New version of the official Playback Statistics component has been released.
http://foobar2000.org/components

New version highlights:

• Now uses a separate file for playback statistics database, instead of storing it in foobar2000.cfg.
• Backwards compatible with old versions - old database gets imported on first run.
• Keeps track of moved/renamed files as long as you use relevant foobar2000 components to do the moving.
• Faster startup/shutdown compared to the old component.

thanks !

It is possible add rating in your database with quiq tags?
Store rating in one place with playcount statistics is good idea.

Faster is better! (and it really did faster on my PC)

Thanks.

And this is why fb2k doesn't give users control over metadata-storage. Well, one of the reasons at least.

Thanks!

I don't understand, what is the reason exactly? this actually sounds like a sane idea. both rating and play counts are similar entities in function and behavior. they are typically the only tags that store user dependent data, and are subject to change.


edit: thanks for the update. the tagging progress bar no longer pops up for any files ive tested it with, and its half the size

This is great! Looks wonderful in 0.9.5. Thanks.

I would appreciate to store the information in tags (otpionally of course). Is it possible?

check the advanced preferences for
Automatically synchronize file tags with statistics

Why is this advanced setting not recommended?

Thanks for all the work.

It may cause playback interruption.

once again Peter comes out with the goods.

Peter would you consider adding the rating tag into this file as well since it is a very common standard now within the community

Thanks again, loving all the updates.

Silently updating tags of files as they're played - without any kind of confirmation - is considered a dangerous misfeature by many people, for various reasons (tagging scheme incompatibilities, file checksum changes clashing with filesharing software, etc).
If you want your playback statistics stored in file tags, you can as well use Playback Statistics / Synchronize Statistics with File Tags context menu command, which includes proper safety measures, so your files get altered only when you explicitly request such action.

But the only way to display the played count in the Play List is by having written to the file tags (using the non-recommended option). Otherwise the %play_count% field remains unchanged. Or did I miss something?

You don't have to write playback statistics information to tags for being able to access the information. You can use %play_count% to access the information no matter if you chose to use file tags or a separate database file (default). The only thing you have to be aware of is that the files have to be in the media library.

Well, except I don't update the field in the song file, I can't get the information from %play_count%. Could it be as PLAY_COUNT is currently a field in my song tag, that variable %play_count% reads the data from the file and not from the stats database? I mean, in one way or another there is a duplicate field: in the song tag, and in the stats database. The variable %play_count$ refers to which one?

That's correct, file tags currently take priority over fields provided by components. This behavior will be changed in the next foobar2000 0.9.5 beta.

Thanks for the clarification. That was driving me nuts

Is there anyway to share the file that is used for playback statistics? I have all my music on a network drive and play the music on up to three PCs. I would love to be able to share the statistics on all the PCs as well. I would rather not write it as a tag as there is a lag when writing the tag information over a network.

Thanks!

Sorry to do this, but I just bumping this up to (hopefully) get my question answered from the last post.

Thanks!

You can create batch file that will copy PlaybackStatistics.dat to other computers and then start foobar2000. Or even simplier - install foobar2000 on that shared network drive.

This does not seem to work. I just manually copied PlaybackStatistics.dat from one machine to the other and Foobar does not pick up the stats from the other machine.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

Thanks!

PlaybackStatistics.dat is not designed to be shared by multiple foobar2000 installations. I'm afraid there is no way to do what you want.

Thanks Foosion. I will keep the stats separate for now and hope that maybe in a future release you will be able to define a location for the playback statistics dat file and the tracks are identified by something other than their path on the PC (but I won't hold my breath for that update! )

I am new to foobar after using Winamp5 for almost 4 years. In that time the media library has accumulated very extensive playcount statistics (plus thousands of individual track ratings, but that is not the issue of my question here). One of the key considerations for me about switching to foobar, was that I hoped there would be a playcount feature like in Winamp, and I sincerely hoped there would be a way to transfer these statistics from Winamp to my future library in foobar.

I have tried out this component here, but am dissappointed to find hardly any options to it. Is there a possibility I could set the time needed to increase playcount for a track from 1 minute, as it appears to be by default, to 0 (instantly) like in winamp, so that i could manually "cheat" all tracks up to the old values in my winamp.... by clicking and clicking and clicking. I know this would be a lot of work and sounds crazy but I'd be ready to do it because, as mentioned before, these playcount statistcs are important to me.

Or would there indeed be a convenient way to achieve what I want?


Secondly: Where is the statistics file placed?

Is there a way to convert existing "unofficial" %first_played% (format: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss) values to the timestamp format that is used by the official component? I searched but could not find any titleformat function that could do this.

Thanks in advance for any help!

One way to do this would be to create autoplaylists in winamp (play_count = 1, 2 ,3 ...) and import them and manaully set the play count to 1,2,3 etc.

Or if you can somehow get winamp to dump the play_counts into clipboard (in order), you could use foobar's "input from clipboard" to get that info in.



Check out playback statistics custom.




