Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ? (Read 7058 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Hi all,

i have read a big thread about the difference between foobar2000 and other players concerning the so called "queue".
There are differences in the interpretations of this word.
My intention here is not to go into a theoretical and scholar discussion.

My post here is motivated by the desire to find a solution to my need and use of foobar, that is good for me, not for everybody. And maybe it will help others too.

In order to avoid confusion, I make clear that I will be using the word queue as it is meant in foobar. That is, a separate list of tracks that can be played in between playing another playlist.
For example I'm playing my Indian Music playlist but I wanna have a break and I add some rock tracks to the queue. The queue is being played and at the end of it, the Indian Music playlist continues playing. This queue has a limited size. It can contain a maximum of 64 tracks, if I'm correct. Also this queue can be edited, and its content viewed, via the Queue Contents Editor component (foo_queuecontents). A track can be super easily added to the queue by right clicking ont the track and selecting ''Add to playback queue". just 2 clicks. It can also be dragged-and-dropped there.
In the queue, when a track is finished, it is being removed from the queue, and the next track starts (which has now become the first one).

My desire is to have a list of tracks that I wanna play on the fly, let's say at a party. I call it "Wanna Play". Basically, at the beginnning of the party i start playing it and throughout the party i keep adding tracks there.

The characteristics of this list should be that
  • the tracks remain in that list after being played (so a guest or me can immediately see what were the previous tracks, or what is gonna play after three tracks, for example.
  • the list can be edited super easily. Especially for adding a track to it. 2 clicks maximum. For example, being in SimPlaylist, right clicking a track and selecting "Add to 'Wanna Play' list ".
  • the list should indicate which track is being played.
  • should be of unlimited size.
  • should keep the focus.

Could you please help me achieving that ?

On a very long thread about queues, foo_queuecontents and so on, someone said (not to me) something like "well what you need is actually a playlist! and that is what foobar is designed for!"

So this is what I tried. I created a "Wanna Play" playlist.

Here is the result I have so far, which for me is not satisfying and I will tell you precisely why.



Description: On the left side I have Facets (foo_facets), where I filter my large music collection. Then the results are shown in the middle, in SimPlaylist (foo_simplaylist). Finnaly, on the right bottom side I have tabs with the playlists. As you can see, there is my "Wanna Play" playlist there.
As you can see i have also included the Queue playlist there for my tests.
This queue doesn't fill the chacteristics above.


I'm not satisfied at present, because to add a track there, I have to right click on it in SimPlaylist, select Utilities, select Send to playlist... then a little window opens, then i have to select the playlist from a drop down list box. 5 steps is too much for me.
I noticed i can drag and drop the track to the playlist. I admit this is better but not super yet because for some reason the focus keeps leaving my playlist.
When i browse through Facets and SimPlaylist, the tabs on the right, with the playlists, are updated. The Library selection playlist appears and gets the focus. Also the Library selection (playing) playlist appears.
Therefore my Wanna Play playlist looses the focus. I don't want that. This is supposed to be my current playlist.
Loosing the focus means i can't drag and drop a track there easily. I have to drag it over the name of the tab, then it opens and then i can drop it.
Also, even if that's not very complicated I still wanna be able to right click and do that easily, and not having to go into a whole 5 steps procedure. It's the most common thing i'm doing with the program. Adding tracks on the fly to be played. So it needs to be easy. And not having other playlists getting the focus just because i'm browsing mly library.

Is this possible with foobar ? (please keep in mind the 5 characteristics above).

I tried with a playlist but i didn't manage. Could you please help me ? (With a playlist or otherwise)













How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #1 –
maybe what you need is just a simple button that add Simplaylist selection to "Wanna Play" playlist, this can be achieved with a simple WSH jscript. May give it a try tomorrow if i've time and will share it here if it do the job.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Falstaff on
maybe what you need is just a simple button that add Simplaylist selection to "Wanna Play" playlist, this can be achieved with a simple WSH jscript. May give it a try tomorrow if i've time and will share it here if it do the job.


thanks a lot!
I'm interested in seeing the script as i've some skills in programming. none in windows scripts though.


