I did. Just added added the missing 's' myself and figured others did the same; didn't feel like whining about it at the time..

foo_playcount 1.7.8 *TEST VERSION* (May 18 2005)

1) Changed PLAY_STAMP so that it writes each stamp to the same field seperated by a ";" character.

@ above, no worries, was just a little concerned + I've had a bad day, so I may have come off a little harsh, sorry.

Edit: Have removed PLAY_STAMP from the available stable 1.7.6 version so that users who get it from the plugins site will get only the stable features.

Am I the only one here who thinks that the this multitude of personal play-data such as PLAY_STAMP, LAST_PLAYED, FIRST_PLAYED, PLAY_COUNTER, ratings etc really doesn't belong in tags?

And adding user info to tags? No thanks. This PLAY_STAMP field adding a line every time a song is played is especially of concern to me (have I understood this correctly?). Seems like tags will end up bloated ala lyrics tags, band history etc. Some people may like this sort of info, but not many IMO.

This sort of data should really be stored in a separate database IMHO.

Edit: spelling

You're not the only person who thinks this, but foobar cannot do this natively. Personally, I use all the tags, but some people might prefer to only use the PLAY_COUNTER tag. All the tags are optional. You can even turn all the tags off, and then the plugin would do nothing.

Edit: About the PLAY_STAMP tag. Yes it does have the ability too become bloated, but I did not add in this feature for the majority. This feature is disabled by default, so as not to "bloat" peoples tags unnecessarily. A select few people will hopefully find this feature interesting/useful and will make use of it. Those who don't find it useful or don't care need not give it a second thought.

What about "blck tag update operation" ?

People are aware of this option, but it blocks all tag updates. If you ever wanted to edit the tags, eg. to correct a spelling mistake, it wouldn't be written to the file. As has been mentioned before, the only reasonable solution is the ability to specify database only tags.

That's why I've switched to kode54 foo_playcount version and foo_quicktag_sql. Both uses sqlite DB, and really easy to use, at least my files doesn't change everytime I rate or play them. The only thing I miss it's the new features that kl33per has implemented in the new 'normal' version of foo_playcount.

Will someone please present to me the strongest case they can make against keeping things like this stored within the files themselves?

This isn't a challenge, there's just a strong purist tendency in me that nags me every once in a while when I hear things like this. I love the ability to have this play data, and that wins out over my desire for tidiness right now, but if someone can convince me why this is bad I'd love to hear it...

For me it's the fact that I back all my mp3's up every day using a DOS command that only copies modified files acorss from d:\ to f:\

Therefore, if I write all play count data to the file instead of the database only, I have to copy across a file whenever it's played as it has a tag that's been modified

Hope that made sense :S

Do you folks realize that db-only tags are among the most-wanted features for fb2k, and that *if* the next fb2k-version implements this, you will have 3 storage-methods for metadata: tags, fb2k's db, sql?

I dont want to discourage the sql-folks here - i find it admirable, that you do something about the problem instead of waiting. But i'm a bit affraid of the scenario which would happen when fb2k itself implements the "proper"-solution.

- Lyx

AFAIK, there's no public knowdlegde that fb2k 0.9 will implement db-only tags. If someone knows something more I'll glad to hear it

Anyway, I don't see the problem if this was implemented, I guess you could always tag most of db-only tags (sql) back to the file and retag into fb2k DB.

As for what I'm concerned, this is sub-optimal because I quite often play 60+ minutes Vorbis files, which (AFAIK) Foobar tags at the begining, hence several second gaps with intense hard disk actvity between those tracks. It's already been discussed so let's just hope that tag padding support for ogg vorbis isn't at the very end of Peter's priority list for future versions

I thought Vorbis was gapless? Unless you're talking about a portable device with Vorbis support.

I don't know why this topic has gone in this direction. Most people seem to agree that not storing this information in the tags of a file is a good. The simple fact of the matter is that in the short term, I'm not experienced enough, nor have enough free time to create a version of foo_playcount with my updates and external database support. Add this to the fact that I don't really care that they are stored in tags, and my motivation to do it becomes quite low.

