now that i experiment more with the rating feature it appears to be bugged. i have tracks that have a rating of 5, when i change the tag manually or with a script components are not reading the rating value correctly until i update it with the option in this component. it seems to happen with ratings of 4 or 5. very unusual.

What is the format of PlaybackStatistics.dat and is there a way for me to programatically add values to this file? I have two objectives:

1 - Import in my ratings from foo_custominfo
2 - Be able to export my ratings to text, say CSV

The above-mentioned features were one of the wonderful parts of foo_custominfo; Thank you for the information and consideration.

Moderation: removed pointless quote of the first post.

As I've mentioned here, I've downloaded and tried this today, and all my %added% values are dated today, rather than going by the earlier %first_played% tag as it is supposed to.

Any help with this?
It doesn't appear %added% is even stored in PlaybackStatistics.dat so I presume I can't "fix" this without nuking foobar2000.cfg?

[edit] Nevermind, a restart seems to have corrected it, sorry.

i started using the playback statistics plugin not too long ago, but i already noticed that shutting down foobar takes way longer than before. is this normal? will it get even slower as more tracks get added to my PlaybackStatistics.dat? the file is already huge almost half the size of my database. how can this be possible? i'm sure that i didn't play back half of my database since i installed the plugin. besides shouldn't the statistics file be smaller anyway as it contains less information (filename + tags: playcount, first played, last played, added) than the database (filename + all other tags)?

edit: i looked into the PlaybackStatistics.dat with a text editor and discovered that my whole database was in there - because of the %added% tag. of course! i didn't think of that before.
i also noticed that it was quite polluted by tracks that were moved to another folder. i guess i'll have to keep my files on the same drive & path to be able to use playcount properly.
is there an option to only use tags to store the information? i guess 'automatically synchronize file tags with...' will keep the PlaybackStatistics.dat as well, won't it?

I've been using 0.9.4.3 for some time now due to my reliance on foo_custominfo, but it looks like these updates to foo_playcount eliminate that reliance.

Still I'm left with the problem of migrating all my custominfo_sqlite.db data to the new PlaybackStatistics.dat file. Has anyone figured out an easy way of doing this? Some options I'm considering:

1) foo_custominfo can alternatively store its data in a text file. Through some clever search and replace, it might be possible to convert this text file to the format used by PlaybackStatistics.dat (I haven't examined this format yet so I'm not sure).

2) foo_custominfo can also store its data in the foobar.cfg file, which can then potentially be read by foo_playcount -- although I will need an older version of foo_playcount, one compatible with 0.9.4.3. Is there one available for download anywhere?

3) Writing all my foo_custominfo data into the files' metadata; importing this metadata into PlaybackStatistics.dat; then removing all the metadata.

Needless to say this last option is far less ideal, but I think it may be my only hope. Any other ideas?

Option 3's probably going to be your best bet. You may need to change the tag names before importing into the official playback statistics component.

I have a problem using both the Playback Statistics and Quick Tagger components for setting song ratings. Here is the problem description: I want to be able to set ratings on every file, which is palyed by FB2K (not the only ones, which are stored in Media Library). This is impossible using Playback Statistics, so I set Quick Tagger to set ratings using keybard horkeys (Ctrl-0...5).

But from time to time the ratings gets messed up. The file properties shows the rating value set by Quick Tagger, but the playlist and the context menu uses value from Playback Statistics (which, by the way was not used to set ratings). See a picture for more info...

http://www.nncron.ru/temp/rating.jpg (120 kB)

The only way to 'synchronise' the rating value back is to use Playback Statistics-Rating-<not set> context menu item and the use one of the Quick Tagger keyb. hotkeys to set the value.

What may be wrong here? It seems, FB2K reads the Playback Statistics database in the irst place, ignoring the file tags, but I'm not sure how the wrong value comes to the Playback Statistics, while this component is not used to set the Rating. Maybe there is smth wrong with the file tags-database synchronisation? The Playback statistic is set to Automatically synchronise the file tags and to Monitor Playing songs.

Thanks!

The reason is that playback statistics stores to its db while quicktagger stores info in file tags. Having playback statistics save info in tag might solve the problem (preferences -> Advanced).

I have wrote 'The Playback statistic is set to Automatically synchronise the file tags and to Monitor Playing songs.' in my initial message, so Playback Statistics IS set to save tags in files.

The problem is, that Playback Statistics is NOT used at all to set the Ratings, but for some reasons it interference with Quick Tagger, changing the Rating value. I'm pretty sure this happens somewhere when synchronising the file tags and PS database.

