[Staying in sync with the Poweramp DB [Solved]]

Hey,
So I have been messing around with the API.
I was wondering what's the best way to stay in sync with the Poweramp DB.
I'm getting all the data I need via the Content Provider but I don't think it's right to reload the whole DB manually.
I looked into Content Observer but I don't think they work with Poweramp . I successfully implemented on for SMS (for testing) but can't implement one for new songs being added to pamp.

Any ideas? I'd like to stay in sync with "played_times" for each song for example.

Anyway. I found a solution.

[Lost Ratings ; Export/Import Ratings]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

How what should work? Poweramp, or the third-party New Playlist Manager app? Please be specific as this thread has meandered a bit.

As Max has said, Poweramp treats ratings as database-created items only, and as such they are somewhat transient insofar as if the database is damaged or cleared, or the precise audio file details or locations get changed, any entries (which including ratings) will be lost. That's what the new backup feature is for, but you need to use it with care and keep a master copy safe somewhere that you are not going to overwrite with potentially inaccurate content if you do it as a daily process.
 

@maxmp Clearly Poweramp should not be attempting to become a universal batch tag editing solution, that is well beyond its remit and scope - and as you say, potential task killing would make it dangerous without creating a background process to handle it like New Playlist Manager seems to do. So mass writing of rating data to entire music collections is out, that should be left to more dedicated apps. However I can't see why writing an individual file is any more dangerous than using the existing Info/Tags tag editor feature? If a file format doesn't support tagging or is broken, surely that feature won't work either, yet it is still shown in the interface? For the vast majority of files with either ID3v2 ("POPM") or Vorbis ("RATING") tags, or even APEv2 or iTunes downloaded AAC files, then isn't it similarly as reliable (or unreliable) as the Info/tags editor?

Merely reading any existing rating info from source audio files during the full scan process ought to be a fairly trivial feature to add though, which would help a lot of users. Writing new ratings info back into files on-the-fly, as this thread requests, should certainly be something that the user is shown a pre-warning message about - either when that mode is first enabled in Settings, or when a problematic file format is noticed - so they are aware of the risks before proceeding. To protect against task killing during writing, I would suggest building a temporary copy of the file containing the new data first, and only once writing is verified as complete should the old file be removed and the new one instantly renamed to replace it. This is fairly standard practice for programs needing to safely update existing documents. Doing this would probably prevent most audio glitching if the user made a change during playback of the same file too, although this is something that is already permitted in the existing Info/Tags editor screen anyway.

Andre

I agree and super fine with just read-only ratings. I can modify them on another app or PC.

[Lost Ratings ; Export/Import Ratings]

On 1/10/2022 at 1:21 AM, andrewilley said:

If you just want to get ratings copied from your music files straight into Poweramp, please forget the red-herring of playlists. Ratings have nothing to do with playlists outside of PA's own customised creation mode, which won't work anywhere else.

Just make sure that your properly rated song files are on your phone, and use New Playlist Manager's 'ratings' feature (NOT its playlist features) to copy the rating data from each individual song file over to Poweramp's internal music database. That's it, no playlists needed.

Andre

Hello, a few questions if you don't mind

Is this possible only on the paid version (paid version) or also on this one (free version) ? I can't find it on the free version.

On 1/9/2022 at 10:00 PM, flyingdutchman said:

@Ash Roarshock Music Playlist Manager has no problem reading your ratings from a track as long as it is a) the popm tag that has the rating and b) it is ID3v2 . This routine is robust and will update the Poweramp database with the rating it finds.

The EXT-X-Rating in a playlist is proprietory to Poweramp so you will not find any other apps other than my music playlist manager where i have implemented this too

If you need more specific help, just send me an email

Also what are the tags that the app can actually recognize?
Is it just "POPULARIMETER" , "RATING MM" and "RATING WMP"? Because I tried it with the "RATING" tag that foobar2000 uses and the app doesn't see any ratings.

Thanks