I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm saying, don't expect it anytime soon. If anybody wants to modify my source code, be my guest.

Hopefully, either Kode or Fermion will fix the tag updating problem with sql version of foo_playcount. With using my lossy audio files mostly on the iPod, these tag writing versions cause too many problems passing duplicate files to the iPod using foo_pod.

I do thank all of you who have worked on the varying versions of Playcount. I think we the users should be greatful that we have members in this forum who work very hard to make foobar a varied and wonderful program to play audio files.

Again, my sincere thanks!

Personally I prefer to have most data in tags. I don't care if files change a bit, foobar doesn't seem to mind, and I'm the only person using those files.

What kind of queries can be made with the FIRST_PLAYED tag? I don't understand the relevance of that tag although I'm sure there is a very good reason for it.


Ditto.

You can calculate the "age" of tracks as well as "average plays per day".
- Lyx

guy, your plugin is removing all the (tags that are in brackets) from my files.


Edit: can someone else confirm this is hapening?

I don't understand what you're saying. What tags in brackets? More information required.

basically when i play a file without your plugin, the files play and life goes on. the tags dont change. now when i run with your plugin, every file that plays and gets updated, the tags get screwed up. i have a couple hunderd files that have the album tag set to things like dazed and condused (soundtrack), or blow (sound track). as each file plays, the tag gets renamed to dazed and confused or blow. anything in quotes is removed as the file plays. this also happened to all the artist and track title tags. i have no idea how many tracks got renamed in the last while, but man, that is not cool.

I do not understand how this is at all possible. My plugin only ever touches the tags it deals with (i.e PLAY_COUNTER, FIRST_PLAYED, LAST_PLAYED, and PLAY_STAMP). There is absolutely nothing in the code that deals with any other tags. I can only assume that the tags with brackets in the have not been written to the file (i.e. are only stored in the database), and then when foo_playcount updates the tags, it doesn't use the moddified database tags, but instead the tags in the original file. This is not a problem with foo_playcount, but a problem with your tags.

omg i posted on 4:20. thats funny as i had.. nm..

try it man, copy some files, set the tags to have album, title, and artist to have some text in ()'s.

edit: then let the file play.

I do have files and albums with tags in brackets and it does not happen to me. It is not possible for foo_playcount to be causing this. It is a problem with your tags and the foobar2000 database not corelating.

it seems to be selective...

i dont know whats goin on with these tags. i'll play with it another time..

Not at all.

Can't reproduce either. Brackets, parenthesis, quotes, whatever. My guess is that foo_playcount's updates are only revealing existing inconsistencies with your metadata. Only other thing I can think of is that your formatting string changes its artist/album display based on foo_playcount's fields, but I don't think that's likely. Will continue testing.

what i really LOVED to see would be db only mask via directory also, not only via extension

i figured it out. i think it has to do with inconsistant tags between the read only files and the db. the tags dont seem to revert back untill the plugin tried to write to them.

Looking into it.

if i specify the form of which i want to see the 'appended information' i see two versions of it, the old one and the new one, is this a bug?

I don't know what you are asking. Be more specific.

Is there any support for multi values fields?

Let's say I have a multi values mood tag and I want to quickly change one of the values I have entered, say 'uplifting', to something else.
I would like to be able to use:


This would avoid me to have to guess if the mood I'm changing is the first or not in the values sequence.

I have a counter solution if the mood (with no %%) is not supported:


This should be able to work in both cases.

The most missing thing is that I can't replace those blahs with a sort of %_user_input% function that would let me write something on fly.

(see the sql modified for reference).

Thanks.

I know masstagger has a "split fields by separator" function. This is what I use to split mood-like information I get from allmusic. Once separated, you can access each value by an index number: $meta(moods,2) would give you the second value for your moods.

