Create Song Playlist

[nkormanik]

Most of us have large repositories of music.

Assume all music is contained in one folder, and sub-folders within that main folder.

I'd like to find a small simple program that can randomly select a number of songs, and send the list to a player program, my preferred is AIMP.

Ideally user should be able to type in a name to look for.  But if no name provided, just include all the files in the folder as potentials.

For instance:  Elton John

Then the number of randomly selected songs to come up with.

For instance: 50

That is, less than or equal to.  There might be only a few Elton John songs.

Then, where to send the created song list.

For instance:  AIMP

An alternative idea would be to copy the songs to another folder.  For instance, if all the songs are on an external USB drive, those songs can be copied to, say, local drive C:  And then played.

Any thoughts or ideas greatly appreciated.

Such a program may already exist, but I haven't found it.

Although, I sort of remember that PowerShell might be able to do this.

Thanks!

Nicholas Kormanik

[publicdomain]

An alternative idea would be to copy the songs to another folder.

Any thoughts or ideas greatly appreciated.

-nkormanik (May 17, 2023, 02:46 AM)

Hi Nick,

No need to copy files, I know how to do it. I've worked with both .m3u/m3u8 and file search.

If nobody comes-up with something as I finish your previous program, I'm totally in for "nkPlaylist"

(I am actively devoted to the coding spree!)

Thanks,
Vic

[nkormanik]

You the man, Vic!

[nkormanik]

Found a program that's close to what I asked for.

https://random-playl...c.com/?ex=DINS-635.1

Best to just cancel the request.

But thanks all.

[Ath]

And there is always our own Skwire, he created sPlaylistMaker, some time ago, that most likely does what you require.

[nkormanik]

The difficulties are often in the details.

The largest problem, and likely insurmountable, lies in number of files in one's music library.

As that number becomes huge, creating even a file list to draw from becomes awful.

So, 'indexing' is thus the answer to this.  And accessing the index.

That's far more than reasonable for DonationCoder friends.

I presently use MediaMonkey, which creates an index.

But if one simply wants a fast random 25 files to quickly listen to for a bit, no easy way.  Sorry folks.

[Deozaan]

But if one simply wants a fast random 25 files to quickly listen to for a bit, no easy way.  Sorry folks.

-nkormanik (May 21, 2023, 12:57 AM)

Plex has something called Smart Playlists. You could create one to grab 25 tracks at random from your library and it will randomize it each time you select the playlist.

Similarly, you could create a Smart Playlist that matches the artist "Elton John" and limit it to 50 tracks and select them randomly and it will do that. I don't have any tracks by Elton John in my library, but I just did one for Radiohead as an example.

Create Song Playlist

The only thing not shown in that screenshot is that it is grabbing them randomly. For some reason when you've selected to filter them by tracks it doesn't allow you to set how you order them. But if you set it to order them randomly while artist or album is still selected, then filter by tracks, it will keep the random part.

Create Song Playlist

[publicdomain]

Hey! This one seems like it's going to help many fellows 

nkPlaylist repo open @ https://github.com/p...licdomain/nkplaylist

"Create random playlist from keywords and folder for opening in a specific player."


So. I'm getting: indexed DB with tags support from all music files in folder for searching + limited random picking + launch generated playlist in a player set by the user.

On the way!

The difficulties are often in the details.

The largest problem, and likely insurmountable, lies in number of files in one's music library.

As that number becomes huge, creating even a file list to draw from becomes awful.

So, 'indexing' is thus the answer to this.  And accessing the index.

That's far more than reasonable for DonationCoder friends.

I presently use MediaMonkey, which creates an index.

But if one simply wants a fast random 25 files to quickly listen to for a bit, no easy way.  Sorry folks.

-nkormanik (May 21, 2023, 12:57 AM)

[nkormanik]

Holy smokes, Vic!  Seems like a herculean challenge.  At $100 per hour, I'd sure run up a sizable bill.

This one not a priority, though.

By the way, Vic!, all these files are in .flac format, in one large USB external hard disk.  Those .flac files I care about the most.

On another external hard disk are .mp3 files, which I don't care about that much, even though there are far more of those in total.

My attitude has been, what the hell, if all those files are going to be made available on the Internet I might as well add them to my collection.

[skwire]

For instance:  Elton John

-nkormanik (May 17, 2023, 02:46 AM)

Years ago, I wrote an audio player called Trout.  Mouser and myself might be the only users of it left.  Hahahaha.   

https://www.donation...forum/?topic=16157.0

Within Trout is a hidden media browser that I never quite finished (hence why it's hidden).  Here's a screenshot with "Artist contains 'Elton John'" as a search:

Create Song Playlist

Astute viewers will notice that it was a Shoutcast and Icecast browser as well.  At any rate, because it's within Trout, it supports the same audio and tag formats that Trout does:

• Supported audio formats (standard): AIFF, AIF, AIFC, MP1, MP2, MP3, OGA, OGG, WAV, MO3, XM, MOD, S3M, IT, & MTM.
• Supported audio formats (with plugins): FLAC, WMA, WMP, WMV, ASF, MID, MIDI, RMI, KAR, WV, WVC, AAC, MP4, M4A, M4B, M4P, APE, AC3, SPX, TTA, OFR, MPC, ALAC, & OPUS.
• Supported tag formats: ID3v1, ID3v2.2/3/4, OGG/FLAC Vorbis comments, WMA, APEv2, & MP4/ALAC/AAC.

Once it's loaded, searches are quick (note the status bar in the screenshot).  With a little work, and if I can find the time, this is most of the way to what you're requesting.

[nkormanik]

Skwire, glad you and Mouser have continued on.  You two, and all the others here, have accomplished so much!