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Topic: Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off (Read 2999 times) previous topic - next topic
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Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Hi everyone,

As a quite experienced foobar user, I love getting the most out of my favorite music player. Thus, I have a lot of autoplaylists. Some are for listening purposes (eg. "%genre% IS Folk", "%rating% GREATER 3"...), some are for maintenance purposes (e.g. "%replaygain_album_gain% MISSING"), etc.
I believe that having dozens of autoplaylists tends to really slow down my foobar, especially when handling nearly 50.000 titles over a local Ethernet network. The slightest tag modification via the properties window results in several seconds of foobar hanging before being applied. Adding an album to the library results in about 10 seconds of foobar hanging (after the album has been copied to the library, and before the autoplaylists get updated). Etc.

Today, I have realized that most of my autoplaylists could be turned off most of the time on an individual basis, only to be turned on when really needed. I believe this should result in a much more reactive foobar.

Could this feature be implemented within foobar, so that it could be used not only by the standard Playlist Manager, but also by 3rd party components such as Playlist Organizer ?

Let me know if this is a good idea or not. Thanks in advance.

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #1
For a current alternative, you could offload /convert the seldom used autoplaylists to saved Facets Filters.

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #2
A nice solution to store redundant autoplaylists is using the WSH-mod Autoplaylist -script you can find [a href='index.php?act=findpost&pid=793678']here[/a]. My only problem was that the inputbox has a 255 char limit, but you can find workaround in the posts above. It reduced my playlist folder from 1gig+ to 200MB and from 350+ lists to 75 or so. Basicly you save your queries wich can be easily recalled.

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #3
Thanks for your replies ! Both could work, but IMHO none would be as user-friendly as my suggestion.
For example, I use Playlist Organizer. When I right-click on a playlist/autoplaylist, I have a context menu with options : Activate, Rename, Remove...
I could easily imagine one more option : "Turn on" or "Turn off" depending on the context of course.
Can this qualify as a feature request ?

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #4
heh, my autoplaylists make foobar take 2 minutes to be responsive at startup.


Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #6
Hi grimes. I don't know about Mymasters' problem, but I suppose it can depend on (1) the size of his music library (e.g. I have almost 50.000 titles), and (2) the location of his music library (e.g. mine is stored on a secure server, with Ethernet access, which makes it slower than if it was stored locally). Not to mention the speed of his own PC (maybe he has some old 300 MHz CPU, who knows).

Anyway, as a member of the Dev group, I suppose you are knowledgeable on this topic's matter. So, what are your thoughts about my own suggestion ? Thanks.

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #7
I agree with the original post. This is a big problem if you run on older hardware. I have a secondary PC that I use just for playing music on my main stereo and I had to pretty much limit myself to a half dozen autoplaylists, otherwise foobar would max out my cpu usage.

On my main PC where I use several playlists (breaking tracks down by year/rating/playcount, maintenance playlists etc.) foobar is consistently at 8-10% cpu usage. Eliminating the autoplaylists cuts that right down.

I would suggest having 3 options: 1) The current implementation; 2) Update on startup; 3) Manually update.



 

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #8
A bit offtopic but i also agree with some parts of the performance-issue,
I can confirm that using a Network Attached Storage (in most cases some kind of Samba) can give foobar a hard time. Partly because NAS-users tend to collect gigantic music-libraries.
The biggest problem with my Media Library has been relocating folders on the NAS. Inside foobar (using file-operations) or outside doesn't matter. It makes foobar hang for certain.
I think, keepng your library 'clean' helps. Don't add folders containing more than 0.5TB. If your collection is bigger you can split it up in some subfolders. Add them one by one. Inbetween exporting it (Menu>Library>Playback Statistics>Export..., select current library content only) And then reimporting it before adding the next folder.  If i add really big folders i even restart foobar and let it completly initialise my library inbetween export and imports. (If you believe littlle gnomes maintain your data you can try my 'clean' method  )

I use very complicated and long queries for my autoplaylists, and i have a lot of them lined-up. But in my expierience it hasn't much to do with CPU-power. I have tested this from a simple duocore 1gigRAM notebook up to my hexacore 12gigRAM beast. All tend to take as much time to startup, the differences are too small to put it on CPU-power. Note that foobar still has an 32bit architecture, it cannot use all of the power available nowadays.

(I have no real knowledge about this stuff, but just wanted to give my input on this as a hardcore user)

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #9
So... there have been some interesting comments, but we still haven't received an official answer to the first question :

Could this feature be implemented within foobar, so that it could be used not only by the standard Playlist Manager, but also by 3rd party components such as Playlist Organizer ?

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #10
What only makes sense in my eyes is mod-ulars advice to use marc2003s wsh-script. The basic idea is: before making autoplaylists more complex it is better to store query patterns outside from playlist view and call them only when you need.

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #11
That looks interesting. Unfortunately WSH is one of the things I'm really not familiar with. I have installed WSH Panel Mod, but I'm not really aware of what it really can do or not. I know there are lots of scripts, I know there's a 60+ topic for them, but I really miss an index of some sort that could help me understand about all the available scripts without having to go through the 60+ pages of the topic.

Besides, you talk about some marc2003's script, and I'd love to read something about it, but I don't know what it does, or even its name. I've followed the above link ( http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....&pid=793678 ), but I still don't understand.

Final words : I guess some help about WSH scripts would be welcome. Thank you.

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #12
Is anybody listening ?...

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #13
download this and check the readme carefully. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/samples.zip

the script is named autoplaylists.txt

it looks like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22801321/autoplaylist%20example.png

on the right you can see i have just 3 playlist tabs. on the left is my script which allows you to add/edit as many autoplaylists as you like and it saves them for future use.

-clicking green + button lets you add a new one where you select a name, the query, the sort pattern (optional) and whether to force sort it
-click the text to make the playlist active.
-when you hover your mouse, you'll see buttons to edit/delete

Feature request : Toggle autoplaylists on/off

Reply #14
Thanks a lot marc, I sure will take a close look. Cheers !