Tag-based MP3 player?
TychoCelchuuu
Anememone Join Date: 2002-03-23 Member: 345Members
Anememone Join Date: 2002-03-23 Member: 345Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Not ID3 tags you dopes</div>Winamp, which has generally been my MP3 player of choice, kind of annoys me with the way it does playlists. If I have 2 folders, and I want one playlist to have some songs from each and the other playlist to have a different set from each, I have to go in and manually add each song one by one, and if I ever lose those playlists, I'm basically boned.
What I want is a player that lets me tag all my movie soundtracks "movie," all my game music "game," all my fantasy movie soundtracks "movie" and "fantasy," all my fantasy game soundtracks "fantasy" and "game," and all my sci-fi movie sountracks "movie" and "sci-fi," and all my sci-fi game soundtracks "game" and "sci-fi," and so on and so forth, then let me make playlists comprising of all sci-fi or all movie or all movie and game or something.
Does this exist? Anywhere? On EARTH?
What I want is a player that lets me tag all my movie soundtracks "movie," all my game music "game," all my fantasy movie soundtracks "movie" and "fantasy," all my fantasy game soundtracks "fantasy" and "game," and all my sci-fi movie sountracks "movie" and "sci-fi," and all my sci-fi game soundtracks "game" and "sci-fi," and so on and so forth, then let me make playlists comprising of all sci-fi or all movie or all movie and game or something.
Does this exist? Anywhere? On EARTH?
Comments
So you could just make a playlist for each of the above, and then add one or more playlists depending what you want to hear..
I'm pretty sure you can add the contents of a Winamp playlist to another winamp playlist - or rather, pretty sure you can add a winamp playlist to the list inside winamp - that it goes through.
So you could just make a playlist for each of the above, and then add one or more playlists depending what you want to hear..
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Right, but if I lose one playlist in that chain I have to start all over again for that one. And I'd need to make like a million playlists, because I'd need one playlist for pirate songs, one playlist for movie soundtracks, one playlist for pirate songs that are part of movie soundtracks, one playlist for pirate songs that are part of game soundtracks, one playlist for sci-fi songs, one playlist for sci-fi songs that are movie soundtracks, one playlist for sci-fi songs that are from game soundtracks, etc. And every time I get a new song, I have to add it to like a million playlists, save each of those individual playlists, then rebuild every playlist that includes one of THOSE playlists as a component.
And Psyke, it only lets me add one genre.
I'm using Foobar2000 with <a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=44012" target="_blank">the quicksearch toolbar</a>. I can search for all songs in my library which are a certain genre and add them to a playlist instantly.
Or I could easily tag them with a new ID3 field called "tags" including any tags I want seperated by commas, then search "%tags% HAS "punk"" or whatever. It wouldn't be perfect but it'd be something.
personally, I just rate every song that comes on my zune, and I make playlists that feature only 4 or 5 star songs, and I skip any I don't want to hear at a given moment.
sounds a little anal retentive to me. I assume this must be a rare, if not nonexistent, feature for a reason. do you really have urges to listen to music that's, say, sci-fi, from movies, but not video games, and so on? and do you have a big enough music library that such a thing would even be possible? and do you have the patience to go through and tag every song?
personally, I just rate every song that comes on my zune, and I make playlists that feature only 4 or 5 star songs, and I skip any I don't want to hear at a given moment.
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There are some Beatles songs I like a lot (Let it Be, Twist and Shout, etc). I keep these songs on my main playlist so that they show up when I listen to music. It's the same way with Star Wars: some songs, like The Battle of Yavin or the Imperial March, are the kind I like to listen to and I like to show up on my main playlist. Same with many, many soundtracks and a few bands.
Sometimes, though, I want to just listen to Star Wars music. Not just the really good songs on my main playlist, but all the Star Wars music. Or, I just want to listen to Beatles. Not just the few Beatles songs I regularly listen to.
I have two options. I can put all the Beatles songs in Beatles folders, Star Wars in Star Wars folders, etc, and add those songs by hand to the main playlist. Then when I want to just listen to the Beatles or Star Wars, I go to one of those folders. The problem is, if I ever rebuild my main playlist, I have to painstakingly hunt down those songs I like in the folders containing ALL the songs.
The other option is to stick the songs I like in my "main music" folder. Unfortunately, if I want to listen to just Star Wars or just the Beatles, I have to go add those songs in the main folder to the "just Star Wars" playlist.
The third option would actually just be to have 2 copies of each song like that but uh, that would quickly gobble up too much space.
