The foo_pod plugin for foobar2000 will do this. The iPod will not make any use of the album artist tag however.

Well, i can tag the files with Foobar but i can't find a way to save the updated files on the Ipod. A hint on that would be dope!

Edit (workaround)
Foo_pod sorting string '$if(%COMPOSER%,%COMPOSER%,%ARTIST%)- %ALBUM% - $num(%TRACKNUMBER%,2)' does a good job with %COMPOSER% fields set to VA.

http://music.morbo.org/wiki/columns_ui:columns_ui

Could you put this link on the first post, might save time if there is anyone else who doesnt know shit about foobar (like me).

I just spent nice 20 mins figuring out what the heck these FCS files are and how to use them.
... and i read the "how-to & bonus-stuff.htm" included in the package.

Thanks!

Navigator suite really fits my use for every type of album / single format i use, but there is still one little feature i'd like to see.
i've got several albums encoded with a cue and a single lossy track (doesn't support embedded cuesheet and reencoding to separate tracks would be bad), and when i'm using the database, the "source" file is generally displayed which is quite annoying when you mainly use "shuffle". i was wondering if there was a way, for example using a tag like %cue_source%, to prevent these tracks from appearing in the playlist. i'm not sure if this feature would be usefull to other people but i sure would appreciate it. of course, don't even consider it if it bloats the code as i know you want navigator suite fast and free of "custom" tags.
thanks

edit: typo

With mitchmalibu and acedriver's advice, I went ahead and tried out the navigator suite.
I must say, Well done ! It works amazingly well for hybrid playlists (which is what i usualy use), including albums, single tracks and various artist albums all in one list. Also, works quite well with hebrew (unicode) tracks aswell, to my relief (more of a font selection problem, i guess).

Supereb work lyx !

I'm not sure if i correctly understand what you're trying to explain. If you mean foobar's habbit of "double-adding" CUE-tracks (the individual tracks + the source) when adding tracks to the playlist, then i'm sorry, its out of my hands, because this behaviour is as far as i know not caused by the formatting, not even the GUI, but fb2k itself. I'm not sure if its done in the fb2k-core, or the input-plugins. If its the latter, then plugin-authors maybe could do something about it. But since you say that it only happens when adding files via the DB, i someway doubt that its a plugin-issue.


Thanks, thats interesting to hear, because i had some back-and-forth feedback with people who use hebrew and asian charsets and tried to keep them in mind when adding stuff. Nope, its not only a font-issue(but mostly). There are some pitfalls in terms of unicode-support when designing playlists. For example, the status about 6 months ago was that color-fades in texts will break unicode. I dunno if this has ever been fixed in fb2k, since from there on, i didn't use them anymore. Nice to hear that it did work out :)

- Lyx

Nope, its still broken - the $transition function in foobar is to blame. it breaks the right-to-left\left-to-right codes, making hebrew chars outputted in reverse.

By the way, is there a way to handle unicode in foobar ? cause for example, hebrew stuff look mostly ok in foobar itself, but certain titles are problemtic, like ones that have ( or ) in the end. it comes out looking like:

( <insert hebrew string here> (<date, or live, or any other song info like that

instead of

<insert hebrew string here> (<date, or live, or any other song info like that)

i guess i'll post a screenshot in order to be clear



this happens when i drop a folder containing the cue and the mp3/mpc, or by choosing "all music" in the database for example. i know that this behaviour is normal (after all i add the cue and the music file in the playlist) but i was wondering if there was a way to prevent it from appearing in the playlist. sorry for posting here if that matter can't be solved using a simple tag check.

Optional hotness support wouldbe really cool

@chaosblade:
I'll think about your problem later, because i dont yet know an instant answer to whats going on as well.


Well, theoretically your idea of fixing it via a tag could work. You could give the unwanted files a tag to mark them.... and then use the string for "sorting incoming files" to check if the tag is there. However, that will not stop the "dupe-track" from appearing in the playlist - it will only move it to the start or end of the playlist. You cannot stop files from being added to the playlist with a tag, because the filter for incoming files does work with fileextensions, but not with tags.


I cannot do that without sorting becoming painfully slow. The reason is the following: those formattings which implemented hotness have a small global-string. I however do have a large(slow) global string. System-date and -time info is only available to the global string, but not to the sorting-code(unless you use the global-string for sorting, but that as mentioned would be too slow).

