Andruha on 20/2/2006 at 17:41
At risk of turning it into an iTunes discussion thread..
Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky
When the "smart" playlist only has one boolean operator [AND], it kind of makes for very weak options. Having parens and an OR (and maybe even a NOT) would be a step in the right direction.
But there are steps in the right direction: one can define one and more rules. A rule can be a NOT filter. Rules can be joined by [AND] and [OR]. A limitation is that [AND] and [OR] apply to *all* rules. This is not perfect but good enouph for most cases.
Quote:
iTunes itself is atrocious at mass tagging/renaming, which sort of exacerbates the situation, coupled with the limitations of the ID3 tags themselves (ie. multiple genre tags would be a good start). On top of which, the fact that everything it does ends up being a hobson's choice between manually telling it what to do on the one hand, or giving it, and it's ludicrously simplistic AI complete control on the other hand, is frustrating, to say the least.
It seems to me that your frustration comes from manually overwriting itunes' file management.. Why do you care how your files are organised? Let iTunes manage it as long as it does not affect music (I am not sure about this, so correct me if I am wrong). Even if iTunes does file management in a "stupid" way, it is a consistent way. Due to this consistency batch operations by users are always an option.
ZylonBane on 20/2/2006 at 18:23
Quote Posted by Tonamel
Why are all media players horrible?
One might just as reasonably ask why you're such a whiny baby lazy-ass. The job of a media player is to PLAY MEDIA, and most of them do a very good and not even remotely horrible job of it.
What you seem to want is some magical mind-reading hand-holding back-rubbing software that will save you the awful traumatic strain of having to build your own damn playlists.
mrPither on 20/2/2006 at 18:29
In defense of iTunes, it has has the coolest ever front-end called (
http://www.steelskies.com/coverflow/) CoverFlow.
It looks up all the
albums from your iTunes library, downloads the corresponding cover art from internet, and makes a 3D album library you can browse and play. It has completely won me over.
The focus is only for albums, not individual songs. Perfect for a "big picture" kind of person.
Unfortunately for Windows users, CoverFlow is currently OS X only. Here is an opportunity for someone with a Windows OS, OpenGL programming skills, and too much spare time...
Aerothorn on 20/2/2006 at 18:54
Years ago I made the mistake of getting an iPod, and so don't have much choice but to use iTunes. It's not that bad, really, but as noted, is a resouce hog - I always see little 'ituneshelp' applications running in the background. Bleh.
Chimpy Chompy on 20/2/2006 at 19:39
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
One might just as reasonably ask why you're such a whiny baby lazy-ass.
I'm sure much good will come of this.
Stitch on 20/2/2006 at 19:59
Yeah, it's pretty easy to tell who around here honed their communication skills solely via the internet.
Gingerbread Man on 20/2/2006 at 20:01
no u lol fag
doctorfrog on 20/2/2006 at 20:22
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
Years ago I made the mistake of getting an iPod, and so don't have much choice but to use iTunes. It's not that bad, really, but as noted, is a resouce hog - I always see little 'ituneshelp' applications running in the background. Bleh.
Earlier versions of iTunes had up to three little sleeper apps that loitered around, smoking and yelling suggestive things at other programs in my RAM. Uninstalled.
Later, my girlfriend got me an iPod, and thus I joined the legion of Pod/Tunes users. I hate/love iTunes, but it doesn't have as much crap as it used to. There is only one service running, the 'iPod helper' service, which can be easily disabled if you have no iPod, or set to 'Manual' so it only starts up when iTunes does.
iTunes is bloaty and slow, and loading a ~6000 track library it takes up nearly 50MB. Minimize it, though, and even when playing,
it takes up only about 6MB. I'm not a programmer or anything, but that sounds like a lot of that memory is going to interface. (Bug: if you minimize to tray, iTunes will still take up its full compliment of memory.)
Unfortunately, iTunes is too damned useful for me to get rid of, as much as I despise it. Though other programs (even Winamp) can be made to sync with an iPod, iTunes is still the easiest and most versatile way to manage dynamic playlists on and off an iPod, which I make extensive use of. I've also created (
http://doctorfrog.blogsome.com/2006/02/20/doctor-frogs-guide-to-creating-your-very-own-personal-top-40-station-using-itunes-winamp-etc/) an elaborate system of dynamic playlists to generate a 'smart' personal radio station that is working out pretty well. I often use the built-in cd-burner to create a CD full of mp3's which turns my DVD player into a 10-hour random jukebox. And so forth.
Just to add to the list of alternatives, check out (
http://www.musikcube.com/) MusikCube. Last I checked, though, creating smart playlists required knowledge of SQL queries, :eww: since it uses SQL to manage your database of music. That may have changed by now, and the project shows promise.
Tonamel on 20/2/2006 at 21:35
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
What you seem to want is some magical mind-reading hand-holding back-rubbing software that will save you the awful traumatic strain of having to build your own damn playlists.
Building even just a 400 song playlist one song at a time is a lot like cleaning a toilet with a toothbrush. Sure, you'll get the job done eventually, but there are better ways to do it. And if you consider going through an entire mp3 collection and tagging every file "magical hand-holding," then I don't want to know what you'd consider tedious.
Yes, media players are meant to play media. I don't see where that was ever in question. But they're all on equal ground there. The way they define themselves is in their file/playlist management. Which is where they all suck.
