I have just figured out how to use the "Ignore as Child" option. I'm going to cross-post this in the tips and tricks document in the FAQ. Now that I'm using it, I can see how terribly useful it can be.

Here is my situation:

I have a few Nine Inch Nails albums on my player. I am not a big fan of NIN other than my immense respect for Trent as a texturalist and producer. My problem isn't with Trent's skill as a musician, it's just the subject matter. I can take angst in sugar-coated doses, such as is the case with Tori Amos' songs, or in most modern Folk music. But I just can't listen to Trent's brand of angst on a regular basis. (Can you imagine if Trent and Tori did an album together? It'd be one big black hole of angst out of which nothing could escape.)

So why do I have any NIN at all on my player? Two reasons:

1) I have a couple of friends who just lurve NIN and request it on a regular basis.

2) NIN is the perfect background music for LAN parties. I even have a special "(LAN Party)" playlist, populated by NIN, Prodigy, Crystal Method, etc., which I play at such gatherings. It's always a hit. Great music to frag to, and I'm too busy aiming to pay attention to the lyrics anyway.

So, my goal is as follows: To leave NIN out of my regular "down-down-down" (play everything) shuffle, but not out of my "(LAN party)" playlist, and not out of my main menu tree.

The "Ignore as Child" option is the solution. What this means is that when you select a high-level tree branch to play (even the top "everything" level), anything below that level tagged with "Ignore as Child" won't be added to the resulting playlist.

So here's what I do: I go into Emplode and tag my "Nine Inch Nails" playlist with "Ignore as Child". But I leave the individual NIN albums, which are subtrees of the "Nine Inch Nails" playlist, "normal", with that box unchecked. Then I copy all of the individual NIN albums into the "(LAN Party)" playlist. (Note: I also have to tag the "(LAN Party)" playlist with "Ignore as Child"; I forgot to do this the first time and couldn't understand why it wasn't working.)

Now it works! When I shuffle the whole player (down down down), NIN doesn't play. But when I specifically select the "Nine Inch Nails" playlist or the "(LAN Party)" playlist, they play fine.

As was mentioned elsewhere on the BBS, this has other useful applications, such as with audiobooks or IASCA test tones. You could create a playlist of "Books" or "Test Tones", tag those as "Ignore as Child" and then they won't appear in a down-down-down shuffle.

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Tony Fabris

Cool, always wondered what it did, had an idea but haven't messed w/it yet. Does anyone know if that's it's only function or are there other uses?

#695-Mk2/8 colors-12Gig/TUNER- awaits v2.x & Voice Recog.

Does anyone know if that's it's only function or are there other uses?

Well, that's the only thing it does, i.e., when building a list of songs from a parent tree, it ignores that particular node. But I'm sure we could come up with more situations where we'd want to use the feature. Anyone?

Funny thing is, I've been thinking about doing this for a long time and just never got around to it until today. I wish I'd tried it sooner.

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Tony Fabris

OK I wasn't sure if that was it's intended purpose or there was another.
So I would have to have NIN under another main playlist in order for this to work. If NIN was the top of the tree it will play them. All of my playlist are group names at top of tree, then albums, then singles for each album. Then in another section there are my Top 40, New, Rock, Heavy Metal, etc. If I don't want for some reason a song or album under one of these to play I mark as 'Ignore as Child'?

#695-Mk2/8 colors-12Gig/TUNER- awaits v2.x & Voice Recog.

So I would have to have NIN under another main playlist in order for this to work.

No, I have my "Nine Inch Nails" right off the main menu and it works.

Remember that the "Top" of the tree is the root playlist. By default, this root playlist is named "Empeg Car" or something like that, but you can rename it to whatever you want. So every single playlist you add is already a child, even if you add it at the highest possible level.

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Tony Fabris

A simpler way of saying this, is "Playlists with the 'Ignore as Child' box checked won't play unless you specifically play them."

All of my AudioBooks are in this category.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Um, yeah. What he said.

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Tony Fabris

Well that's just great I understood what he said finally until you said that, now I'm all screwed up.

#695-Mk2/8 colors-12Gig/TUNER- awaits v2.x & Voice Recog.

All of my AudioBooks are in this category.

/me runs out and gets rid of the "Music" and "Non Music" root level playlists.

One thing I've found with the options attribute (including ignore-as-child, randomise, etc) is that subsequently-added children gain the options - this is usually not what I want, particularly when doing as Tony described. Perhaps this is an emptool-only feature - can someone report whether emplode and/or Jemplode do the same?

The way this bit me is that each time I upload, I create a playlist /new/{date}, and upload into it (this is so that I can do listening tests, tag checking, etc, and so that I can populate my /singles/{year}/ and /moods/*/ playlists without being distracted by already-processed tracks). I'd set /new/ to be ignore-as-child; this meant that everything I added was ignored...

Note also that each item has only one set of options - if you want to ignore certain items only as children of certain playlists, you may need to interpose a dummy parent to do so. (Or perhaps hard-link the *0 file and copy the *1 file to a new FID on the player, modify the *1, and rebuild the database. But I haven't tried that, though I'm considering it for my /covers/*/ playlist, where Now + Next looks a bit silly with all titles the same...).

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Toby Speight - 040103385

Note also that each item has only one set of options - if you want to ignore certain items only as children of certain playlists, you may need to interpose a dummy parent to do so. (Or perhaps hard-link the *0 file and copy the *1 file to a new FID on the player, modify the *1, and rebuild the database. But I haven't tried that, though I'm considering it for my /covers/*/ playlist, where Now + Next looks a bit silly with all titles the same...).

This reminds me of my very old wishlist item: possibility of having more than
one *1 file per *0 file, so to speak (exactly for your reason: I also wanted to have some of my tunes have different tags in different lists - your example with covers is very good). But, I guess this would not work in the current sheme of FID things...

Your idea with hardlinks is worth exploring. I wonder what will emplode say to that

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

The way this bit me is that each time I upload, I create a playlist /new/{date}, and upload into it (this is so that I can do listening tests, tag checking, etc, and so that I can populate my /singles/{year}/ and /moods/*/ playlists without being distracted by already-processed tracks). I'd set /new/ to be ignore-as-child; this meant that everything I added was ignored...

Yes. When you play the root playlist, it ignores /new (because /new is marked ignore-as-child) but recurses into the other children of the root.

If that's not what you're saying -- if you're saying that children of /new get ignored when you play /new -- then that does sound like a bug.

Peter

In reply to:

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Yes. When you play the root playlist, it ignores /new (because /new is marked ignore-as-child) but recurses into the other children of the root.

If that's not what you're saying -- if you're saying that children of /new get ignored when you play /new -- then that does sound like a bug.

---

The latter. The new children[1] get ignored when I play /new/ (because emptool copied the options=20 from /new/ when creating the child playlist). Not only that, but they don't play when they are copied to /artists/ (because copying doesn't change the options). Existing playlists were untouched, as you'd expect.

I managed to fix things (grep is our friend), but a large number of new playlists had become infected with options I didn't want.

[Note 1]

I mean "the newly-added children" rather than "the children of /new/". Perhaps I chose a poor example?

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Toby Speight - 040103385

i have just figured out how to use the "Ignore as Child" option

I don't what to bother you, but this feature was allready describe with the relase of version 1.03 in this thread

Daniel
Mk1 10Gb+30Gb #00107 Amber