What's up with the ratings?

[Ricky L.]

For some reason, the star ratings that I've set for each song in my playlists keep reverting back to the default setting. I've had to go through the entire category and redo them several times but it doesn't seem to save it. It's getting pretty annoying. 

[andrewilley]

Ratings are saved in the music database, so can get lost if there is any corruption or the database needs to be rebuilt.

Poweramp saves Ratings as part of physical playlist files by the way (take a look at a saved M3U file in a text editor) so if you cause a playlist to be reloaded from its source M3U file - for example by changing any of its contents externally - then any ratings from the M3U file will be re-applied back to the songs. That feature can be disabled by turning off PA Settings=>Library=>Playlists=>Import Ratings.

You can Export all your Ratings to a backup by the way, PA Settings=>Export Settings/Data and Import Settings/Data. Tick the options you want saved (or restored).

Andre

[Ricky L.]

I followed those steps but after I click "import system library playlists" it says, "no permission". 

[andrewilley]

@Ricky L. Why are you trying import system (i.e. generic Android database) playlists? They are effectively obsolete and depreciated nowadays, and no longer supported by Android.

Andre

[Ricky L.]

That's what I was instructed to do. What do you suggest? 

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, Ricky L. said:

That's what I was instructed to do. What do you suggest? 

By who? What sort of playlists are you trying to use, and what are you trying to do with them?

Andre

[JohnD]

5 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Ratings are saved in the music database, so can get lost if there is any corruption or the database needs to be rebuilt.

...

You can Export all your Ratings to a backup by the way, PA Settings=>Export Settings/Data and Import Settings/Data. Tick the options you want saved (or restored).

Andre

Would that fix the database? As I have noticed that export of ratings is just an sqllite database itself, and not an "export" format. Unless you do some kind of magic and merge dbs on import which fixes original corruption.

[Ricky L.]

Yeah, I did all that but it seems like every time I come back to a song I'll notice that the rating (stars) have disappeared or changed to one (star) as opposed to what I initially had. I mean, this is with any track in my entire library. I guess I didn't mean to say, "playlists". Sorry if I confused anyone. And my album artwork seems to change as well even though I have downloaded my own. 

[andrewilley]

@JohnD I assume the export process just exports a column of the SQL database into a new database, and saves that into the backup ZIP file. Importing it again just re-connects the values to the same files again.

@Ricky L. Ratings should not change unless you do so manually, except under some specific circumstances:

1) Modified externally - an app such as Music Playlist Manager can do this for example.
2) Modified by re-reading an M3U(8) Playlist file containing #EXT-X-RATING lines for that song file (only if the Playlists=>Import Ratings option is enabled).
3) Modified by fetching backup data via Import Settings/Data.
4) The filename (or path to the filename) has been altered, which will cause Poweramp to mark the old audio file as having been removed from storage (and thus it will be deleted from the Library) and the moved audio file will be scanning in as a 'new' item with new properties. Even if the Title/Artist/Album/etc tags are the same, it will still be regarded as a new file with the details. This could be caused by changing anything in the audio file's path, so the root location, artist subfolder, album subfolder, etc, not just the filename.
5) Database corruption. I'd expect a lot more issues than just missing ratings though.

Note: you should not be using the Import System Playlists feature on a routine basis. Once a given playlist has been read into Poweramp, it is disconnected from the Android system version and they are separate entities. That type of playlist is obsolete (depreciated by Google) and should no longer be used anyway.

Andre