It's seems I know, what happens. When both Automatically synchronise the file tags and to Monitor Playing songs Playback Statistics options are enabled, the current Rating settings is written into the PS db. And after this it is impossible to change this value using Quick Tagger, just because the value is fetched from the databse. Right? I think this is not a good idea.

So, we have two options:

1) Allow Playback Statistics to write tags to files not included in Media Library ( visit this link to find why I need this: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=567578 )
2) Give file tags the precedence comparing to database

Your ideas?

I was just planning to ask about/for this option Any chances for implementing/enabling this kind of behaviour?

FEATURE REQUEST:

Would it be possible for Playback Statistics to either:
a) record "Total Played Time per Track", or
b) allow an option whereby Playback Statistics offers an additional (alternative) playcount based on:
Total Played Time per Track / Track Length

Why would this be good?

1) It gives you a far more accurate reading. Currently, if I play the first 1 min of a 10 min song 10 times, foo_playcount says I've played it 10 times, whereas "total played time" / "track length" would say I've played it once. Though this is not entirely accurate, it's far, far closer to the truth.
2) It's a good way to eliminate the need for skip counts.
3) It would not affect those users who always play their files all the way through, but it would beneficially affect those users who skip from track to track and still require an accurate reading of how often they've listened to each track.
4) It eliminates the need for any "count if played when played x %" or "count if played when played > 2 mins" kind of options.
5 Kanak has suggested %play_time% which would be purely the total played time per song. This would give users the opportunity to do:
%play_time% / %track_length% as a column ("play count") format, and I think this a nice idea.
6) Alternatively, foo_playcount could do the calculation itself and output something like %play_count_alt% which would yield the same result as above (5).

Clearly, if foo_playcount used "total played time" / "track length" it would want to round down to the nearest integer.

Thanks for taking the time to consider this request.

C.

Something strange here. The component works with album list, but not with facets. Look at the screenshot. What could I have done wrong?



I could swear it worked lately

//edit: seems that only the %added%-query doesn't work

DURING LAST is not supported by facets yet.

All other syntax extensions are supported automatically, but this is a rare case where work on my side is required.

Thank you Frank,

I thought, I made a mistake.

i wonder if in a future update if the stats component could come with an option to not update the stats of a track until playback is stopped or another track is started.

I'm timidly approaching the arduous task of migrating all my stats from foo_custominfo (in foobar 0.9.4.3) to foo_playcount (in 0.9.5.4).

First I thought I would have to write all my custominfo tags into the file metadata, to be read later by foo_playcount. I don't seem to be able to do this with Masstagger, however; it doesn't recognize data from foo_custominfo, neither through %field_name% nor through $cinfo(field_name). Am I doing something wrong? Does anybody know how to get foo_custominfo data into the file tags?

I've also realized that in addition to foo_custominfo, I've kept foo_playcount 1.3.2 running this whole time, to keep parallel data in foobar2000.cfg (for just such an occasion, I guess). Because of my problem in getting custominfo data into file tags, I might have to resort to using this data (which is slightly less complete). So, what might be the best way to do this? Is there a foo_playcount version between 1.3.2 and 2.1.4 that both (a) is compatible with foobar 0.9.4.x and (b) stores its data in PlaybackStatistics.dat? If so, I could migrate all the data this way, without having to touch the audio files themselves, which is hugely appealing.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Stats are very important to me with a 3 year old, 15k+ library. Thanks in advance.

Are Playback Statistics info being stored in PlaybackStatistics.dat ?
If I save this file and copy it into a clean installation of foobar and Playback Statistics will all my old data be transfered to my new installation?

@hariskar: It does, if your new installation has Media Library with the same path structure.

Thanks!
If the Local Disk's letter changes?

Same path structure means no drive letter change.

So, the only way is to write data in file tags?

You may use that way as an intermediate or you can change the letters of your partitions on your new installation by right click on My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management. The latter way is a little tricky and you may mess up your data.

Hi,

is there a way to tell external programs like "CD Art Display" where to store the rating tag? If i rate with this little nice external cover art application, the rating is stored in the file instead in the database. but because im using ps3 as mediaplayer i need to stay with id3v2.3 tags. a tag change within foobar will write id3v2.4 tags, wich are not compatible with my media servers.
maybe it's possible to tell foobar to store a tag like "RATING" always in the statistics database?

thanks

i think it's too much, but if it isn't, i'd like the possibility to move folders that are in media library, and not to lose their play stats just because you replace folder from one place to another inside media library

You can do that currently if you move your files within foobar.
[context menu] ->File Operations-> Move to....

Also, according to the SDK:
"In 0.9.6, the Media Library backend will be entirely reimplemented to perform tracking of folder content changes on its own"

oh nice! now that is something to look forward to, thanks for the heads up.

