Sub Genres or associating to SmartPlaylists ?

[simoncn]

(13-11-2014 08:59)Coolhand Wrote:  Hi Simon,
I searched around the forum without conclusion to the following:

Is it possible to have MinimServer configurable to present a Recently Added genre or similar, and also is it possible to have it present sub genres such as I effectively have created in iTunes, a.k.a- Smart PlayLists ?

Recently Added isn't a genre. I am hoping to add support for an automatically generated Recently Added playlist in a future version of MinimServer.

Quote:As an example of the SmartPlaylists I've created, I have made all tracks in my iTunes library defined by every resolution from 16/44.1 to 24/352.8, with a separate SmartPlaylist for each.
This is very easily determined by assigning the field (sample rate) (is) (xxxkhz) field which is the Rule that is then used to auto populate each associated SmartPlaylist.

MinimServer provides this capability with "special tags". For example, you can add the special tag #AudioFormat to the indexTags field and this will show a #AudioFormat index in the top-level menu with all the different resolutions as choices within this index.

Quote:Likewise I have a primary Classic music genre, but a SmartPlaylist for Classic Harp so that when searching or shuffle playing the Classical music genre nothing is excluded, but I can also limit my listening or shuffle playing within the Classical Harp sub genre SmartPlaylist.
In the above case I use the Grouping field, which in iTunes is present for each track, so I tag it .classicalharp. and assign this tag to a SmartPlaylist with the Rule (grouping) (contains) (.classicharp.)
Such groupings can be stacked with multiple rules although I haven't done this.

MinimServer allows you to specify mutliple genre values for a file. For example, you could browse by Genre and select Classical as a first step and you could then browse by Genre again and select Classical Harp as a second step. Alternatively, you could tag Classical Harp using some other tag such as Subgenre to avoid putting too many choices in the Genre index.

Quote:As far as I'm concerned the Smart playlists are an incredible powerful defining feature of iTunes which greatly facilitate easy sorting of my near 60,000 track library.

I think the Intelligent Browsing feature of MinimServer provides similar power using a slightly different design approach.

Quote:Further to my first query as to the mapping of Recently Added music, I actually have a folder named Recently Added which contains 4 such playlists using the rules (date added) (in the last) (xxxdays)
One each for 2 days, 4 weeks, 6 months and 12 months.

I am not intending to use this approach for the Recently Added support in MinimServer. My preferred approach is to provide a single Recently Added playlist ordered by when the music was added, with the newest music appearing first.

Quote:Anyway, if you can incorporate the ability to associate ANY of the SmartPlaylists functionality into MinimServer I would be absolutely head over heels as I no longer directly use iTunes to replay music :-)

I hope the above answers will encourage you to read the MinimServer documentation to discover how you can get a lot of this functionality by using MinimServer's existing capabilities.