Best way to Randomly play VERY large (5000 song) Playlist?

[erland]

Could those that have problem with this describe:
1. Are you just looking for a way to play a long playlist in the right order or in random order ?
2. Is it important that you can scroll through the complete playlist from Now Playing screen ? Why ? (it's not enough to be able to do this from the "Playlists" menu)
3. Is it just the Now Playing screen that's slow or is it also slow to browse the playlist using the "Playlists" menu ?

As described earlier, question 1 can be solved with Dynamic Playlist if you are willing to run third party plugins, it will add the playlist tracks bit by bit to the current playlist, the performance should be similar to a 20 track playlist which usually is really good.

For question 2 I don't thin there is a good solution at the moment, if the peformance problems are only related to the "Now Playing" current playlist and not when browsing the "Playlists" menu (question 3), it would probably be possible to create a new context menu as a third party plugin that listed the playlists a track is part of and made it possible to browse the complete playlist. However, I suspect the problem is the same in the "Playlists" menu and in that case a third party plugin won't solve anything.

Is there a bug report at http://bugs.slimdevices.com related to this ? If not, could anyone register one and post the link to it here so people with the problem can vote on it ?

[Xlorep DarkHelm]

It seems that very large playlists bog down even decent servers. Should I be using some type of plugin to implement this?

Backgroud info: Server: Windows Home Server on 2.8 P4, all Flac files, total collection about 45,000 songs. Running ver 7.5.
The playlist was generated in Media Monkey. If necessary, I could add a rating to all the songs on the playlist and play only those songs with the proper rating.

Is there a way to load 20 songs into the queue, randomly, from the play list, like the way "Song Mix" works? So I don't bog down the computer.

I just want to randomly play songs from one (very large) static playlist.

I have read up on Erland's "Random Playlist" plugin and his "SQL Playlist" plugin but not sure which is the best (simplest) implementation, or if either of these plugins will actually do what I need them to do.

It is for a name that tune party with about 100 people showing up, and it needs to be reliable.


Thanks

Actually, I use the SQL Playlist & Dynamic Playlist plugins together (since it works better that way anyway) -- I also added the Track Statistics and CustomScan plug-ins. I have my SqueezeBox Server running with an external MySQL database, so I can access it easily with SQLYog and external apps.

Then, with all of this, I added entries to my customscan_track_attributes table (that Custom Scan added), have all of my tracks rated 1 - 5 stars with the track statistics plugin, and built a Java EE module that connects to the database, and constructs a semi-randomized playlist guaranteed to eventually play each and every track in my song collection.

... but this isn't exactly a very simple process to do... fun, nonetheless.

[paf]

Could those that have problem with this describe:
1. Are you just looking for a way to play a long playlist in the right order or in random order ?
...
As described earlier, question 1 can be solved with Dynamic Playlist if you are willing to run third party plugins, it will add the playlist tracks bit by bit to the current playlist, the performance should be similar to a 20 track playlist which usually is really good.
...

As far as I understand, my 500/750-songs problem on the SB Radio should be solved by Erland's "dynamic playlists" plugin.

But: I activated the plugin on SBS (Perl running on my Synology NAS). Now all my iTunes playlists show under "my music/dynamic playlists" but when I click on one (or press play), the radio says "no songs".

The lists are not empty when I open then as "normal" playlists.

On the web interface of the server, when I click on a dynamic playlists, it jumps into the corresponding "classic" playlist. Clicking on the play button has no effect.

When I change the option "random saved playlists" from "random" to "ordered", then it works but of course it is useless as I would like to play my songs randomly...

Help!!!

[erland]

As far as I understand, my 500/750-songs problem on the SB Radio should be solved by Erland's "dynamic playlists" plugin.

But: I activated the plugin on SBS (Perl running on my Synology NAS). Now all my iTunes playlists show under "my music/dynamic playlists" but when I click on one (or press play), the radio says "no songs".

The lists are not empty when I open then as "normal" playlists.

On the web interface of the server, when I click on a dynamic playlists, it jumps into the corresponding "classic" playlist. Clicking on the play button has no effect.

When I change the option "random saved playlists" from "random" to "ordered", then it works but of course it is useless as I would like to play my songs randomly...

It was caused by a bug, a new version of Dynamic Playlist is now available where this should be solved. Thanks for reporting.

[paf]

It was caused by a bug, a new version of Dynamic Playlist is now available where this should be solved. Thanks for reporting.

Now it works, thank you very much! A perfect compensation for the slow and limited playlists options of my SB Radio.

The only thing that I don't like is not specific to your plugin... I find the ergonomy of the SB Radio absolutely terrible. Using you plugin is no exception: pressing the "home" button, then scrolling to "my music" and choosing it, then scrolling to "dynamic playlists" and choosing it before I can choose a list... or do I miss something?

[erland]

The only thing that I don't like is not specific to your plugin... I find the ergonomy of the SB Radio absolutely terrible. Using you plugin is no exception: pressing the "home" button, then scrolling to "my music" and choosing it, then scrolling to "dynamic playlists" and choosing it before I can choose a list... or do I miss something?

In "Settings/Home Menu" you can select to show the "Dynamic Playlists" menu directly in the home menu if you want to avoid the "My Music" level.

You can also setup the preset buttons on the Radio to play a specific playlist.

And you can select a dynamic playlist which will make it appear in the "Favorites" menu which I think is available in the home menu as default.