New Way Of Searching?

Here is something that I've noticed (and don't like) when searching with the Rio remote. I have a large custom playlist which has all of my favorite songs from many different cd's. I've noticed that when you search for a particular song, your only options are to insert that song in front of the one currently playing or to close your current playlist and play up the song in it's own 'playlist'. I was wondering if there would be a way to modify the search feature so that when you search for a particular song, it would act like the bookmark feature and switch to that song INSIDE of the current playlist in it's current position?? This way you don't have to reload the playlist from the beginning. Also that way you wouldn't screw up the playlist order. If there is a way to do this I haven't been able to figure it out. Thanks in advance.

There are four options for playing the search results, not two. Press the Select Mode button. Detailed in the FAQ here.

I don't think that's what he's asking, although your point is well made. I think he's asking about searching for a song, and then picking up the playlist that it's in, rather than just the song.

If this is what he's asking, then the answer is no. The player cannot do this. It doesn't have a way to find out which playlist a particular song is in. Mainly because a single song can be in more than one playlist.

Okay, I looked that the search modes. I was wrong there are four but there still is no way of using the search like a bookmark, where when you select your choice, it skippes the songs in front or back of the current song to the other song position, WITHIN the playlist, and without changing the playlist order. Is there a way to make this possible???

Actually that's not what I mean either. Let me explain. I don't have a collection of cd's on my mp3 player. What I did was rip all of my favorite songs from my cd's and uploaded them to a single playlist on my player. With like 400+ songs on the one playlist, it gets tedious to keep pushing the next button to get to the song I want. When I enter which song to play when searching, I just want the player to stop playing the current song, skip over the other songs to the newly selected song, and start playing that song without changing the playlist or closing the playlist just to play that one song. Then when that song is done playing, it will go on normally to the next song on the playlist as if I never searched. Can you understand??

Are you by chance still running 1.0 software on the empeg? Check the About menu to see the version number, and if so, use the "Latest Software" link above to upgrade to 2.0. Then you will have the 4 modes Tony talked about.

No, I have 2.00 but even with all four modes. There is nothing that does what I need. Is there anybody that can help???

Hi!

The behaviour you're looking for is almost the same as if you search and insert, but I can see two differences:

First, with Search/Insert, the current playing song isn't stopped, but you're just a press of the skip button away from what you want.

Second, if you search and insert, the "current playing order" (what you call playlist here:)

>skip over the other songs to the newly selected song, and
>start playing that song without changing the playlist

is modified. But why bother? In fact, the playlist itself isn't modified: it is still exactly as you saved it from emplode and and will reappear as "brand new" when you'll reselect it from the playlist menu. You can't do anything permanent to playlists from your car.

The rest of the "current playing order" will remain unchanged after search (as if you never searched), as you wished.


So, does it help?

Yes, I understand what your saying. However I still have a problem with the search and insert mode. The reason why I bother is the same reason anybody wants to add new functionality to any piece of software out there. To make it better to suit their needs:). I know that the playlist itself isn't modified but I still find it inconvenient of the way it works. I want to be able to search for a song and have it PLAY not have it pushed in front of my current song and then have to push the next button. This could be simplified. Also I don't want to have to restart the playlist from the beginning just to restore the order when there should be a search mode that doesn't modify the playlist (or current playing order) in the first place. What do you think???

Can you understand??

No, I can't. Your description of what you want sounds just like the existing "insert" behavior. It puts the searched song right there and then continues the playlist like you want.

The only difference is that in the current behavior, when you're done with the search you need to press the Next button exactly once. It's only one more button to press than what you described.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your description.

Wait, I've re-read the thread and I think I see what you're asking for.

You want a "leap to this point in the current playlist" feature.

The reason you want it is because you have only one playlist on the player and you always play it in the same order and you don't want to mess up that order just to play a given song.

What you're asking for isn't available, but if you want to bookmark your point in an existing playlist, you can use the Bookmark feature.

No, I can't. Your description of what you want sounds just like the existing "insert" behavior. It puts the searched song right there and then continues the playlist like you want.

