I've noticed that the optional components page for a while now that a better version of the Autoplaylist Manager component will be coming out at some point. I'm not trying to apply any pressure I was just wondering how its progress is going... I've noticed a few things that are a little annoying in the current component but I have so far held asking for them to be changed. So, what might we expect from a new version?

The single most annoying thing that will be fixed is the inability to edit the settings of existing autoplaylists. Also planned is a wizard to guide new users through the process of creating an autoplaylist. While this wizard currently is the only part of the new user interface that is already implemented, it will be possible to disable it in the final versions.

As for other new features, well, I have thought about the possibility to restrict the size of an autoplaylist. However, to my great dismay I have found it even harder than expected to add this properly to the autoplaylist backend, so it might stay on the todo/wishlist for quite a while longer.

Ah thank you, thank you, thank you!
That is probably the only real gripe I have at the moment, so I'll await the new version eargerly
Thanks again.

by the way...

i created an autoplaylist with the following query: %path% HAS 80s (which would add all files in my "80s Music" dir. is there a way to automaticly update the playlist?
lets say i would add a new file to my 80s-music place on my harddisk.
what i do now:
- insert the file manually to the foobar-playlist, or:
- rescan media library (wich takes very, very long...)
is there a way to do this automaticly with autoplaylist? i know there is a way to do this with winamp, and i really liked this feature.

"playlist_bind" should do that....

for autoplaylist the files have to be part of the ML.

Right now it's a little slow for me when the program start with a 10000+ songs ML and more than 10 autoplaylists and some with complex search strings. So foosion could you add an option allow us not to update the autoplaylist at program start and a button to refresh the autoplaylist, right now I have to restart foobar to update those autoplaylist or I miss something. One more, in the context menu of playlist an "update this autoplaylist" would be great.

An autoplaylist should update automatically when the contents of the media library changes. Manual update seems like a sensible idea for large libraries, so I'll put it on the wishlist. I cannot promise that it will be in the first new version.

thanks.

EDIT: It seems that the double quotation marks (") does not work. If I use "%path% HAS "Album Music"" it acts as "%path% HAS Album OR %path% HAS Music" I think it should find the songs with path have "Album Music" string, is it a bug?

Hmm. I noticed a little Bug i think. The autoplaylist component doesnt show up in the preferences Dialog, which im using to check the Version Number. It isnt very important, but it would be nice to fix this

In this circumstance, it seems to fail. After remove files from library then autoplaylist updates but if I readd those files then nothing happen.

This is intended behaviour of the media library. If you remove files from it, they cannot be re-added until after you restart foobar2000. This is to prevent them being accidentally added back, because foobar2000 monitors files that are added to the playlist and adds them automatically to the media library, if they match criteria you set on the media library preferences page.

on normal playlists the selected track after starting foobar is the last one played before closing. on autoplaylist it is still the first one of the playlist and the sorting always changes also if i havent insert a sorting format - than it changes to something like %filename% or %artist%%title% or whatever but i like it that the foobar starts as if i closed it.

this is caused by the refreshing of the playlist cause for about 1 or 2 seconds at start i can see the old playlist and than it will be refreshed...

another question:

how to make a autoplaylist for missing albumgain and trackgain files?

i think it's not possible at the moment, cause you need somethink like IS_NOT or !GREATER but maybe someone else has find a freakin query string for that.

by the way i have a foo_autoplaylist.dll in my components folder but i dont find it under preferences --> components.

What about the NOT operator. Example:
Note: This checks if the field %__replaygain_album_gain% exists and is at least one character long.

thx foosion!

@foosion: if it's your plugin, can you update the help inside the plugin? or where can i read the hints on such query strings?

little bit offtopic: is there a possibility to see all available %variables% on my foobar set?

The current autoplaylist component already has a help button in the "Autoplaylist manager" window which opens a window with some help text. This help text unfortunately lacks the description of the MISSING operator and isn't structured all that well (it's just plain text after all). I already fixed both issues in the new version.

yes i know the button, but the help is not very detailed like you said.

where is it? :-)

I look forward to the new foo_autoplaylist, I was just wondering if we could have a way to export all the autoplaylists's that we created so that if foobar2000 crashes at anytime, we can import our playlists.

yes it is annoying. in the majority of cases foobar crashes the autoplaylist are away but everything else is ok. so it would be cool to export it in a readable way - a csv-file or something like this - or the crash stability will be improved

You can use the "File/Save configuration" command to save the configuration file and all the playlists to prevent losing unsaved settings. I haven't lost my configuration in a crash since 0.9 final at least, and the components I use don't crash on a regular basis either.

