First of all I want to thank everyone who has given me such awesome help and support with questions I've had the last couple of months!

Since I was introduced to the miracle of soup playlists based on searches (I know... latecomers eh!) I've been having a massive listening session based on unreferenced tracks, and I'm almost at the end of the 2,000 track playlist - what I'd like to create is the following...

An advanced search playlist which reveals only albums where all of their tracks are unreferenced - then I can have a big erasing session, free up some space and take all the relevant CDs to the local charity shop! Is this possible? (the playlist I mean, not taking the CDs to the charity shop....)

Not certain what you're asking, but refs=0 shows all items on the player that do not exist in playlists.

That's what I used to generate my 2,000 track playlist. I've listened to it and added what I liked to playlists, but that leaves about 1,600 unreferenced. What I'm after is a query that will produce a result containing only tracks where *all* of the tracks in an album are unreferenced. I don't like partially deleting albums, but this result would produce entire albums which can be erased.... does that make sense?

in (j)emplode search for refs=0
then sort by album
not exactly what you seek, but it will give you a visual clue.

that would help, but only when I could see a break in the track numbering for the albums. The problem would be if the last track(s) off some albums had been playlisted, I wouldn't know if it was a complete album that could be wiped or not. so i guess the answer is that it can't be done?

Yeah. There's no way to define what a complete album is, so you can't search on it. I don't think you could anyway with the search implemented the way it is, but that's the first big stumbling block.

well, of course my way is going to require some work from your cranium. should be a small amount of work to have google up and search for track listings from albums that appear full in the results. for albums that have 4 songs showing, that most likely is not a full album and can be disregarded (unless you have all of the jewel cases handy. if so, please feel free to consult them)
and, no, not automatically. not any way that i can tell. who knows, ive been wrong before though.

Scrolling through 2000 tracks by hand is surprisingly easy when you've got things laid out nicely and can sort by columns. I'd say, view all tracks, set up the columns so you get title, tracknumber, source, refs, sort on track number and then album, and then scroll down to find what's what.

Just because there isn't a magic widget to do precisely what you want doesn't mean you can't do it by hand with a little sorting assistance.

I suppose it could be a feature request for a new emplode version, i.e. allowing summing of values in a sub-clause? - show albums where (sum of refs from tracks having that album ID = 0) - It would be do-able in SQL, for example.

oh, I totally agree. I'm in metadata management for a living, so I deeply love the empeg and the development that's been done on it, compared to any other mp3 player on the market :-)

Hmmm, don't recall what fields, nor the organisation of it, that are included in the CSV file export... If the required info is there, then it might be easier to make an Excel macro or import the data into a database and do some SQL...

/Michael

that's just what I'll probably do.... another possibility though - has any one ever considered writing an ODBC driver for the empeg's database? would there be any interest?

an ODBC driver for the empeg's database? would there be any interest?

sounds nice, but i'm far away of knowing how to do it...

One possibilty (though I haven't tried it myself):

First find all the tracks you want to keep (refs != "0") in a JEmplode search.

Select them all, and Toggle Coloured on them. (I've never used Emplode, but I believe this is a JEmplode-only function).

Now go to (or create) a soup view by album.

The albums you want to keep are the coloured ones - remove the contents of the rest.

I knew there had to be a lateral-thinking solution that involved the toggle color feature. Couldn't think of it, though. Nice one.

That's brilliant!!! Thanks a million - thought I was going to have to write an ODBC driver for a minute there :-)

remove the contents of the rest

Well, search the uncolored ones for incomplete albums, at any rate.

Or maybe I misunderstood the question.

In reply to:

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has any one ever considered writing an ODBC driver for the empeg's database

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I've been on the verge of writing a JDBC driver for it for a long time, but just never quite built up enough mental energy to do it ...