wide, especially if the playlists have long names. But it is easily truncated. And visually if you see even a partial playlist name in the column you know it is a "Ja/Yes". There is no need to see the whole playlist name or list of playlists. But for people like me who would find it valuable to see all the playlists the listed songs are in with just one glance (and use short playlist names like D001, S012, etc) we could just use a wider column. The best of both worlds....

Q1:
What happens if more than one song is selected in the list view? Perhaps a simple solution might be to add something below the Playlist Manager panel title saying "Multiple files selected, do you want to apply the checked playlists to all selected songs?... Or even simpler, just grey out the Playlist Manager Panel if more than one song in the list view is selected.

Q2: Did I understand correctly that you already have this running in MM4? If so, is it available for others to use?

Q3: Assuming you have implemented this, have you noticed any performance issues?

Q4: Do you know if the playlists a song is in kept as a property in the db with each song, or are they calculated/queried dynamically for each song? I have not noticed any performance issues with Playlist in Main Window, nor when I did the test that Peke suggested earlier in the thread, (Track->Find more from same-> Playlists.)
This is beyond my area of expertise, but I imagine that factors like this might influence how feasible this suggestion would be as the developers need to account for massive databases and huge number of playlists. And it seems like for large dbs and playlists like what Peke tested on there are potential perf implications. Might need some brainstorming on how to implement.

Yes, I am familiar with the PlaylistInMainWindow.2.0.0.106 script.
However, I am the "visual type" and use the script "PlaylistManager" adapted by me for MM4. There, too, if a selected song only appears in one playlist, I write a note "JA" in a custom field.

I think the developers could combine both.
My suggestion for MM5 and your wish, the update in another selectable custom field.

You're speaking to my heart with that. https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... st#p490337

Thanks Erwin for the pointer. I wasn't aware of that MM4 Playlist addon. I can see how it and what was suggested for MM5 would be helpful in the scenario when you have already selected a song and want to quickly and easily assign it to multiple playlists.

But just to be clear, the MM4 Playlist in Main Window add-on is a little different in that the playlists the song is in are listed in a column next to the song in the list view, not from a song on "Send to playlist". But once you do have a song selected, and want to put it into some playlist(s), I can see how what is your the suggestion would be quite helpful and wouldn't require multiple "Send To"->Playlist clicks/mouse movements. For me personally, having the playlists listed in the list view is more valuable, but I can see how both suggestions would be very helpful depending on people's personal playlist workflows.

BTW, Not sure if you are familiar with the MM4 "Playlist in Main Window" add-on. Here is a link to it in case you are not aware of it. Sounds like you are a heavy user of playlists like me and I thought this might be quite helpful to you
https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... 9&start=60

I am not a developer, but from what I can tell Playlist in Main Window seems to set some triggers that fire as playlists are manipulated and it updates the Custom1 field with those playlist names. It might not be too difficult for a developer to port over to MM5.

"I can easily see in a single glance which (and how many) playlists each song is in."

You're speaking to my heart with that. https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... st#p490337

Thanks Barry for the suggestions. I knew about them. Unfortunately they don't help my situation which I will give a little more context below.... None-the-less, I appreciate the pointers, I have learnt a ton of neat tips and tricks from yours and other posts.

Workarounds that may be of small assistance:
You know that you can check multiple playlists in the existing MM5 Playlist is and is not criteria function?

My main playlist organization scheme is essentially groupings of 50 songs for activities where I use my music... e.g. Driving, Skiing, etc. Each time I create a new playlist, of a specific type, I increment its number.

For example, my Ski playlists are named S001, S002, S003, etc., my Driving playlists D001, D002, ....

As my library expands and I keep adding new songs and playlists, the playlists continue to increase. So it is not just a case of creating an auto playlist to check if a song is in say in 5 playlists. Every time I add a new playlist like S112, I would have to go back and update the auto playlist rule to include/exclude the newly created playlist. Essentially I need a way to determine if a song is not in any playlist. With MM4 playlist in main window and its setting of the Custom1 field to include the playlist names, I can easily determine this with an Auto playlist criteria Custom1 doesn't contain 'S' means that the song isn't in any of my Ski playlists...

If I had the "is unknown" criteria this would be sufficient. But as I mention above, if it would be possible to include in the playlist name selection criteria, the Genre like criteria such as "equal", "contains", "doesn't start with", etc.. I could see this being a really powerful tool that people could use to create all sorts of fancy playlists. You would have to put thought into your playlist naming scheme, but based on all the stuff I have seen people do in defining all types of Genres I think some people would be into that, especially DJs who need to be able to quickly find specific songs quickly.