I would also like that the two playlists "Library selection" and "Library selection (playing)" stop getting the focus all the time while i'm simply browsing my library.
The current playlist (Wanna Play) is my "current" so i want it to keep the focus.

thanks again. i'm looking forward to see how you do that.
and maybe i'll be able to match the 5 characteristics of my dreamed "Wanna Play" list.

cheers


How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #3 –
I use foo_utils to do something similar. After you install, set up a keyboard shortcut for 'Add to Wanna Play.' The selected song will be added to the Wanna Play playlist without losing focus.
That's so plausible, I can't believe it.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #4 –
@adrien.ha: no time today, will try tomorrow...

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #5 –
Your "Wanna Play" playlist loses focus because the default settings in Facets send items selected in Facets to the "Playlist selection" playlist, which causes that playlist to be become the active playlist.

Another factor is that Playlist Renderers in foobar almost without exception display the active playlist. This makes having more than one Playlist Renderer in your layout largely pointless.

You're current layout and settings aren't conducive to what you're trying to achieve, turning something simple into a convoluted process.

My suggestions for remedying your situation:

1. Remove the playlist in the lower right corner of your layout. It's redundant.

2. Add "Playlist Tabs" to your layout above SimPlaylist.

3. Add additional panes to Facets and use these to view and add items to the playlist instead of attempting to use SimPlaylist as some kind of quasi-library viewer. You currently have ALBUM ARTIST in your first pane so ALBUM in a second pane and TRACK in a third pane would be a good start.

4. Go to File > Preferences> Media Library > Facets and make the following settings in the "Library" section (using these settings will prevent you or others from accidentally overwriting your current playlist with Facets):
a) Selection action: None
b) Double-click action: Add to current playlist
c) Middle-click action: Add to current playlist

Now to add items to your "Wanna Play" playlist (or any playlist) you simply select its tab and double-click items in Facets (or select items and press the Enter key) to add them.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: DustMagnet on
I use foo_utils to do something similar. After you install, set up a keyboard shortcut for 'Add to Wanna Play.' The selected song will be added to the Wanna Play playlist without losing focus.


Thank you DustMagnet, indeed that's fatser now. No popup window opens witht the playlists. I can do it directly from the contextual menu. It's still kind of many steps though:
right click > Legacy commands (unsorted) > Add to playlist > select it.

Anyway thanks it helps!

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: BenB on
Your "Wanna Play" playlist loses focus because the default settings in Facets send items selected in Facets to the "Playlist selection" playlist, which causes that playlist to be become the active playlist.

Another factor is that Playlist Renderers in foobar almost without exception display the active playlist. This makes having more than one Playlist Renderer in your layout largely pointless.

You're current layout and settings aren't conducive to what you're trying to achieve, turning something simple into a convoluted process.

My suggestions for remedying your situation:

1. Remove the playlist in the lower right corner of your layout. It's redundant.

2. Add "Playlist Tabs" to your layout above SimPlaylist.

3. Add additional panes to Facets and use these to view and add items to the playlist instead of attempting to use SimPlaylist as some kind of quasi-library viewer. You currently have ALBUM ARTIST in your first pane so ALBUM in a second pane and TRACK in a third pane would be a good start.

4. Go to File > Preferences> Media Library > Facets and make the following settings in the "Library" section (using these settings will prevent you or others from accidentally overwriting your current playlist with Facets):
a) Selection action: None
b) Double-click action: Add to current playlist
c) Middle-click action: Add to current playlist

Now to add items to your "Wanna Play" playlist (or any playlist) you simply select its tab and double-click items in Facets (or select items and press the Enter key) to add them.


Thank you BenB your exlanations really help me see things more clearly concerning this issue. I see now that i was using two playlist renderers, of course they were always switching focus! as threy are linked to the same thing! I even didn't know that they were two renderers. I was seeing and using, as you said, SimPlaylist as a sort of Library browser.
But it was perfect for that and so beautiful!
I love browsing the library and having the album covers and just next to them the tracks! That's what we do with normal CD's!
I just love this! :

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: adrien.ha on
Another problem with Facets is that, as you can see in the above picture, I have selected AniDifranco as an Artist on the first pane, then on the second, middle pane, it shows the covers and on the third, right pane, it shows the tracks.
This prevents me from seeing which tracks are from which album. Of course if i click on a cover, only its tracks will be shown, but that's not ergonomical when i simply want to visually browse through the albums.


