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Topic: New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance (Read 1632 times) previous topic - next topic
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New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance

Hi Folks.

I have the latest available version of fb2k installed.  I also am using the DarkOne v4.0 theme that I like a lot.  I have fb2k working properly, and I even installed and have a working last.fm scrobbler, that gix created, I downloaded from here:  https://github.com/gix/foo_scrobble/releases

I am new to fb2k and have some basic operation questions.  My entire music library is on my NAS.  I intentionally have some duplicates of albums mainly for archival/historical purposes.  My music collection is very old, and it has been growing over many years.  As an example, I have about three different folders for Prince's Purple Rain album release:

1.  The original 16-bit 1984 CD as APE files:  Purple Rain
2,  The remastered 192kHz album as FLAC files:  Purple Rain (192kHz)
3.  The expanded 2015 96kHz edition as FLAC files:  Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition)

What is the best way to have fb2k always choose a particular file for common songs within all three locations?  Is there a way that I may ignore specific files for all playlists?  I have my music content to the left displayed by genre.  If I left click a specific genre, all content for the genre appears in the selection list to the far right.  This will include duplicates for the reasons I noted above.  It would be handy to prevent the unwanted files from appearing when I click a genre.  This way I may click play, set the play order to random, and only hear the music I wish with no manual skipping.

I appreciate any tips you are able to share.

Thanks in advance.


Re: New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance

Reply #1 –
One thing that immediately comes to mind is me creating m3u playlist files containing only the content I want played for a specific genre.  This is an option that will require work and maintenance to keep updated.  I can certainly do this.  If there is a better method I am open to suggestions.

Re: New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance

Reply #2 –
Second question while listening to my music right now:

I am currently using the following view while I listen to music:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/nyqzrhdtacx904u/fb2k_playing_view.png

This is all music of one genre from my library played randomly.  From my screenshot, I see the track title and time but I cannot quickly see the artist or album.  The panel over to the right does show this; however, I must click Now to the lower right to have it update after each track change. 

My question is can I write a script to automate this after each track change?

Re: New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance

Reply #3 –
The default ALT+ENTER keyboard shortcut will show the currently playing file's properties that provides detailed information for the file.  I am even able to see detailed statistics from last.fm that is very nice.

Kudos to grix for a fantastic component.

Re: New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance

Reply #4 –
I have one playlist m3u file created for one genre.  It contains over 6,000 songs, so fb2k took quite awhile to load it.  Now that it is loaded, I am able to play in a random order not hearing any duplicates.  This should work for me until I find a better alternative.

My batch tag editor has a feature that exports selected files to an XML document.  I exported my entire library complete with tags of interest to XML.  I then created XQuery to select files of interest creating a new smaller XML document for my genre of interest.  Last, I created an XSLT transformation to convert the smaller genre XML document to an M3U playlist.  It worked like a charm.

Re: New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Dryst on
What is the best way to have fb2k always choose a particular file for common songs within all three locations?  Is there a way that I may ignore specific files for all playlists?
This is probably too late and so obvious that you most likely don't want to hear it, but the best way to do this is to not include the unwanted files in the media library. Keep unwanted files for example in NAS\Archive and the music you actually want in NAS\Music and only let foobar2000 see NAS\Music.

Why do you want to create M3U playlists? You only need those if you need to take a playlist out of foobar2000 and open it in some other player. Just use media library search to create autoplaylists with queries you want and they'll be always up-to-date.

Re: New To Fb2k Seeking Guidance

Reply #6 –
Thank you for your reply to my question.  Yes -- this is one way to handle this.

My entire media library is an archive of my music collection.  Space is no concern for me, because it is stored on a file server.  I would prefer not to delete anything and keep all for historical purposes.  Moving files from one location to another is a work-around, but for query purposes it makes things more difficult.  The M3U8 playlist resolves this nicely, since fb2k has no way to do it on its own.

A couple of built-in ways to handle what I am looking for include:
  1) Flagging specific files as 'ignore' for all activity
  2) Combining multiple files into a single one

I am not seeing that fb2k can currently do the above, so M3U8 playlist works perfectly for me.

Edit:  Also, to add to this-- the XQuery method is easily maintainable and readable.  It's very quick and simple to modify.  It also provides lots of query flexibility, since the XML schema contains so many useful fields for querying.