philipx
11-12-2003, 09:33 PM
The new iTunes skin(s) for QCD really made me want to ask for a feature.
The world of music players is split in two: simple players with excellent interface (QCD, WinAmp, etc) on one side and library managers with excellent playlist management on the other side (iTunes, WMP9, JRiver Media Jukebox). Then there's MusicMatch Jukebox's and foobar2000's attempts to bridge the two by adding a somehow better than average library management.
I wish QCD would join MMJB and fb2k in adding more advance playlist management. While this can be done through a plugin, I think it would be really nice to have it built in the interface. Again the iTunes skin offers a perfect example on how this could be handled. I'll get to it in a second.
Now of course I can spend a lot of time creating my own playlists and then loading them in QCD. Alas QCD doesn't offer support for playlists as entities, but in simply loads the files from the playlist. If you load 10 playlists into QCD there is no real way to switch between them (or see that you have 10 pls loaded).
So getting back at the iTunes skin, imagine the left area reading Library, Radio, My Top Rated, etc would be used for playlist management. In my example it would display the 10 playlists I have loaded, allowing me to switch between them. Clicking on one would display the content of the playlist in the ...err... playlist window :)
One feature that I have loved in the Library Managers (iT, WMP, JRMJ) is the dynamic playlist. And this is the improvement to the ummm... previous improvement ;)
The smart playlist/dynamic playlist is a playlist that dynamically changes its content. In all the 3 library managers this is done through a small rule editor. Examples of smart playlists:
* Top 25 most listened tracks ( size = 25, order by Play Count, descending)
* Last 50 tracks added to the playlist (size = 50, order by Date Added, ascending)
* Top 25 most listened Hard Rock tracks ( size = 25, Genre = Hard Rock, order by Play Count, descending)
Even stuff like:
* All Genre=Jazz tracks - (now of course one could create a Jazz playlist and load it, but making it dynamic allows one to have it updated with all the tracks added to QCD without having to update the file).
could be nicely handled by this playlist manager...
I'm pretty sure Paul can tell us if it's easy to do or not :D
Thanks a lot anyway!
The world of music players is split in two: simple players with excellent interface (QCD, WinAmp, etc) on one side and library managers with excellent playlist management on the other side (iTunes, WMP9, JRiver Media Jukebox). Then there's MusicMatch Jukebox's and foobar2000's attempts to bridge the two by adding a somehow better than average library management.
I wish QCD would join MMJB and fb2k in adding more advance playlist management. While this can be done through a plugin, I think it would be really nice to have it built in the interface. Again the iTunes skin offers a perfect example on how this could be handled. I'll get to it in a second.
Now of course I can spend a lot of time creating my own playlists and then loading them in QCD. Alas QCD doesn't offer support for playlists as entities, but in simply loads the files from the playlist. If you load 10 playlists into QCD there is no real way to switch between them (or see that you have 10 pls loaded).
So getting back at the iTunes skin, imagine the left area reading Library, Radio, My Top Rated, etc would be used for playlist management. In my example it would display the 10 playlists I have loaded, allowing me to switch between them. Clicking on one would display the content of the playlist in the ...err... playlist window :)
One feature that I have loved in the Library Managers (iT, WMP, JRMJ) is the dynamic playlist. And this is the improvement to the ummm... previous improvement ;)
The smart playlist/dynamic playlist is a playlist that dynamically changes its content. In all the 3 library managers this is done through a small rule editor. Examples of smart playlists:
* Top 25 most listened tracks ( size = 25, order by Play Count, descending)
* Last 50 tracks added to the playlist (size = 50, order by Date Added, ascending)
* Top 25 most listened Hard Rock tracks ( size = 25, Genre = Hard Rock, order by Play Count, descending)
Even stuff like:
* All Genre=Jazz tracks - (now of course one could create a Jazz playlist and load it, but making it dynamic allows one to have it updated with all the tracks added to QCD without having to update the file).
could be nicely handled by this playlist manager...
I'm pretty sure Paul can tell us if it's easy to do or not :D
Thanks a lot anyway!