Actually, Facets can do that in the third pane. You just need to enable Multiple columns and pick what you want. Order of columns can be juggled, but you can see what I did here to get this layout. 'Display' in the third pane of this screenshot was set to 'Album art (right labels)'. It still doesn't address your main problem, but thought you might be interested in this nonetheless.


How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: adrien.ha on
It's still kind of many steps though:
right click > Legacy commands (unsorted) > Add to playlist > select it.


Bind this action to a shortcut. For example  I use middle mouse click to do something similar.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: MachineHead on
Quote from: adrien.ha on
Another problem with Facets is that, as you can see in the above picture, I have selected AniDifranco as an Artist on the first pane, then on the second, middle pane, it shows the covers and on the third, right pane, it shows the tracks.
This prevents me from seeing which tracks are from which album. Of course if i click on a cover, only its tracks will be shown, but that's not ergonomical when i simply want to visually browse through the albums.


Actually, Facets can do that in the third pane. You just need to enable Multiple columns and pick what you want. Order of columns can be juggled, but you can see what I did here to get this layout. 'Display' in the third pane of this screenshot was set to 'Album art (right labels)'. It still doesn't address your main problem, but thought you might be interested in this nonetheless.





Thanks MachineHead, your example doesn't show Facets being able to do that. What you show is the album cover being repeated for zeveryt rack of the album. Doesn't make sense. It's going on the right direction though. It's hard to me to accept that foobar can't have a library browser showing covers and tracks next to them (like SimPlaylist does for playlists).


How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #11 –
You need to wrap your brain around the fact that foobar was designed to be different and to stop trying to make it look and function like other media players.

That said, EsPlaylist is probably the closest you'll come to what you want. It has a library viewer mode and a playlist renderer mode. Most who use it have two in their layout with one set to each mode. Once installed, some of its settings are found in Preferences under Tools but most are found in its context menu.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: BenB on
You need to wrap your brain around the fact that foobar was designed to be different and to stop trying to make it look and function like other media players.

That said, EsPlaylist is probably the closest you'll come to what you want. It has a library viewer mode and a playlist renderer mode. Most who use it have two in their layout with one set to each mode. Once installed, some of its settings are found in Preferences under Tools but most are found in its context menu.


Thank you BenB. Since this "view" is already proposed by foobar for playlists -with SimPlaylist-, I think it isn't totally out of scope to ask for something like that as a view for library browsers.
Moreover, foobar is designed to be different than other players as per its architectural model. That is, being organized around playlists.
My questions and wishes don't oppose that. They are dealing with the "view", the interface. And how it interacts with back model.

In the past, Facets didn't exist. Yet foobar was foobar. Now it exists and foobar is still foobar. With a nice library browser.
Don't worry, displaying track titles next to a cover won't kill foobar.
Let's be constructive on foobar here which I love!

Thank you for EsPlaylist. I'll try it again. Since it's not anymore in the components list on foobar.org I thought it was discontinued.
Why are some components on that page and others not ?
Are there other pages i'm not aware of ?

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: jazzthieve on
Quote from: adrien.ha on
It's still kind of many steps though:
right click > Legacy commands (unsorted) > Add to playlist > select it.


Bind this action to a shortcut. For example  I use middle mouse click to do something similar.


Thanks jassthieve, I'll look into that. Fewer clicks are always welcome

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #14 –
move your mouse over the album facets pane. now hold ctrl and use the mouse wheel to make the image much larger. that gives pretty much what you want.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: marc2003 on
move your mouse over the album facets pane. now hold ctrl and use the mouse wheel to make the image much larger. that gives pretty much what you want.


Thank you marc2003. "Pretty much" what i want is quite subjective here.
I see what you mean, but that solution will give inconsistent results. The thing is to show the tracks next to their album cover in a way that we know to which album they belong to.
The way you propose it, the albums pane and the tracks pane won't scroll together. Also, even if they were scrolling together, there is an other issue: some albums have like 6 tracks, and others 20, so the tracks on the tracks pane won't be opposite their album cover, because the size of the covers defined and the size of 6 or 20 tracks is undefined.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: marc2003 on
move your mouse over the album facets pane. now hold ctrl and use the mouse wheel to make the image much larger. that gives pretty much what you want.


Nope. What he's after is almost possible with SimPlaylist but it's missing a few key context entries. It's not a maintained component so no surprise there.

