Lost Ratings ; Export/Import Ratings

[MotleyG]

5 hours ago, andrewilley said:

But if it takes a while to write, so be it - that's up to the user to decide whether the waiting time is worth it to them. It would only be single files at a time, and would only happen if the user opts for it.

I can just imagine how many new threads this would create. Even with the regular use cases of existing features that work as expected, some users can really go off the tracks. I see this being a very polarizing problem with all of the potential tagging formats.🤯

[andrewilley]

7 hours ago, MotleyG said:

I can just imagine how many new threads this would create. 

Yes, there would certainly need to be warning messages (and even an "Experimental" disclaimer?) when enabling it. However I don't see it as any more potentially destructive to non-standard files than the current Info/Tags editor, which carries no warnings at all.

One interim solution (to see how reliably it works in the wild) might be to initially include saving ratings data as part of the Info/Tags editor screen. So rather than writing ratings back to files on-the-fly when you move your finger over the five stars bar, you would additionally have to go into the tag editor in order to write content back into the file - just like you do for any other tag changes you make. Then later, if there isn't a deluge of complaints from users whose non-standard files have become corrupted, an on-the-fly option could eventually be added (with suitable disclaimer) via Settings. 

I feel that reading ratings from files during a rescan is much less problematical though, and should probably become the app default - just like reading every other embedded tag into the database is automatic and transparent. The only potential issue would be where an embedded tag in a file contains different content to an existing (already created internally) rating value. I think that would be best served by an "Overwrite existing internal rating for this song? (Current=4 stars, New=3 stars)" prompt during the scan, with three options "Always" | "Prompt Each Time" | "Never". Unless the user actively chooses the prompt version, they would only be bothered by the message once, which I think is a fair compromise.

Andre

[MotleyG]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I feel that reading ratings from files during a rescan is much less problematical though, and should probably become the app default - just like reading every other embedded tag into the database is automatic and transparent. The only potential issue would be where an embedded tag in a file contains different content to an existing (already created internally) rating value. I think that would be best served by an "Overwrite existing internal rating for this song? (Current=4 stars, New=3 stars)" prompt during the scan, with three options "Always" | "Prompt Each Time" | "Never". Unless the user actively chooses the prompt version, they would only be bothered by the message once, which I think is a fair compromise.

I agree, reading ratings shouldn’t have any impact on the file structure. It is just the writing part where any changes to the header could cause a failure for all of the reasons posted earlier by Max, and probably more. Even the tag editor doesn’t allow more than a single file to be done at a time. The idea of a mobile device batch editing 100’s or even 1000’s of files with one “Apply” is where I see things going badly.

[andrewilley]

@MotleyG Absolutely, batch tag editing is not a route that PA ought to go down, that's not its purpose. It is a music player, leave batch processing to other programs designed for the task - ideally on a computer to be honest.

Andre

[Ash Roarshock]

On 1/12/2022 at 4:08 PM, andrewilley said:

 

I would suggest ratings should be auto-read during the next Full Rescan (but if existing different ratings already exist in a user's database, prompt the user before overwriting anything).

And when a user later changes any rating, another pop-up a box would appear (with a potential consequences warning) asking whether to write rating back to file: Always, Prompt Each Time, or Never.

Andre

Maybe this could be as simple as a tick box to always ignore embedded ratings if a rating already exists in Poweramp.

Having Poweramp import the rating during a scan is a massive help. The editing is not such a big deal as you can always export a playlist and fix them on a PC later if needed. I don't foresee a whole lot of people embedding and updating tags on the PC, only to edit them in Poweramp and then transfer the audio file back to the PC so they are updated. In most cases they are either going to maintain everything in Poweramp or on the PC. Not back and forth.

In the post above I was talking about the playlist manager app. Unfortunately it crashes every time I open a big playlist and every time I try to "update Poweramp rating from tag". It updates Poweramp database fine if I try to update from an m3u embedded rating. Every other feature I tried works fine and didn't have issues communicating with Poweramp. It's just the one feature I wanted to use it for doesn't work. Again, multiple reviews on the play store reported it stopped working and you have to downgrade Poweramp to an older version before the playlist manager app fully works again. I also tried this on my wife's phone with the same result.

 

[flyingdutchman]

@Ash Roarshock the good news is that ( after at least a year ),  I have been able to restore, in my app Music Playlist Manager,  the functionality to update mp3 ratings POPM tag with the ratings recorded in Poweramp. The reverse (populate the Poweramp database with ratings found on the POPM tag) always worked.

Furthermore you can also update other tags using the IDV32 editor, single tracks, whole albums or selections.

The next version will be out soon

 

[andrewilley]

5 hours ago, Ash Roarshock said:

Maybe this could be as simple as a tick box to always ignore embedded ratings if a rating already exists in Poweramp.

That is basically what I suggested - although I mooted three options for determine whether to overwrite when there is clash between a file tag and an existing database ratings - Always Overwrite, Never Overwrite, and Prompt Each Time. The Prompt option would also offer to change to Always or Never modes if you wish - there could be a lot of clicking ahead with a large music collection otherwise! 

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@andrewilley as the updating pa2popm is a background process, there can be no user interaction. For the popm2pa i have a setting to overwrite existing rating

[andrewilley]

@flyingdutchman Sorry, I was talking about if Max decides to implement reading POPM ratings from files, within PA itself. This thread gets confusing!

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

On 12/24/2021 at 2:02 PM, flyingdutchman said:

@Ash Roarshock for what it is worth, point 2 is exactly what my app music playlist manager does, reads ratings and times played from the popm tag and updates the Poweramp database. Any subsequent changes to ratings can be easily backed up to a simple text file (and restored too of course).

Although it has routines to write to the popm tag, restrictions in versions above android9 have broken this

Glad to announce that the issue of not being able to update POPM tags for android10 and above has now been resolved.

 

so Music Playlist Manager can now write your Poweramp ratings to the POPM tag of the actual music file. 

and even when you lost your ratings in Poweramp for some reason, this app will repopulate your Poweramp ratings