@shakey_snake: ok, thanks for the info

@topdownjimmy:
did you find a smooth solution for migrating from foo_custominfo?
I've got the same problem:
I have all my %added%-tags saved in the txt-file and if I write them all into my metadata i'll have to copy over all my files when syncing for backup. I'd like to avoid that.

There must be heaps of people in need for a solution!

Yours JD

i read that in amarok they also take into account how often you skipped a track, not only how often you played it, to calculate it's popularity.
might be an interesting thing to do.

somebody suggested counting the time played would be nice. i agree, it takes more to listen a 15min song than a 3min song with the same playcount. but then it only really matters when you taked times skipped into the calculation. because otherwise you could just calculate a rating by going %lenght%*%playcount% or something like that.

just some thoughts,
greets

Hi, just a quick thought, what's wrong with a simple percentage option?
Now less than 1 min long songs don't get counted.

Hi everybody, I have two questions that are puzzling me about this great component :

Let's assume all my music files are in a NAS, and they are accessed by two different people (e.g. me and my girlfriend) with two different PCs and two different foobar configs. Each user has his own official Playback Statistics component, and thus can handle his corresponding statistics. So far so good !

Point #1 : user1 has his own ratings, and so has user2. But let's imagine user2 would like to take a look at user1's ratings. I don't think this is possible currently. If user1 and user2 have different databases, then ratings can't be shared. And if they decide to write the Playback Statistics directly to the file tags (assuming that %rating% can be selected as the only Playback Statistic to be written), then it won't work either since there is only one %rating% field.
--> Cause : user1 and user2 want to share their ratings
--> Consequence : impossible right now
--> Solution : could there be some kind of "multi-user rating" option where each user could enter a custom name for the rating field (e.g. %rating1% and %rating2%), and then both %rating1% and %rating2% would be automatically written to the file tags, so that both users could access both ratings ? (all other Playback Statistics remaining within the local databases)

Point #2 : if user1 renames / moves a file within his foobar, user2's foobar won't know it. So user2 will have to do a rescan to find the file again. And then, I suppose user2's foobar will think that the found file is a new file (since it has been modified), so the file's Playback Statistics will get lost for user2.
--> Cause : user1 renames / moves a file within foobar
--> Consequence : user2's PlayBack Statistics get lost
--> Solution : would there be an elegant way to avoid this ? I may have a suggestion, but I don't know if it will work (and there are probably better solutions !) : if during a rescan foobar finds a new file whose metadata (with two notable exceptions : modification date and file path) is exactly the same as the metadata present in foobar's database for an "orphan" file (foobar has the data but the file isn't at the expected path anymore), then could foobar consider that it's the same file so that Playback Statistics don't get lost ?

These two points could be handled via some "multi-user" option(s) in the component prefs, so that "normal" users wouldn't get bothered by this. Anyway, it would be a huge bonus for users wanting to access a music database in a multi-client environment.

What do you think ?

Why not using Playback Statistics Custom and store all info in tag (which can be access by all users)? It has the possibility to set up custom tag name for each statistic, so if you use different ones you do not have any problems (also no problem if the files were moved). to rate my songs I use quicktagger with different keyboardshortcuts assigned with "set tag %rating% to 1 (2,3,4,5)" (at this point you can also use different tag names, which can also be accessed by all user b/c it's in the tags )

hope this is some help...
callisto

Thanks callisto. Yes, that could be a solution. However, I am a bit reluctant to use the "custom" component, since it hasn't been updated by kitahei in a year (will it be still compatible with future foobar versions ?) and it's not an "official" component (let's say that for "critical" components that write info to tags or databases, I'd prefer to use the official ones whenever possible).

I simply hope my previous post will interest Peter at some point and give him some food for thought. Maybe he can come up with some brilliant idea we haven't thought about and update the component, so that users in a multi-user environment aren't forced to find alternative solutions ?


EDIT - in fact it would be great if Playback Statistics database values could be accessible by users. Just like with old foo_custominfo, where you could choose the database format : SQLite or text file for instance. If the official Playback Statistics component would let users choose the database format (or at least give some information about the database format so that we could access the database), then I could make an external script that would scan periodically user1 and user2 databases and store all the values in custom tags (first played 1, first played 2, last played 1, last played 2, play count 1, play count 2, rating 1, rating 2). That would be a good solution for me, because I could even find an elegant way to handle the "moving / renaming" of files.

But anyway, let's see what Peter and other folks think about this. I am open to almost anything.