The third option would actually just be to have 2 copies of each song like that but uh, that would quickly gobble up too much space.
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SYM LINKS!
so, they are not actually letting you tag each song with multiple tags, but you can file each song in multiple locations with no significant amount of HDD waste.
Unless you delete the playlist, how are you going to "lose" it? will it just jump across a few folders to mess with you. Or hide behind your e-sofa?
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That's a very good question, and the answer is that it's less a question of me losing the playlist and more a question of me constantly choosing new songs for the main playlist and rearranging the actual songs on the different playlists.
And TOmekki, I answered that in the post a bit above this one.
My music collection is quite well organized with folders for each artist and sub-folders for albums, all of which are tagged appropriately. I just direct Winamp to scan the whole music folder, and whenever I add new content I try to rate the individual songs. The Global Hotkeys make this easy, as a song plays I just hit the appropriate hotkey (for instance, 5 stars is CTRL+ALT+F5). Then in the Media Library I've created a Smart View (right click "Local Media") for ratings of 4 or above and using the search I can narrow down what I want to listen to a genre/artist/album/etc. You can even create more advanced Smart Views that match all kinds of fields. For example I have a Smart View for my favorite Brazilian music that matches the genres 'bossa nova' or 'samba' or the artists 'jobim' or 'moraes' or anything with 'brasil' in the album name AND that have a rating of 4 or above.
The search is very powerful and quite fun to use if you have a big collection. It will find as you type and match words from all the IDvx tags. For example, if I type "twe sou" I can narrow down to the Ocean's Twelve soundtrack from hundreds of albums.
There are different ways to have library and playlist interact but I like the enqueue on click the best (Preferences>Media Library>Library Options). Basically it allows you to run through a search filter and just click on a few different songs to quickly add them to your current playlist.
Like I said, Global Hotkeys are an essential part of how I use Winamp. I basically use them for every command from 'play' to 'open media library' to 'toggle shuffle mode'. They're easy to set up and very useful.
My collection is getting close to 40 gigs, which is a fair size, and I'm starting to see Winamp have some trouble loading it quickly. I don't know if that's a limitation of the program or my computer, but I assume it should run fast on your new rig. That's the only downside I can think of though.
Edit: I forgot to mention. I like to have the most real-estate possible on the ML, so I've collapsed all the useless stuff. Basically the only thing I see is the track selection. I've hidden the "Show Track Info" stuff as well as the two top windows.
Oh shi-
--Scythe--
Or you don't even have to bother with play lists, just separate the genres, then band and albums by folders and when you want to listen to something go in the folder and play it. Just drag the whole album on the play list and such.
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But then if I want a playlist that contains half the songs from one genre and half from another, I'd have to sort it all out manually.
Take care of your MP3 tags. The benefits you'll reap are worthwhile. I can quickly listen to all jazz, ska and blues in my collection released between 1955 and 1975 Or all electronic music on the warp record label. etc.
If you need to retag your badly ripped collection, then I recommend you use MusicBrainz.
I have about 60GB of mp3s and I haven't looked at a folder to play them in years.
you can add as much data as you want to certain fields in the ID3v2 tag and the winamp library will still sort by them (for instance you can make the genre field "rock jazz contemporary"). what you would then need to do is find a ID3v2 editor that lets you do a batch append to the end of a tag.
What I would then do is select all your music, and tell it to clear the genre tag, and then go through and select each genre and have the program append that genre to the genre field.
Then using winamp library you just type in the genre(s) you want and it will filter them out for you.
Only problem?
finding an ID3 editor that will append (instead of just over writing). If you can code, I would suggest doing it your self (ID3 tags are actually very simple to play with, just try opening an MP3 is a text ed).
good luck <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
And puzl, unlikely as it sounds, MusicBrainz doesn't have a lot of the music I listen to. Obscure game soundtracks are tough to tag.
I tested it out.
made the genre field "rock jazz contemp"
you can type them in any order, full/partial/anything. it is kinda awesome <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
again, only problem is finding a program that will ADD to existing tags instead of overwriting them.
Or you get in an IRC kinda program and a random song is played from a random library and you have to guess who's it is.
Maybe I just found a new project for myself.
yes, yes you can tycho <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
I tested it out.
made the genre field "rock jazz contemp"
you can type them in any order, full/partial/anything. it is kinda awesome <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
again, only problem is finding a program that will ADD to existing tags instead of overwriting them.
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Sweet, that solves my problem! I assume Winamp can search through them, or are you using some other player?