e: Re: New Dynamic Playlist

[Valorie Zimmerman]

Sorry for my delay in replying, Ralf.

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Ralf Engels <ralf-engels at gmx.de> wrote:
> ...
>>
>> I personally don't want to belittle Ralph's work at all. I think the
>> new treeview for the dynamic playlists look very nice. Much respect
>> for that. And I'm sure if you understand the concepts well that it's
>> nice to use.
>> However I think we will not get anywhere with trying to use the
>> dynamic playlist Bias system in it's current form. The concepts are
>> just to hard to grasp for anyone not blessed with the gift of
>> understanding the codebase. In short we need to simplify it.
>>
>> Here is what I propose:
>> - re-introduce  smart playlists, not dynamic but just build with a
>> query that will return as every match from the collections. This
>> should suite the usecase of a subset of dynamic playlist usage
>> already.
>> - On top of the Biases add a very simple similar playlist which will
>> be based on whatever is in the queue already. Ex: similar from Last.fm
>> based on tracks; similar from echonest based on artists currently in
>> the queue; similar tracks using moobar data.
>> - A random mode/playlist category. With proportional bias towards
>> genre, rating, decade and age, no more for the sake of simplicity.
>>
>> So in short: split up dynamic playlists in favor of user friendly,
>> easy to understand playlist concepts.
>> At the same time remove APG for obvious reasons and maintenance.
>>
>> I've voiced this idea here in Randa already and it seems to be very
>> much accepted.
>>
>> Bart
>
>
> Maybe we should talk about a minimal subset that it still acceptable.
>
> My current dynamic playlist is very similar to the "rating" mode.
>
> That means I get a small random set of tracks but the rest have a rating
> of at least 2.5 or 4 stars.
> In addition I choose not to include any tracks with the genre
> "audiobook".

That sounds excellent. Could you possibly do a step-by-step of how to
get a playlist like that? I tried again, and would like to update our
Handbook page, but really am baffled.

> A dynamic playlist that does not provide at least this functionality is
> unacceptable for me. It seems to me that this was also unacceptable for
> a couple of different people or we wouldn't had the old dynamic playlist
> functionality at all.

I used to use the old dynamic playlist all the time, and just remove
tracks that didn't seem to fit. A new one is a great idea, because we
got lots of complaints about the old one, but at least it was easy to
use (for most, not all people).

> However, I am in favour of removing the APG functionality since I can't
> see any benefit over the dynamic playlist (you could just increase the
> amount of generated songs and then save your playlist)

Amen.

> We also might think of merging the dynamic playlist and the
> "conventional" playlists into one. Both have a tree-view now.

What? I'm not sure what is being proposed here.

> Anyway, I would like to hear feedback from a person who said: "I wanted
> to use the dynamic playlists but I didn't understand them".
>
> Cheers,
> Ralf

My feedback -- please send me or send the list a detailed,
step-by-step description of how to use the new dynamic playlist. I
will try out your instructions, and construct the new Handbook page
from that. I'll also write an article for the upcoming Insider, and
credit you as the author if you'll sign off on it to be sure it's
accurate and complete.

Once I understand how to use it, I'll have more useful opinion.

Valorie

-- 
http://linuxgrandma.blogspot.com
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