He could instead use someone's WSH playlist and get the two-click thing in the process (menu location is weird but there). Problem is it's not going to look exactly like SimPlaylist (a good thing IMO) and takes a little getting used to. Been testing it with Facets and it does exactly what he wants. And...that's as far as I'm willing to go with this now. He already said my suggestion was wrong with Facets. It wasn't. It showed which tracks were from which album. However, Facets doesn't group shit like a playlist renderer because, surprise, it's not a playlist renderer.

As mentioned above, there are other ways but the user has to accept the limitations of them.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: MachineHead on
Quote from: marc2003 on
move your mouse over the album facets pane. now hold ctrl and use the mouse wheel to make the image much larger. that gives pretty much what you want.


Nope. What he's after is almost possible with SimPlaylist but it's missing a few key context entries. It's not a maintained component so no surprise there.

He could instead use someone's WSH playlist and get the two-click thing in the process (menu location is weird but there). Problem is it's not going to look exactly like SimPlaylist (a good thing IMO) and takes a little getting used to. Been testing it with Facets and it does exactly what he wants. And...that's as far as I'm willing to go with this now. He already said my suggestion was wrong with Facets. It wasn't. It showed which tracks were from which album. However, Facets doesn't group shit like a playlist renderer because, surprise, it's not a playlist renderer.

As mentioned above, there are other ways but the user has to accept the limitations of them.


Thank you MachineHead for your input, i'm grateful for your input and for your previous one, too. I thanked you for it. I wanted to show the tracks of an album next to the cover and your proposition wasn't doing that. It was repeating the album cover for each track. So yes it was wrong, in that respect only. I even didn't say that, as you state. Actually I said it was going in the right direction.

But if your proposition is not what i asked for, then what shoudl I say? "Oh this is it!"  ?

Come on I would prefer you tell me: well that is not possible but here is something that is close to it. Rather than say that it is possible, and then show something different.

Also about how a library browser should or should not look and how a playlist renderer should or should not look, you seem to be pretty closed about it. We're talking about looks here.
I mean if you're accepting something as Facets, showing covers and so on, i don't see why suddenly another presentation is sooo crazy. Why is Facets acceptable and not my proposal ? This is personnal.

regards..


...

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #18 –
Plan B

The second image is about as good as it gets.

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: MachineHead on
Plan B

The second image is about as good as it gets.


Hi MachineHead, thank you again for your help. 
  • On the second image, do we have to click on each album to see its content ?
    Also, what happens in tha same image (album browser) if you don't type anything in the search box ?

    I think I will try EsPlaylist again.
  • Do you or anybody else know why it isn't listed on www.foobar2000.org/components anymore ?
    I know it's not maintained anymore, but why is it removed? Isn't working or what ?
  • On a previous post you advised using someone's WSH playlist. I'm interested in that. What is it exactly ? Is it a script that someone develops in order to have his own contextual menu ?
    Any help on that would be greatly appreciated, some link or something so i can research it on my own deeper.
  • Also, a general question, around the same subject. Are components open source ? I mean maybe it would be possible for me or someone else to take the source of SimPlaylist, since this is the presentation I like, and foobar is all about customization, and transform it into a library browser.


Thanks again for your help until here. I'm aware i'm straight about things it's just that i know what i want and go for it because i think it's not crazy. Also it seems my desire of a library browser showing an album cover and its tracks next to it isn't that much out of foobar's scope after all, since EsPlaylist was doing that.

Again, this is not going against keeping playlists at the center of foobar. I can imagine a special "WannaPlay" playlist, or whatever name, that would be of a particular type, see my first post for its characteristics,  allowing what many users seem to want.

Adding such a feature wouldn't change anything for all the users who don't want to use it. Foobar would still be centered around playlists, and if, if... someone wants, he would just use that feature. No obligation for anybody. For me foobar is a software that can play so many file formats, that is fast, that is lightweight, that is centered around playlists, that is super customizable. All of that would still be.
Nobody killed. No blood. Nothing.
 

How to easily add tracks to a "Wanna play these" playlist ?

Reply #20 –
Hi.
My problem is similar so I decied to write here.
Is there any plugin or something to add "Repeat queue" in the Playback/Order ?
Anyway this might be also a suggestion to add "Repeat queue" permanently...