But insert mode doesn't change the current index: Jim 55063 wants to be on track 20/133 of a running order, do a search constrained to the contents of the current running order only, and, supposing the song is found at position 101, to commence playing it at position 101/133. This is not much like any existing functionality, but IIRC it has been asked for before. It's a bit like searching ahead in Now & Next on the Karma, except more automated.

Peter

Yes, peter understands what I'm saying. Thanks for translating to geek:) Is there any way to make this possible?

Yeah, I finally got what you were asking for.

Like Peter said, no one has ever asked for it before. I don't really see why someone would want it. I'm either listening to the whole player or one of my "mood" playlists shuffled, in which case I couldn't care less about my position in the running order, or I'm listening to a specific album in sequential order, in which case I don't need to change my position in the running order.

Can you clarify why your current position in the running order is so important to you, so maybe we can suggest a different approach to using playlists that will take care of your problem using existing features?

I don't really see why someone would want it.

Perhaps you, or your friend, put a long playlist together for a party, and the next morning you want to play the good bit of the evening's music again. You remember that "State Of Independence" got everyone on the dance floor, and the next few songs were great too and fitted really well, but you can't remember what they were. So you want to automate the process of skipping forwards until you get to the "State Of Independence" bit.

Peter

Like Peter said, no one has ever asked for it before.

Actually, he said the exact opposite...

FWIW, I can actually understand why one might want this, but only in a scenario where your playlists have some specific sequence built into them. If the playlist is shuffled, then the effect becomes a lot like doing an Insert and then skipping a track. If the playlist is in order, however, the proposed functionality becomes a lot more like if you had an MP3 CD with 150 tracks on it and you're on track 30, but you want to skip ahead to track 120, and then listen to 121. In the empeg methodology, you can search for 120, but after it's done, it's going to play track 31.

I personally wouldn't have a whole lot of use for this search mode, but that doesn't mean it's not a valid request. Your listening and organizational strategies and mine aren't the only valid ones on the planet.

Okay, Peter, I see that hypothetical potential use for it. I think that particular situation would be rather rare though.

Since that wasn't his situation, I'm curious why his position in the running order is so important to him. There are enough other features in the player that, once we learn this, I'm sure we can come up with an alternate method of working his playlists that will solve his problem.

Yes, yn0t_'s MP3 CD analogy is good. Peter's example I can understand b\c in it, he is trying to figure out what songs were after the "State of Independence" song. If you used the search and insert method, you would get the "State of Independence" song but not what was played directly after them as you would in my proposed search mode. That isn't the reason I would want it but is a good example. Thanks guys.

I think it sounds pretty useful for exactly what Peter said. Our current usage of the player is limiting because of pre-existing play lists and the way people deal with them.

Some people, like Tony, create mood lists... Some people (at least one) just dumps all his songs into one giant list. I have all my songs within album lists which in turn are under their respective artists. And artists are split into two groups to make it easier to scroll through those lists.

That's a lot of navigating based on fixed lists which can be very inconvenient. If I were to put together a large custom list I may want to skip or jump to a specific position in that list. This is what the question is all about. The whole search and insert thing lead poeple down the wrong path only because it's what the poster was trying to do. Not what he wanted to do. Perhaps it would have been quicker to just say clearly what was wanted: Jump to a specific position in a running playlist. And being able to accomplish that jump by "searching" for the song to jump to.

Nothing in the player right now jumps positions, but rather grabs the found song ans allows you to do something with it.

I'm still really waiting for Soup info and features to be exposed in the player software and I think then, this feature would be useful for me. Right now I tend to run a lot of Random lists, so "position" is rather irrelevant - I never know what comes next anyway.

Bruno

That isn't the reason I would want it but is a good example.

Okay, so what is the reason you want it?

Really, I just think it would be a great idea. Like I mentioned I have only 1 playlist with lots of songs on it. I want this new mode b/c none of the others do what I want them to do. It just seems that it would be a more simplified way of searching and playing a track in my situation. I don't see what the point is in the search and insert mode. Why would you have the player take the song you said you wanted it to play and put it in front of the current song when you could be able to just play it now?? If you wanted it played directly after the current song then they should call it enqueing or something right??

