filter Adding "restriction filter" to playlists

[fr0stsilver]

Case: Have played 5 star tracks for decades. Want to hear new good tracks. 

Action: Check the "rating" filter inside the playlist and specify 3-4 stars. 

Result: Poweramp now only plays 3-4 stars tracks as filtered. 

[fr0stsilver]

Case: Want some fresh tracks. 

Action: Check the "play count" filter inside the playlist and specify ≤5. 

Result: Poweramp now only plays tracks that are less heard. 

[andrewilley]

Do you actually mean inside Playlists here? As in the Library category called Playlists where you see previously created ordered lists of songs?

Andre

[fr0stsilver]

On 7/21/2020 at 3:40 AM, andrewilley said:

Do you actually mean inside Playlists here? As in the Library category called Playlists where you see previously created ordered lists of songs?

Andre

No. I meant a filter inside any Playlist or Folder. 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Crericper

[fr0stsilver]

@andrewilley Should I rephrase a new thread for this? 

[andrewilley]

Each library category in Poweramp has its own independently set sorting method. which control how the contents should be viewed and played  For example, in Folders mode you could have the songs sorted by Rating (in either forward or reverse order) by tapping the three-dots menu icon and selecting List Options. You can't filter to see ONLY see one particular rating though, it would just change which ones you see/hear first.

If you want to apply this logic to your entire music collection, use the All Songs category and do the same thing there.

Playlists are slightly different in that they are a created list of song titles that already have their own pre-defined playback order. You can re-sort that order for a specific playlist though, by using the same three-dots menu inside the playlist and choosing Re-sort.

Andre

[fr0stsilver]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Each library category in Poweramp has its own independently set sorting method. which control how the contents should be viewed and played  For example, in Folders mode you could have the songs sorted by Rating (in either forward or reverse order) by tapping the three-dots menu icon and selecting List Options. You can't filter to see ONLY see one particular rating though, it would just change which ones you see/hear first.

If you want to apply this logic to your entire music collection, use the All Songs category and do the same thing there.

Playlists are slightly different in that they are a created list of song titles that already have their own pre-defined playback order. You can re-sort that order for a specific playlist though, by using the same three-dots menu inside the playlist and choosing Re-sort.

Andre

Adding filter will make life easier on arranging tracks. 

e.g. Selecting and adding all 5 starred tracks from a folder with 2000 of them to a dedicated playlist. 

It doesn't have to modify the list. It's all about filtering and selecting, which can make my life easier on managing, for example, rated songs and unheard songs. 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Crericper

[andrewilley]

So what you are talking about is not filtering the contents of an existing Playlist, but filtering songs from the main Library so you can add all of the filtered songs to a Playlist (or make a new list). At the moment, you can add content by individual song(s), folder(s), album(s), etc - including multi-selection.

You could also view the 'Top Rated' category and select all of the songs within it for adding to a playlist, which is getting pretty close to what you want. However although you can use its List Options to choose how many songs should be shown, you can't currently change the actual rating threshold - it is pre-configured to show to 2* songs and up. Perhaps @maxmp could add an extra item to the List Options menu for both the 'Top Rated' and 'Low Rated' categories to allow you to set your own threshold values? 

Andre

[fr0stsilver]

@andrewilley 

There are also cases where I'd like to filter tracks inside a folder or a playlist. That said, the filter tool should also exist inside Playlists or any folder-like structures. 

The tool should only show any filtered result instead of modifying anything. Hence, we can use features such as "Select All" to easily select them. 

BTW, the search tool should also be added inside any folder-like structures for further filtering.

(All talks are based on the concept of having hundreds of items needed to be selected.)

[maxmp]

@Crericper thanks for the idea. There are plans to add user-created custom categories to Poweramp, and while technically there are no problems, first attempts shown UI too complicated for users. Customizing the existing categories the way you suggest may be a better idea.

[andrewilley]

5 hours ago, Crericper said:

BTW, the search tool should also be added inside any folder-like structures for further filtering.

It already is. The search icon shown at the bottom of the screen is always global, but there is another search icon that appears in the header of each list which restricts its results to the current view only - e.g. go into an Artist and tap All Artist Songs, then use the upper Search icon to see results from the songs by that artist only.

While that still only allows for simple searches for textual matches, I can't see that it would be terribly difficult (sorry Max!) to add a few other qualification options into the Search pages too - a bit like the advanced search feature on this forum in fact - with some obvious choices being things like song-duration, filesize, star-rating, modified-date, etc.

Ironically, the old system in PA v2 was actually much more akin to the filter concept that you describe.

Andre

[andrewilley]

4 hours ago, maxmp said:

There are plans to add user-created custom categories to Poweramp, and while technically there are no problems, first attempts shown UI too complicated for users.

Was this based on the system I suggested a while back? I put quite a bit of thought into making it as simple as possible from the user's point of view (basically clickable lists to make an entire new Category) although I have no idea how complex the underlying code would be of course:

• You would first create a numbered top-down sorting order, using as many hierarchical layers as you like. A simple list of choices could include genre, composer, year, track artist/album artist, album title, song title, path, filename, etc. There could easily be enough options for all of the esoteric things that people occasionally mention too - such as duration, bitrate, BPM, date added, star rating, most-played, etc. The resulting layered sort order could be as simple as just one entry, or as complex as anyone wishes. There could be optional Forward/Reverse (and even Random?) ordering available for each level - long-press to choose reversed, shuffled, or cancel that choice which would move it back to the unselected area again .
• Once finished, you could then (optionally) long-press to define which of those sorting levels you also want to act as a 'group' level. Selecting no grouping at all would give you a simple flattened All Songs list, or you could set just a one-layer Artists group for example which would contain all of that artist's songs in a long list, or more complex multiple drill-down layering as desired.

