I assume that people who read this post have used iTunes in the past, but for those who haven't I will explain what I'm talking about.

In iTunes, the very left column holds a check box next to each song in the library. If songs are unchecked, they will not play when using the entire library as a playlist. If you so choose, they will also not load onto your iPod (I am not looking for this functionality, however).

I am a bit of a digital packrat and I like to keep albums I download even if I don't like all of the songs. I would then uncheck songs I didn't like so that my library would be unadultered by bad songs. Unfortunately, when I switched to foobar2000 I lost this functionality.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to how to get it back?

I don't know how you'd get it back (as in the already checked/unchecked files) But foobar does the same thing with foo_skip.

there's foo_skip plugin which could skip over certain tracks. you could use foo_custominfo (or directly tags) to "mark" some songs and use this info to skip over them.

you could (of course) visualize the skip state of particular song in the playlist, track info panel, create buttons for it on track info panel mod or regular columns ui buttons etc.

my example:

Well just in case someone else is going to do this, I will show you my steps.

1. In iTunes, create a Smart Playlist that contains only checked songs. This can be done a number of ways. The way I did it was to use the filter "Date Added is after 1/1/1990" and check the box that says "Match only checked items"

2. Get playlistext stand-alone app from http://www.crea-doo.at/ituneswatcher/downloads.htm (at the bottom of the list of downloads).

3. Use playlistext to export the Smart Playlist you created in step 1. You should now have a .M3U playlist file.

4. Of course get foo_skip and foo_custominfo and fire up foobar2000. Go to File >> Load Playlist... and find your .M3U playlist. It should now be in your list of playlists.

5. Go to your Preferences, open up the Custom Info settings under the tools heading, adjust your settings, and go to the Context menu commands tab.

6. Delete whatever is there by default and click New. For Display Name, type Check Me. For Field Name, type CHECKED. For Value, type the number 1. Leave the rest of the settings alone.

7. Without leaving this part of the preferences, click New again. For Display Name, type Uncheck Me. For Field Name, type CHECKED. For Value, type the number 0.

7. If you are using Columns UI, go to Playlist view under Columns UI under Display in your preferences. Switch over to the Columns tab and click Insert at the bottom left. You will have a new column. I suggest moving it to the top and renaming it to C, but it's your choice.

8. For your new column, here are the settings you should use:

Display:
$if($strcmp(%checked%,1),•,)

Sort:
%checked%|$replace(%artist%,The ,)|$replace(%track artist%,The ,)|[%album%]|[%discnumber%]|[%tracknumber%]|[%directoryname%]

10. Go to the full list of the files in your library. Highlight every song you have and right-click them. Select "Uncheck me" from the context menu.

11. Highlight all of the files in your newly-loaded playlist (from step 4). Right-click and select "Check Me".



The metadata from your iTunes checked songs should now contain CHECKED=1 and unchecked songs should contain UNCHECKED=0. I suggest backing up your custominfo database every now and then because it is annoying to figure out which songs you like or dislike out of thousands.

This topic about foo_skip is also relevant: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=30361



EDIT: I would like to note also that all downloads links to foo_skip are broken, so if someone could post the latest DLL on this thread I would be much obliged.

Now there is one more issue that I need to address, if possible.

Is it possible to use autoplaylist (or some other method) to create an automatically-updating playlist populated by only checked songs? Autoplaylist does not seem to recognize tags created by customtags.

mirror of foo_skip.dll here.

As another recent Itunes convert, I've been hoping for the same thing. I've tried the combination of foo_skip and foo_custominfo to attempt to mimic it, but I think the problem I'm having is a combination of my listening habits and foo_skip's functionality. Specifically, I'm used to having my entire library in one playlist and having almost the entire thing unchecked at any one time, except for whichever album or couple of songs I happen to be listening to at the time. When I try to work like this with foo_skip, I run into a major problem - once it gets to the last checked song, it travels through every unchecked song thereafter, which takes forever. I assume that the way it's working is grabbing one track, checking its skip status, and then, if it is tagged to skip, moving on to the next one. For the way I'm using it, then, it's a bit kludgy.

Anyway, the programming of some other alternative is beyond my capabilities, but if any such alternative did arise I'd be all over it. This is the one major thing keeping me from fully switching; I find the Album View method unintuitive, and I find making a new playlist for whatever I want to listen to at the moment to be a hassle. If anyone has some other smarter method that I'm missing out on, I'd love to know it!

-Nate