Also if you display a track's properties (Shift + Enter) you can see which, if any, playlists a track belongs to

Yes, I use this when I am dealing with a single song. But usually I will be dealing with a list of lots of similar songs that I want to put into the new playlist I am constructing. It is just not practical to open 10+ track properties, and look and see which playlists the songs are in.

With MM4 Playlist in Main Window, I just add the Custom1 column beside each song, and I can easily see in a single glance which (and how many) playlists each song is in.
e.g.
Song Custom1
Rock The Casbah S001;S027;D069
Police On My Back
Julie's Working For the Drug Squad S044;S111;
etc.

Hence my other request for being able to display playlists in a column.
https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... p?t=102131

MikeGahrns wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 7:18 pm Is there a reason why the auto Playlists criteria rules are limited to just “Is” and “Is Not”, instead of the at least 4 choices that every other property has? "Is", "Is Not", "Is Unknown", "Is known"

Thinking about this some more, it might be interesting to a lot of people to expand the criteria selection rules even more like what you see with other multi-value fields like “Genre”....

Genre allows you to create rules like “equal”, “contains”, “starts with”, “doesn’t equal”, “doesn’t contain”, “doesn’t start with”, “is unknown”, “is known”.

Hi Mike,

Coming back to Earth and your original request.

I agree that it would be useful to select whether a track is, or is not, already in any user created playlist. And all the other options that you list from the options available for the Genre tag.

Workarounds that may be of small assistance:
You know that you can check multiple playlists in the existing MM5 Playlist is and is not criteria function?
Also if you display a track's properties (Shift + Enter) you can see which, if any, playlists a track belongs to?
You can't do this at the album level, which seems another disappointing deficiency.

MikeGahrns wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 8:48 pm What do you mean by complex playlists that spread over multiple layers? My playlists were maybe 50 auto playlists, the rest static.

By multiple layers I mean that some playlist contain Nested structure like this one.

Thanks Peke,

And I thought I had a lot of playlists with several hundred!

I don't know much about SQL, but as a datapoint I just did the test you suggested.,,,

With 22,581 tracks, and 310 playlists:

Right click song, Track->Find more from same, Playlists was instantaneous to show in the flyout all of the other playlists the song was in.

BTW. What do you mean by complex playlists that spread over multiple layers? My playlists were maybe 50 auto playlists, the rest static.

Hmmm, Interesting Idea and I have put some little test on my main library which contain 200k+ tracks and 10k+ Playlist I collected/Created over the 15+ years my library is old.

Having SQL QUERY Playlist is unknown and list tracks was run for 20m and it still had not finished. Because some complex Playlists that spread of multiple layers for other playlist takes up to a 1 min to calculate and I have Several hundred of such playlists.

To test this much simpler you can right click on Track -> Find more from same -> Playlists and see how long it take to show all results, or check playlists (Classification tab).

There is definitely space to improve and I am open suggestions to not compromise MM speed.

I think all other properties have more capabilities than just these two criteria.

For example, other classification properties like Mood, Tempo, etc. also have “Is unknown” and “Is known”

Often I will want to check for new songs I have added to MM5 that are not already in playlists, so that I can get these new songs into playing rotation. I am assuming that if there was an “Is unknown” auto-playlist criteria I could easily do this by just creating an auto playlist with “Playlist” : “Is unknown”.

I can do this with MM4 and the MM4 add-on Playlists in Main Window by creating auto playlist criteria using the Custom X fields, since you can create auto playlists rules based on custom field values and “Playlist in Main Window” uses to the custom field to store the playlists that a song is in.

Is there a reason why the auto Playlists criteria rules are limited to just “Is” and “Is Not”, instead of the at least 4 choices that every other property has? "Is", "Is Not", "Is Unknown", "Is known"

Thinking about this some more, it might be interesting to a lot of people to expand the criteria selection rules even more like what you see with other multi-value fields like “Genre”....

Genre allows you to create rules like “equal”, “contains”, “starts with”, “doesn’t equal”, “doesn’t contain”, “doesn’t start with”, “is unknown”, “is known”.

With some thought put into your playlist naming scheme you probably could make some pretty cool auto-playlist. E.g. Things like good soft songs that haven’t been played much would have an auto playlist rule like: Match Any: Rating:5 Stars, Play Count < 10, Playlist Name Contains “Mellow”, “Light”, Easy Listening”, “Romantic”

Thanks for considering expanding the auto playlist rule criteria for the songs playlist property.