Unfortunately there's no way (that I know of) to know which index number a certain value has. I think this would be valuable, and could mirror the $strstr() function with something like $metastr(uplifting), returning the index of the value "uplifting." $meta(moods,$metastr(uplifting)) would return "uplifting," for example (useless, I know, but demonstrates the inverseness of these two functions).

When i specify what i want in the appended space

i.e "%D/%M/%Y"

i'd get something like this

05-18-2005 11:30:03 18/05/05


is there anyway to get rid of the "05-18-2005 11:30:03" and just have the "18/05/05" display?

I think this probably answers your question.

Edit: Oops....I see that he added a few things since the last one I had.....my bad.

There is no way to get rid of "2005-05-18 11:30:03" before your custom timestamp of "18/05/05". This is by design and not a bug. You can use TAGZ to display the date as "18/05/05" without appending any information.

Edit: This will display the date as you require it, just using the default tag.

Besides of what kl33per said, see here for more info on the FIRST_PLAYED and LAST_PLAYED tag.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=31530

As you can see, changing the hardcoded part of the first_played- and last_played-timestamp(the data before the "appended"-info) is not allowed. This is to ensure compatibility with a wide variety of formatting strings and plugins. If these parts of the tags would be configurable, then public formatting-strings and plugins couldn't know what to look for - and therefore could not support this plugin.
Or in short: its hardcoded, because otherwise public formattings and plugins could not support this plugin.

edit: the above link also contains codesnippets which show you how to reformat the tag in formatting strings - because thats what formatting strings are there for: to "format" the output ;)

- Lyx

There seems to be a mem leak in the sqllite plugin and so I have switched over to the new play count

Thank you lyx and kl33per

I'm sorry but may I ask that is it posibble if we change it to AM PM instead of 24 hours time? I mean something like this ---> 05-18-2005 02:30:03 PM

Edit 1: Sorry, there's a mistake above, give me a minute to fix it.

Edit 2: Fixed.

Edit 3: Nope Still broken, hold on.

Edit 4: Fixed for sure now.

thanks a million !!! You rocks man... I love you dude...

You ROCK My WORLD !!

what is the DB which playcount plugin refer to ? a tag in mp3 file or something other ?

There is an older, modified version of foo_playcount that stores the tags in an external MySQL of SQLite database. It has not been updated for some time, and does not have any of the new features that my version has. My version writes the tags directly to file.

Edit: Unless your talking about the database referred to in the Preferences dialog. This is the foobar2000 database. It is not enabled in a default foobar installation (I don't think). You can have foo_playcount only work on files that are part of the database. To enable the database, go to foobar2000 -> Preferences -> Database.

I have enabled the fb database.

how do I know if the playcount plugin is in work ?

It will write, by default, three tags to your files, after 50% of the song has played. These tags are PLAY_COUNTER, FIRST_PLAYED, and LAST_PLAYED. If it writes these, it is working.

sorry if its the wrong thread but I would like to know how could I add to my trackinfo panel a line that would tell me exactly how many times I have played the band i'm listening at the moment or on what band I got my mouse on or how many times I have played the album. ofcourse I can just count with calc but its just way too much work. I'm not much of a coder so thats why i'm bothering you.

Not possible with fb2k 0.8 (and i would "guess" also not with 0.9). Reason is that strings only see the current track - they are "blind" of other tracks. However, a plugin "could" achieve this(nope, i dont think one exists which can do it).

If you dont want to code your own playlist-formatting string(or dont know how) with playcount-support, then you could try the playlist designs "Azrael" or "Navigator-Suite". Both at least partially support it. I think Navigator supports more playback stats, but the last "official" release had a bug with calculating plays/day.

I also wonder if db info would be retained if you'd move dirs.

By the way: thanks to everyone doing a good job on writing and improving the scripts!

I asked before how I could sort my playlist in a way it would put most played files at top and least played files at bottom... At that time I was using the play count script which wrote to the id3 tags. Now i'm using the script using sqlite, how does it work now?

Thanks a lot!