Check out the FAQ here:

As far as I can see, only the way from %*_played_timestamp% to %*_played% is shown there. My question is: Is there a way to create the timestamp format from a string containing the "human readable" format, e.g. with a masstagger script?

Oops, my mistake. i thought you wanted to do the reverse.

AFAIK there isn't a titleformat string to do what you want, however, we know that the format being used is Win32 Filetime, so you could possibly cook up a script on your own.

Why exactly do you want to convert to that format? Doesn't the playback statistics official automatically convert these tags to its own format?

EDIT: This masstagger script only work with year before 2006.

I still have the masstagger script file that can do this (got from this forum) "load from file.." in masstagger to use it.
Here's the link It's also convert "PLAY_COUNTER" to "PLAY_COUNT"

But as Kanak said, Why do you want to do this anyway since it will auto update these tag by itself.

I didn't know it should do that - it does not work here!

So here an example file:


While %play_counter% is recognised, incremented and converted to %play_count%, the value of %first_played% (and - less important - %last_played%) is ignored and FIRST_PLAYED_TIMESTAMP is identical to LAST_PLAYED_TIMESTAMP.

Is this a bug or is there something I could have made wrong (hidden settings, tag format incompatibilites)?

Don't use official play_count if you have stastic tags.

You must use foo_playback_custom.dll, if you want keep your first_player value.

Thanks, that did it.

New version 2.1 out.
A feature request: Currently I can't assign shortcut keys for rating. Any chance it will be possible in the future?

Coolness. Anyone know an easy way to migrate my custominfo ratings (& playcounts)?

Just had a look at it - apart from the rating thing in the context menu is there anything different.
I was hoping I might be able to set the % a track is played before it's rated - have I missed an option?
I played a 20 min track and it counted it played after 1 minute - is that as it should be?

C.

weee... %added% field, finally
thx Peter

Yay for %added%. Now how do i create a autoplaylist of the recently added songs (without cwb_hooks, as it wont be supported in the future, right)?

As of now the added dates for old songs that already have their statistics are weird as the time is taken at the current time. A better choice would be the first played time stamp.

Yeah I noticed that.
What would be really useful is a way to transfer existing %added% data to the playcount database (PlaybackStatistics.dat).

Also (not sure if this is the correct place) but since cwb_hooks is soon(?) to no longer be supported I'd like to put in 2 requests:

1) include a skip count (so that at any time someone hits "next" a %skip% is registered).
2) allow the user to set the % a track is played before it's counted as played (this would also be nice for the %skip% as a user could say if the track is skipped after 90% played don't count it as skipped).

With those 2 additions I wouldn't need cwb_hooks.

C.

Fixed in 2.1.1, thanks for reporting.

Good idea, I'll change that for the next version as well.

I have weird issues: my old rated songs stored in custominfo are dissapeared.
There is any possibility to store them now in playbackstatistic.dat without losing old ones. I think it's a strange way in: First---stamp %rating% tag, Second---update to 2.1.1 and delete custominfo.dll, Third---re-assign ratings via context menu and finally remove %rate% tags from files. It can work, but isn't elegant

Peter, thank you for taking my requests into consideration. I forgot to add that old songs now with weird added date should be fixed to the new way, too.

@orbtwin: I did half what you said yesterday as my rating is in tag. It's not much tedious if you use query to create appropriate playlists with rating = X then set rating using playback statistics.

EDIT: bug report: setting a rated song using this component back to <not set> is not possible currently using shortcut key.

also not work with context menu

while we wait for an update (2.1.2) or something, i'll do the trick with the rated songs, but in a different way:(nearly the same, otherwise).
1.group files in rate+1, rate+2, etc...
2.create a pls from every group, in this way, isn't necesary in stamp %rate % tag.
3.then add new playback.dll and erase custominfo.dll.
4.finally load every pls and re-tag via context menu

But the more strange behaviour it's the weird added date. Now ALL files are added Today, losing albums added in past 40 days.







Peter, thank you for the update (and every byte of fb2k )
thuan: let's do the trick

Melomane: It does work for me, check whether you still have physical rating tag for that particular song.

Changing rating to "not set" currently does not work correctly if you have a metadata field named RATING present in your file tags (eg. as a result of synchronizing playback statistics with file tags), this will be fixed in the next release.


Updated: Version 2.1.2 is available for download.

hi,

before i updated from playback statistics version 1.0 to the new version i used a masstager-scipt to write the %ADDED%-dates as a tag. now with the new version all played songs are correct synchronised with the %ADDED%-tag. but never played songs are not - they have all the added-date in the playback statistics when i start foobar the first time with the new playback statistics version.

for example: a never played song with the %ADDED%-tag has the date "2007-07-10 00:06:56", but in the playback statistics the added-date is "2008-05-04 01:27:16".

what is the problem and how i can resolve it?

thx in advance & greets.

Any possibility that the database is located in the media library's folders?. That way it would be portable, usably across different operating systems (XP32/64, Vista32/64 and even Linux with Wine).
Furthermore I backup my all data but not my OS and programs, so HD failure would result in losing all statistics.

And finally it feels more natural to have the statistics associated with the music in the same place the music is.