Is it possible to shuffle ONLY top-rated, or ONLY low-rated tracks while using the thumbs up/down ratings style?

[LeeroySpankinz]

Explanation:
I've been shuffling my 1-4 star rated songs for years with PA. It will always play a top rated track while in the star rating mode.

Recently, I decided I want to start using the thumbs up/down rating mode to rate songs.

Attempt:
Open PA > Select Top Rated list from the library > Select shuffle option at the top of the list.

Result:
The next song in this mode seems to be random. It can be an unrated song, low rated song, or top rated song.
 

Could this be a bug? Or might there be an option that can solve my issue?

Thx!

[andrewilley]

Ratings are always stored internally in numeric format, even if you later choose to display them using a Thumbs Up/Down format. So when you press the 'Thumb-Up' icon, that song will internally be assigned a 5-star rating. Conversely, using 'Thumb-Down' will assign a 1-star rating. Anything in your music collection that had previously been assigned a rating of between 2-4 stars won't show as either Thumbs-Up or Thumbs-Down in the Player Screen or lists, but it will still have that existing 2-4 star rating stored internally.

The Low-Rated Category displays 1-star items only - which will all show as Thumbs-Down if that's the mode you have selected.

The Top-Rated Category shows any songs rated between 2-stars and 5-stars. So if you are using an old music collection containing assorted 1-5 star rated songs, but you are viewing in Thumbs mode, the Top-Rated list will actually include some songs that seem to be unrated on the screen, but are actually old 2-4 stars items. Thus when you view or shuffle the Top-Rated Category, you will hear all the same songs that you would have done before - a random selection of 2-5 star tracks - but some will show on-screen as unrated because the Thumbs system doesn't display anything for 2-4 stars.

Currently the only way to change that would be to switch back to viewing by Stars and use the Top-Rated list to find and remove the ratings from any 2-4 star songs (or change them to 1-star or 5-star if you prefer). Then when you go back to Thumbs view, there will only be 1-star, 5-star, or Unrated songs - and that will then display and shuffle as you expect. 

Andre

[LeeroySpankinz]

That's an incredibly thorough explanation. I understand how it works now.

My goal was to start using the thumbs up as a favorites list and the thumbs down as an alternative, "unsure-yet-whether-to-keep-or-not" list, both of which I can shuffle.

You make this forum a smooth and comfortable place to troubleshoot. Thank you.

[andrewilley]

Your usage method would work fine as long as you realise that Up and Down ratings will overwrite any existing star ratings to values of 1-star or 5-stars. And you'd need to clear any 2-4 ratings to declutter the list.

There are tricks that would enable you to do that as a one-off batch process if you want. For example, you could add all of your 'Top-Rated' songs to a temporary playlist, then export that playlist to a file, and then use any text editor to search-and-replace the "#EXT-X-RATING:2", "#EXT-X-RATING:3" and "#EXT-X-RATING:4" values and change them to either 0 (unrated) or 5 (which is the same as Thumbs Up). Then allow Poweramp to scan that modified playlist back in again and the new ratings would get applied to all of the songs. Note: re-importing ratings requires Settings=>Library=>Playlists=>Import Ratings to be enabled. 

@maxmp I tend to agree with the poster that the Top-Rated list no longer appears to make sense once a user has switched to using Thumbs, as it includes songs that seem to be neither Thumbs Up nor Thumbs Down. Perhaps either the Top Rated list should only show 5-star items in this case, or alternatively 2-4 star items should also be treated as Thumbs-Up for display purposes?  Even better, there was some discussion a while ago about adding a simple low/high threshold slider into the List Options menus for the Rated categories - so users could just set their preference for Low Rated to be (for example) 0-2 and Top Rated as 3-5.

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@LeeroySpankinz you could of course use Music Playlist Manager which allows you to create Poweramp playlists based upon select ratings or create (app provides an sql builder) your own sql query and create playlist that way. For example

ratings >=3 AND ratings < 5  would give you ratings 3 and 4. You could even add in genre or other criteria

 

Edited January 19 by flyingdutchman

[LeeroySpankinz]

On 1/19/2024 at 2:47 AM, andrewilley said:

...or alternatively 2-4 star items should also be treated as Thumbs-Up for display purposes?  Even better, there was some discussion a while ago about adding a simple low/high threshold slider into the List Options menus for the Rated categories - so users could just set their preference for Low Rated to be (for example) 0-2 and Top Rated as 3-5.

Andre

I love both of those ideas!