I use the Playback Statistics Custom component, and it works just fine with the newest foobar2000

In some point I can understand you, to use only "official" components... but isn't fb2k just about 3rd party plugins to gain more functionality? So there is a solution, which works perfectly... why not take it?
Maybe kitahei didn't update his component, because there were no problems and will update if it breaks with a future version of foobar, but who knows ^^

*no problems occured, so far*
callisto

I understand you guys, and I am sure Playback Statistics Custom works perfectly. The problem for me lies in the future of foobar :

- If foobar evolves and Playback Statistics Custom becomes a deprecated component, then there is a chance that P.S.C users will have to start from scratch with another component and lose all their previous data.

- With an official component however, we can be pretty sure that even if foobar evolves the component will evolve as well, so no data will be left behind.

I have absolutely no problem using 3rd party components (in fact I use a good amount of them ), provided I don't use them to store critical data that could become unaccessible in the future / unrecoverable by another component. Ideally I'd prefer to let official components handle such critical data. Do you see my point ?

Of course if there's no other solution then I'll consider moving on to P.S.C. But official components tend to get better and better, so who knows, maybe Peter, foosion & co. have something in store for us ?

@up
AFAIR you could synchronize your data from PSC with tags, so no data will be lost (that means no starting from scratch ).

About link (starting with second point) - developers of foobar2000 could implement some central database with info about file paths and hashes of those files (that could lead to some interesting possibilities*) and specific play-count/rating data would be written in user's profile directory only pointing to the central database for exact paths (that would solve problem with updating real paths to files by one of users). Adding a tick/option in preferences dialog to share user's play-count data would indicate user's will to do such a thing (we've got some control from users whether one wants to be more private).

* - e.g. synchronizing play-count/rating data of same artist-title-length tracks of different physical files (e.g. one has got some-song by some-artist both on original album and some compilation and/or another soundtrack)

PS. Sorry for poor English, I hope I was understandable

I am currently using foo_playback_custom version 1.4.3, which saves the following information to mp3s:

<FIRST_PLAYED> : 2008-06-08 03:34:46
<LAST_PLAYED> : 2008-09-24 01:41:54
<PLAY_COUNTER> : 5
<PLAY_STAMP> : 2008-06-08 03:34:46; 2008-06-08 06:17:56; 2008-06-09 04:41:12; 2008-06-14 16:33:02; 2008-09-24 01:41:54
<RATING> : 3

What would be the easiest way to switch over to foo_playcount 2.x without losing data?

Ok I'll try again to import my old statistics info:

Old info saved in the foo_custominfo database (txt, sqlite, fb2k database).

Steps:
1) I just installed new version (v0.9.5) over old one (v0.9.2) plus foo_playcount (v2.1.5) and started. Ø
2) I tried all three storage methods from foo_custominfo (deleted new Playback statistics database beforehand). Ø
3) I copied the info into a couple of files with Properties>Automatically Fill Values>source:%added%, pattern:%added%. In new version I used [cm]>Playback Statistics>Import from file tags. It scanned my whole library: Ø

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

And the worst thing i found out: My old Statistics component didn't seem to work properly because all my %first_played%/%last_played%/%playcount% are mixed up to a very recent date and Playcount!!! :-(


Yours JD

/edit: album = files

I know it isn't Peter's responsibility to look out for those of us who have chosen to use an unsupported component for so long. And I appreciate that he has taken the desire for statistics seriously enough to support them with an official component, and one that is done well.

However, I can see that I'm not alone in being stuck with a huge SQLite database from the foo_custominfo component, full of data that I do not want to lose. If I could migrate this data into the new official component, I could ostensibly be confident that I will never have to stress over my statistics storage methodology again, as the official component will likely upgrade smoothly with the future development of foobar.

This isn't the first time I've had to jump through hoops to get my statistics from one component to another, and I'm dying to be done with having to deal with the overwhelming prospect of it every couple years. The newer version of the official component will be a huge relief once it has imported all my previous data.

But for the time being, Peter, will you consider writing in some functionality to import statistics data from SQLite files left over by foo_custominfo? Of course you can't be expected to accommodate everybody, but it seems to me that most people who are stuck are stuck with these SQLite databases.

If you are dead set against offering this, it would be helpful to know that too so that I can get started figuring out the most painless way to begin the migration.

Thanks.

Thanks Jimmy. I guess your post proves exactly what I meant to say with my above post :


I wouldn't like to experience the same problem as you in the future, and that's why I'd like to use the official component, provided it becomes possible one day in my multi-user environment.

Now I'd really love if Peter could come back to this thread and explain us his views on Playback Statistics' future improvements. At least we would know. Peter, thanks in advance.

@ topdownjimmy

I'm reading what you have posted and now a bit confused, what you want here is to have all your stat in custominfo to merge with current official playcount stat.. right?

What foobar version you're using now? (the one that have all your custominfo stat)

There's might be a way, but it still need to rewrite all files tags anyway.