"File/Save configuration" where is it?

You can access this command via keyboard shortcut.
Preferences > General > Keyboard Shortcuts : File/Save Configuration

ahh okay i thought i could save it in another file than foobar2000.cfg, but its only the same as the [save all] button in preferences.

what should this help? my configuration is saved but foobar crashes or will be killed on shutdown and after the next start all autoplaylists are away while the rest of foobar looks like everytime and is set to the same parameters like everytime.

foosion will you be releasing your updated autoplaylsit component with this new beta?

It will be released when it's done.

foosion sorry for that I meant to ask if the component will be released when a new version of foobar2000 is released or if it can/will be released separately when you are finished?

foosion, I am wondering whether the implentation of limiting the size of a playlist is going well. (I hope it's not much trouble now (mentioned last in June); I'm itching for a "100 Most Played" autoplaylist.)

Before reattaching itself to an existing playlist on startup, the autoplaylist component checks if the playlist name is the one it remembers. I wonder whether you are using this component that messes with the names of playlists based on their contents (foo_playlist_name_enhanced or whatever it is called).

I also have this problem when foobar crash a time by time, and i don't have foo_playlist_name_enhanced installed.

My comment got ignored so I guess my answer is nothing's changed since June. Well, thanks anyway for a great plugin that makes foobar infinitely better by empowering its users with so much more control.

Just wondering, if I do use foo_playlist_name_enhanced, does this mean autoplaylist is incompatible with it? Or is there anything to make autoplaylist remember the 'enhanced' playlist name so rescanning the ML after every restart is unnesscary? Thx

Is there a way to use $directory(), $left(), etc. functions in the query? This is the query I can't get it to accept:
NOT $left($directory(%_path%,1),2) HAS "VA" AND %genre% IS "Post-Rock"

By the way, this is the most useful plugin for foobar, I can't wait to see it improved... nice work

Edit: Nevermind, I saw an earlier post and figured it out, this works:
(NOT "[$left($directory(%_path%,1),2)]" IS "VA") AND (the rest of my query)

This plugin severely kills my foobar startup time. I have some playlists that query groups of artists, like "artist is blah or artist is blahblah or artist is blarge" in a very large list.

With a fresh install of foobar 0.9.3 along with my current db and no autoplaylist plugin, startup time is 0:04s but when I add the autoplaylist plugin the startup time jumps up to 2m:45s. Any chance the new version will be better at this?

There's an easy way. Go to your main library PL, sort by play count, find the 100th song's play count (=xx). Make an autoplaylist with PLAY_COUNTER GREATER xx.

Half-ass. But it works. Depending on how dynamic your listening habit is... This shoud last you about a month or two before having to re-edit it.

Thanks for the advice, I thought of the same thing. It'd be nice, though, to have that feature, especially for other kinds of statistics. (Say I wanted a sampling of songs that are rated 5. I'd want a limit of 100, RATING EQUALS 5, and sorted randomly.) That feature would give us more options/control.

I've found a bug... if you use a lot of really big autoplaylists (I think I'm the only one) the shutdown time takes a lot longer, and if you force the program to close (windows automatically does this during shutdown) there is roughly an 80% chance that a whole bunch or maybe all of your autoplaylists will disappear. It's happened to me twice now.

Is it possible to sort recursive? F.ex. Sort by %artist% then by %year% ?

Are there any documentation on the syntax other than just the lousy help button?

And... still 1.0 - Any progress on the "new" version?

I was bored so I've written a little at the wiki.

@odyssey: You can check it out if you haven't found the answer to your question about sorting.

PS: Please check what I wrote as maybe there're mistakes in it.

Feature request:

As you develop the new version, any chance of adding access to tags from the now playing track?

Then we could have autoplaylists with e.g.: tracks in the same album, by the same artist etc. etc.

This component is abandoned. Look here:
http://foobar2000.org/components/index.html