That was basically it. So as an example, you could create a sorting order of Genre > Artist > Year (reverse order, so recent years first) > Album Title > Track# , and you could group (i.e. set drill-down levels) on the Genre | Artist | Album Title layers.

Andre

[fr0stsilver]

I will be amazed if I see this to be implemented. 

Concept design for "Advanced Search Filter" 

Note: 

1. New filter button beside the start playing button. 

2. Rules that will filter the current search result based on them. 

3. This design should be implemented in all folder-like structures (e.g. Folders, Playlists) for the most consistent searching experience.  

 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Crericper

[andrewilley]

Would this be something that should stay enabled with any given category (Folders, Albums, etc) or just be a one-off choice?

If more of a one-off choice, might it make more sense to put any extra options into the already-existing Search feature at the top of each list? 

Andre

[fr0stsilver]

19 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

make more sense to put any extra options into the already-existing Search feature at the top of each list

That's right. I think the current "List Option" is quite confusing and unusable. I think changing it to "Filter" will be more intuitive for most people. 

And I also think it is more powerful. 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Crericper

[andrewilley]

'List Options' has nothing to do with filtering or searching, it is there to set the sort order and visual layout style. It does not change the content at all.

I was suggesting the idea of adding more criteria beyond simple text strings into the existing category search feature (i.e. the magnifying glass icon in the header area), then you can play the results by pressing the Play icon in the search screen. This works by added all the matched songs to the Queue, so you can further control playback from there afterwards.

Andre

[fr0stsilver]

3 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I was suggesting the idea of adding more criteria beyond simple text strings into the existing category search feature

Yes, that is what I meant. I didn't fully understand what "List Options" exactly do. However, it looks very similar to the idea of filtering and matching criterias. 

In fact, the concept design image is made based on the screenshot of "List Options". 

Hope this will bring some inspiration. 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Crericper

[andrewilley]

Sorry,  I misunderstood and thought you were talking about the List Options for the Folder/Album/songs/etc view (the one in the menu at the top of the category or song lists).

In the Search screen, List Options defines what type of results are to be returned - which as you say is much more relevant for the global Search feature where you can search for Album titles, song titles, Genres, Folder names, etc. When using the more limited search icon in the top header area, it is already filtered to just one category so you are right that the list is not especially useful until you remove that category filter.

 

Andre

[ODD]

i am totally thrilled about this idea.

@maxmpis there any progress?

[maxmp]

@ODD noted, added to TODO list. Thanks for the request. Some features, such as rating and play count could be added rather earlier.

[Ash Roarshock]

@maxmp

It would be awesome if there was a way to sort by top rated or most played artist and not just songs. Like if an artist had 50 five star songs, Poweramp would be able to sort artists category by that number.

I think it would have to be by total number and not by percentages. So if an artist only had 10 songs and 7 of them were 5 star, I don't think that would trump an artist with 100 songs and only 50 were 5 star. Also if I've played one song a billion times, and no other artist songs combined reached that number, I still think that's my top played artist.

This would get way too complicated to implement to albums. An album with 8 songs, all 5 stars would want to be higher than an album with 20 songs with 9 being 5 stars and 11 being 1 star. Play count would make no sense either if I've played one song a billion times and the rest of the album once. Albums could be sorted by top rated, but I think it would have to be a manual rating added to the album just like rating each song. That's a whole different feature request though.

 

[GeilerHeinz]

On 7/22/2020 at 8:11 PM, andrewilley said:

Was this based on the system I suggested a while back? I put quite a bit of thought into making it as simple as possible from the user's point of view (basically clickable lists to make an entire new Category) although I have no idea how complex the underlying code would be of course:

• You would first create a numbered top-down sorting order, using as many hierarchical layers as you like. A simple list of choices could include genre, composer, year, track artist/album artist, album title, song title, path, filename, etc. There could easily be enough options for all of the esoteric things that people occasionally mention too - such as duration, bitrate, BPM, date added, star rating, most-played, etc. The resulting layered sort order could be as simple as just one entry, or as complex as anyone wishes. There could be optional Forward/Reverse (and even Random?) ordering available for each level - long-press to choose reversed, shuffled, or cancel that choice which would move it back to the unselected area again .
• Once finished, you could then (optionally) long-press to define which of those sorting levels you also want to act as a 'group' level. Selecting no grouping at all would give you a simple flattened All Songs list, or you could set just a one-layer Artists group for example which would contain all of that artist's songs in a long list, or more complex multiple drill-down layering as desired.

That was basically it. So as an example, you could create a sorting order of Genre > Artist > Year (reverse order, so recent years first) > Album Title > Track# , and you could group (i.e. set drill-down levels) on the Genre | Artist | Album Title layers.

Andre

That would be such a powerful enhancement.

Speaking of complicated: Those user, who wish to customize their categories, should be prepared to invest additional "brainpower" and manual work for it to accomplish. 

Regards 

[fr0stsilver]

@maxmp An additional idea based on this topic: A selector utilizing the filtering features we've talked about here, which allows us to select and move around large number of songs easily. 

Edited October 26, 2021 by Crericper

[HJicub Jiikol]

Rule based playlists would be awesome!