So, to implement hotness or similiar stuff, i need one of the following:
- ui columns alowing me to have systemdate and -time available in sorting
- non-trackspecific global strings to make my global-string fast enough that i can use it for sorting

- Lyx

it would have surprised me if that was possible, since when a file goes through the extension check, it'll appear no matter what.
thanks for the answer and navigator suite

I dont know what i was thinking yesterday, but stuff like hotness IS possible - its just that sorting by it may not be possible(however, maybe i know a workaround - i need to check that).

Anyways, i will probably not implement hotness but instead something similiar: adding plays/day. Then, when i later will be able to also use it for sorting, i can take other stuff into account as well.

- Lyx

update - changelog as usual is in the first post of this thread. Backup your modifications before upgrading.

minor update because of a small but annoying glitch in the "daily plays"-column - unless you use the new playcount-plugin, there is no need to update.

To Lyx

I independently from you change Navigator 1.2.2 in next way:

In global section I add code





Then I add columns hotness - play_counter*(days_interval/days_sice_play).

Hotness always <= play_counter and indicate average play_count of time of last playing.

I attach modified fcs.

Sorry attached fcs there

Sorry I don attach the file, then I place code of hotness column



and sort string


For right sorting you must check box "Use global variables when sorting" in global section of preference column ui.

Thanks for the updates Lyx.

awww bugger I kinda liked using different seperator's for diff colour modes... Perhaps a single option in the main config section to choose your seperator char?

Well, you could change them at those parts in the code where they're hardcoded... that would be the "album", "artist - album" and "title - length" columns.

The option will probably come back someday in the future together with some other highly wanted color-scheme options, when ui_columns gets non-trackspecific global strings. Among others, i would then create two sets of "standard-color" - one for background-color1 and another one for background color2. So that there would be two groups like this:

background_color1
standard_color1
light/dark_scheme1

background_color2
standard_color2
light/dark_scheme2

This alone will multiply the possibilities for designing color-schemes and make those kind of color-schemes possible which are currently not possible (schemes which are light AND dark simultaneusly). So, once the bottleneck in the global string is solved by ui_columns, i will be able to do resource-hungry stuff in those areas which only need to be executed once, instead of for every single track(like color-scheme calculations and customizability).

- Lyx

hehe yep already hardcoded an option in there
And I'm looking forward to the changes to colour schemes configuration, would open up many more options for colour combo's.

...but dont hold your breath for it - musicmusic is known to take his time :)

- Lyx

edit: found a way to cheat a bit and "kinda" implement sorting by plays/day. Will be included in next version. Add to this a timespan for the "age" of files under which they're "hidden"(so, excluded from plays/day calculations) and then the ingredients are complete to create my version of "hotness"(i plan to not indicate hotness but instead "favorites"). I'm also thinking about changing the first_played-column into showing the "age" of tracks, instead of dates.

request: "Hybrid Mode" or something, like singletrack mode, just with every artist after the first "greyed out" (same color as bracket text for example) wouldbe cool

Either you didn't read the FCS-description and the HOWTO, or i dont understand what you're trying to say.

- Lyx

I think he means that in the current singlemode, use the normal text colour only for the artist in track 1 of an album, then grey out the other tracks of the album using _standard_color_low...
Why however I don't know, its just another form of albummode really, and would kinda defeat the point of having a singlemode.

That is my impression as well. Singlemode is for singles. Albummode is for albums. Since albummode allowing only albums is a bit restricting, singles in albummode are possible - the hybridmode. Introducing one more layer sounds like overkill to me and may make the whole thing difficult to understand for the average user.

I mean - the fact alone that there are modes is already a "flaw"... optimally, the user should not need to switch between modes and the player should automatically display the tracks the best way. Since thats currently not possible with fb2k, we've begun to introduce singlemode and albummode. But this really is a "hack" - having modes is not something desirable from an objective POV - adding more modes therefore as well is something which is best avoided.

- Lyx

well maybe youre right and its not a that good idea but some indicator for the first track of the album in singlemode would still be cool

Navigator is broken using foobar2000 0.9 Beta 3 and Columns UI 0.13 Pre-Alpha 10. Just thought you might want to know.

It will stay that way for a while. fb2k 0.9 as well as the ui_columns alpha introduce significant changes. Additionally, i won't start doing any porting until it becomes more clear what musicmusic is gonna do with the new $set_style feature.

So, things are a bit too shaky for my taste to start porting. I'll wait a bit until the dust has settled.

