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Thread: Looking to exclude files from smart playlists

  1. #1

    Question Looking to exclude files from smart playlists

    My use case: I use smart playlists to create dynamic music playlists, setting criteria by genre (punk rock and rock and rockabilly, for example) then setting them in random order and setting a list limit of 75 songs. I have lots of files that I want to keep in my library but don't want coming up in a playlist (for example, a bonus disc with lots of 20 second outtakes.) I tag these files with a one star user rating.

    My question: is there a way I can use a smart playlist criteria to exclude by criteria? Currently it only seems to offer "all" or "any" options but none that can exclude.

    Thank you for any ideas in advance!

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by willduan View Post
    My use case: I use smart playlists to create dynamic music playlists, setting criteria by genre (punk rock and rock and rockabilly, for example) then setting them in random order and setting a list limit of 75 songs. I have lots of files that I want to keep in my library but don't want coming up in a playlist (for example, a bonus disc with lots of 20 second outtakes.) I tag these files with a one star user rating.

    My question: is there a way I can use a smart playlist criteria to exclude by criteria? Currently it only seems to offer "all" or "any" options but none that can exclude.

    Thank you for any ideas in advance!
    Try adding the criteria for "user rating is not 1" . I believe that will work for what you want. It would be an "AND" condition. Another option is "duration is greater than say 1 minute" That might be easier. You could add both.

  3. #3

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    Thank you for the thoughtful reply. When I tried setting "user rating not 1," it allowed in songs that don't meet the criteria for genre. For example:
    overall: meets any criteria
    Rule 1: says genre = punk rock
    Rule 2: says genre = rockabilly
    At the point you get a playlist with Punk and Rockabilly, as intended

    When you add user rating !=1, the list populates with all songs from any genre not ratting "blacklisted," in this case putting Simon and Garfunkel in between Rancid and Reverend Horton Heat, which is somewhat jarring as well as negating the point of multi=genre playlists.

    If you set the overall rule to "all" instead of "any" you get a null result as there are no multi-genre files.

    About the minute limit, some of the songs I want to exclude are full length.
    Thanks again for the thoughtful ideas. Open to any other suggestions.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
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    Quote Originally Posted by willduan View Post
    Thank you for the thoughtful reply. When I tried setting "user rating not 1," it allowed in songs that don't meet the criteria for genre. For example:
    overall: meets any criteria
    Rule 1: says genre = punk rock
    Rule 2: says genre = rockabilly
    At the point you get a playlist with Punk and Rockabilly, as intended

    When you add user rating !=1, the list populates with all songs from any genre not ratting "blacklisted," in this case putting Simon and Garfunkel in between Rancid and Reverend Horton Heat, which is somewhat jarring as well as negating the point of multi=genre playlists.

    If you set the overall rule to "all" instead of "any" you get a null result as there are no multi-genre files.

    About the minute limit, some of the songs I want to exclude are full length.
    Thanks again for the thoughtful ideas. Open to any other suggestions.
    OK, it has to be ALL, which is the AND condition. We need to be clear on the logic to solve this. Try these two rules:

    Rule 1: says genre contains rock
    Rule 2: says user rating != 1

    Rule 1 will grab punk rock, rockability and likely any genre which contains rock. That may be more than you want. Then it becomes a question of what other criteria is unique to what is showing up as unwanted in your playlist. For example let's say you get files with the genre of rock that you don't want. Is there something unique about them like maybe you stored them all under a folder called rock ? If so then you could add a third rule which cays:

    filepath does not contain the location of my rock files

    I find I have to think these through to find the solution. Often it's in the logic. A worst case scenario is a brute force approach to the genre exclusion where you would explicitly exclude all other genres that you don't want. The good news here is that there are only about 20 or so for music. So this would look something like:

    Rule 1: says genre is not Country
    Rule 2: says genre is not Alternative
    ...
    ...
    Rule X: says genre is not the last unwanted genre
    Rule Y: says user rating != 1

    You'd continue adding genre exclusions until you eliminate everything you don't want. It makes a rule a bit larger but will work.
    Last edited by jbinkley60; 01-04-2016 at 07:45 AM.

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