I've used iTunes to rate all my songs on a scale of 1-5 stars. I've replicated each song's rating into the Comments field of the ID3 tag, so now I can leverage that information in JEmplode to hopefully create more intelligent playlists.

Now, what I'd like to do is create a random playlist that is composed of:

- 45% "5 stars" songs
- 30% "4 stars" songs
- 25% "3 stars" songs

I found an article on the forum that explains how to equally weight artists (but I'm not quite certain if/how I can apply that technique to weighting songs by rating):

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_general&Number=74565&page=&view=&sb=&o=

Has anyone done this before or have any 1-2-3 steps I can follow? Thanks!

I think it's possible in Jemplode to create an "arbitrary" soup view based on a search criteria or a specific field. I forget exactly how to do it. But once you've done that (soup views based on the comment field), you follow those same steps but at this step...

Into each artist playlist, put the loose songs by that artist, copied from the "Artists" soup views.

...instead of using the "Artists" soup views, use the special soups you created based on your comment fields.

I think this can be done...

Is there a way to do this with weighted shuffles? A recent thread talked about which fields could be used as a definition field in a weighted shuffle. I know the "comments" field is a string an not a number, so this might not work...

Just tested it. Looks like shuffling by "comment" works as long as the numerical value is the first thing in the comment. However, that wouldn't do the 45% 5 star, 30% 4 star thing because shuffle just shuffles an existing playlist. It doesn't create new playlists.

An auto playlist generator based on various criteria would be a nice feature though. Maybe in empeg version 3.00.

An auto playlist generator based on various criteria would be a nice feature though.

I thought that was the point of creating custom soups in Jemplode...

You're right. Soups in jEmplode pretty much accomplish this, but they require you to hook the player up to a pc to generate. I was thinking of that kind of functionality, but built into the Empeg player software.

Just tested it. Looks like shuffling by "comment" works as long as the numerical value is the first thing in the comment. However, that wouldn't do the 45% 5 star, 30% 4 star thing because shuffle just shuffles an existing playlist. It doesn't create new playlists.

So what you do is, you set up a custom shuffle that has a small random element but favours least-recently-played, highly-rated songs. If you get the coefficients right, you should just be able to get into the car each day, play all with shuffle turned on, and you'll get the effect of a different playlist each day that's mostly 5-star songs, a few 4-star, the rest turning up just at random, and so on.

Custom shuffle modes, in some sense, are auto playlist generators.

Peter

Hmm, this is all very cool. The benefit of using custom shuffles over custom weighted playlists is the ability to “unshuffle”. I’d loose the ability to evenly weight Rush with all of the other artists on the empeg (I just couldn’t rate their songs low simply to keep them from dominating), but now that I’ve finally acquired more music that may not be the problem it once was.

Looks like I may have a weekend of experimentation before me.

I’d loose the ability to evenly weight Rush with all of the other artists on the empeg (I just couldn’t rate their songs low simply to keep them from dominating),

Why not? A lot of their songs really suck. And this is coming from a Rush fan.

Think of it this way: Rate the Rush tunes against other rush tunes, not against your entire collection. In other words, the 5's would be YYZ, Strangiato, Limelight, Freewill, etc., and then down from there. That way, you get lower overall ratings for the tunes compared to your current collection so it doesn't overpower, but you're still consistent within the Rush collection for when you shuffle just "Rush" by itself.

Why not? A lot of their songs really suck.

Heretic!

/me envisions 300+ post religious debate . . .

Ok actually not all Rush songs deserve a 4 or 5, but these wouldn’t be a lot. As a matter of fact, I can think of about 3 songs between 2112 and TFE that I wouldn’t want to hear on a regular basis. Since I can’t choose between them, I prefer let the almighty randomizer decide.

/me envisions 300+ post religious debate . . .

I'm really tempted to actually start this by listing the Rush tracks I could do without. Because I love talking about Rush. But at the moment, I'm really busy with work and as much as I'd enjoy such a discussion, I don't have time to devote any real attention to it.

Back on topic: I'd love to see the format for your "ranking" system (how it appears in the comments field) and the details of config.ini entry for the custom shuffle.

I'd love to see the format for your "ranking" system (how it appears in the comments field) and the details of config.ini entry for the custom shuffle.

I'd like to see this too, anonymoose. All OT discussions aside, the ability to simply randomize my "albums" would more than outweigh the down sides, I think.

OK, as Peter mentioned, you can sort of approximate creating a new playlist. ProtonVehiCROSS, here's a shuffle you may want to try.

shuffle0=By rating and least played,-play_last=2,comment=150000,random=5

This is based on a 1000 track playlist with an even distribution of 1-5 star ratings. You may want to play around with the numbers because it may be way off for your playlists. Try increasing the multipliers in the following way: (try changing comment multiplier first)
play_last - in steps of 1
comment - in steps of about 50000 to 100000
random - in steps of 1 to 5

Keep in mind that because of the way custom shuffles work, you'll get the following effect:
5 star songs for a while, then some 5 and 4 mixed, then some 5, 4, and 3 mixed, then some 5,4,3,2 mixed, etc. At the point you start seeing too many 2 star rated songs, you should re-shuffle. If you shuffle a playlist composed of only 5, 4, and 3 star rated songs, you should get better results.

Here's another one, but without giving any weight to least/most recently played songs.
shuffle0=By rating,comment=5000,random=1
Increase comment in steps of 500 to 1000, random in steps of 1 to 5

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As far as doing an album shuffle...
Since it's possible for 3rd party apps to add custom fields to tracks, you could create a field like "x-album" and have it be the same value for all tracks in an album. (Different value for different albums.)

Then you could do shuffle0=By Album and track order,x-album=100,-tracknr=1 to get a playlist of albums. Though not randomized.

Or shuffle0=By Album - Tracks randomized,x-album=32768,random=1 to get a playlist of albums with the tracks in each album randomized.

Unfortunately, unless you can get a random variable that can be seeded by, say, current time plus the value of x-album, a random album shuffle just doesn't appear doable via custom shuffles.



Also, just wanted to mention that I'm working on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that can use tracks copied from Emplode to list and graph out how the various shuffles would look like. If anyone is interested, I'll make it available when I'm done.

These are really cool! Thanks!

These are really cool! Thanks!

You're welcome. I just hope that all these shuffle examples actually do what I think they do.