- Lyx

I managed to get a working version of navigator going in 0.9 b3 by removing all the $if(%_globalvar% checks and replacing them with $if(%tagfield% (ie. $if(%_album% did not want to work, whereas $if(%album% would) in the columns.
I think the global vars aren't being left empty if no tag is present in the globals or something like that. And theres also the tag remappings probably screwing it up somewhat.

lyx, the only problem i can see with the new 0.1.3 alpha is that foobar 0.9 always defines album artist. that makes formatting default to va mode all the time ...

should be easy to fix

I'll do an interim update when the next fb2k beta gets released, because currently i've got some playback-problems with the beta3. The field-remapping stuff unfortunatelly is a bit more complicated than that, mazy. For tagged tracks, you're right - but tagguessing is completely confused by the mappings. So, the tag-guess parts all need to replace the %tag% versions with their meta() counterparts.

- Lyx

I don't know if it interests you, but with a little software called arachnophilia (free), there is a replace option, it may automate some changes instead of doing it with your hands. if you want more info, send me a PM or contact me by msn (see my personal page for my adress)

Thanks for the hint. My editor (Notepad++, based on Scintilla) does have quite good search and replace options. But that won't save me from testing the widespread changes.

I love this column configuration!! I thought I would share a pic of my FB2K. It is set up to go with the GT3 Windowblinds, by Tiggz. It is set up for a 1600 x 1200 resolution.

My FB2K

Edit: Changed image...noticed some missing text in Toaster.

What is navigator suite ? is it another customized column ui style ?

Yes

Originally, it was meant to be much more (OSD-string, trackinfo, etc. etc.). But as so often, things went a little bit different, so now its an ui_columns style with some extras like copy-string.

Main reason why things went differently was because ui_columns lacked mechanisms to change color-schemes and settings at one central place, and then this stuff being applied to all panels.

Cancelled. 0.9beta and especially UI-columns alpha is too unstable for my taste currently.

The good news is that from the work i've done so far, scrolling is now very smooth - although i dont know why.

- Lyx

Oh how I long for smooth scrolling

Can't wait for Navigator for 0.9 and the SDK to come out. Then things will get really exciting.

Both of them have yet to crash on my computer.

Unstable not in terms of "not crashing", but in terms of features. %tracknumber% and $meta(tracknumber) behave quite strangely here when combined with $num(). And speaking about $num() the same applies to ui columns alpha when sorting - some quite simple strings (without color-codes) look absolutely correct for display, but sort incorrectly. I could go on an name numerous other minor glitches. Porting the beast called Navigator is already quite a task, but while doing so, i dont want to hunt ghosts in my code.

- Lyx

edit: $meta(tracknumber) behaves correctly when combined with $num. The fault was on my site(i defined tracknr in two places, but only corrected it in one of the two)

Ok, understood then. My mind just associates unstable with crashing, but I see your point. Anyway, ui columns works fine with my formatting and I'm happy with it Hopefully you get yours working asap (read: hopefully we get more releases of 0.9 and 0.1.3 soon)!

WIP 1.4.0alpha:
This version only works with the current fb2k 0.9beta and the current UI column alpha. Singlemode default version only for now.

If worked around most annoyances, except one thing: Sorting by plays/day is messed up. I have no clue why. There is a "test"-column included, which is disabled by default. It plain simply outputs the plays/day rate multiplied by 100 and padded to 4 digits. There are no color-codes or any formatting in it. Just the 4 digits. Yet, it displays correctly but doesn't sort correctly. It would be nice if someone can verify if this is a bug in the current ui columns alpha, or a bug in my code.

Other changes:
- various fixes and changes to playback stats
- "should" work without legacy support in the current ui columns alpha.
- various minor speed optimizations
- makes use of the new field mappings where reasonable(for example for tag-guess purposes). So, i did not just replace every field with its $meta counterpart.

Please only report bugs when you're sure that they are not related to ui_columns or fb2k 0.9beta.

kockroach: what is that huge visualazation panel in the upper middle of your screenshot ?

Lyx: is the $transition still messed up for non-english text in 0.9beta ?

It is the Simple Stereo plugin. I have an empty Tab Panel behind it.

Where might i find it ?

By your answer im understanding its more like a window (G-Force, etc) and not a panel, though ?

It's called foo_vis_stereo. Yeah, it's a window, not a panel. I just keep a blank panel open, without header, and place the window in that spot. It disappears when you aren't playing a file, and will always open in the same spot.

I dont know. I'm not using $transition for text anymore because its slow.

Does the RTL-problem with brackets which you described earlier still happen?

- Lyx

havent been able to test 0.9beta, actully. no plugin aside from the ones in the official package run, claiming something is wrong with the utf8 dll.