I know that in the newest beta release of emplode, reading the release notes, they actually did rename the insert mode to enqueue mode, but there was no mention of a direct position skip mode which I think would be a nice option.

Does anybody agree with me or am I alone on this point??

I'm personally very happy with the way search/insert is working now. Maybe it's because I'm used to; maybe I don't need anything else. Or maybe the empeg "teached" me to be happy with that search mode. I think that pressing the "Next" button isn't that much: Using the empeg in full random, I do press it at least 50 times a day, so 1 or 2 times more isn't a lot...

But I wouldn't be mad if that new search mode was created. Could always be useful. I do see the point now for what reason it could be used. It's just that for me, it wouldn't be the search mode I'd prefer.

The great strenght of the empeg is its versatility, and it's also what makes it difficult to develop software for it: a lot of people with a lot of different habits. Hard to please everyone. Even more now that developpement is ressource-limited. But even though, they find the time to release new versions.

BTW Thank you guys @ empeg !

How would a person go about making getting that new search mode?? (Keep in mind I am not a programmer and don't know much about it). Is there somebody I can contact that could maybe help me??

The player software does not work the way you, I, or the bulk of the population would intuitively expect it to work. That's one reason why this stuff hasn't caught on more widely.

It does work well enough, in its own quirky way, and the devotees of this BBS will swear up and down over and over that it is the One True Way, and why would anyone possibly want it to be different. Not me, though.

A way to approximate the same ends as what you want, for shorter playlists at least, is to use Hijack's KnobSeek feature from within a playlist. Once activated, you can just spin the knob until your song appears on the screen.

KnobSeek is accessed by first setting the Knob Press Redefinition to "PopUp0", and then using a short-knob press to bring up the PopUp0 menu. Spin the knob until you see KnobSeek, press the knob once again to select/activate it, and then spin the knob until your track appears. One more knob press exits (or just wait a few seconds).

Cheers

Does anybody agree with me or am I alone on this point??

I'm with you, although I don't agree with your reason. Frankly, I think that you should invest some time in creating some effective playlists and stop using the player in such a cripppled manner. Remember that the playlists are heirarchal - you can still have one big playlist ordered as before _and_ have flexibility to choose one 'section' of it.

I really can't understand why you want to do what you are doing - the search feature isn't as easy to use as the playlist selection feature anyway, Search takes too many button presses for my liking, and I have no avertion to changing playlists at whim.

That all being said - I can see some uses for this, and as a feature I don't think that it would do anything but add to the existing functionality. I'd imagine that it might be useful to audio-book listeners as well as other uses listed above.

_EDIT_ Man, the way I phrased that makes me appear like a total git. Didn't mean to offend.

Well thank's to everybody for all of the imput. In reply to genixia's post. I actually have like 8 different playlists divided from the one big one but my point in starting this post was to see if anybody could come up with a way to make this search mode a reality. Not everybody has the time to rip their entire cd collection and upload it onto their mp3. Also many people don't have and don't want to spend money on a good mp3 tagger so that they can create mood lists like was mentioned before. Personally I have 1 big playlist and like 3 smaller sections of the playlist. I don't have a tagger so I had to go through each and every song and put down which genre I wanted as I was uploading it. If I had this search mode, I wouldn't have had to do any of that. I just would've kept all of my fav. songs on one playlist and skipped around to whatever I wanted to play in the way I've mentioned before. For now I will try mlord's knobseek and bookmark. This is not optimal and I still would like to see if somebody could write something to actually give the mp3 the more functionality that it needs.

I don't have a tagger so I had to go through each and every song and put down which genre I wanted as I was uploading it.

This isn't necessary. For mood playlists, you create them how you want, and put whatever songs in them you want that list to contain.

If the music is already on your empeg, you can put that song into multiple playlists without wasting space on the unit. I personally have a few top level playlists for 80's, Hard Rock, Techno, etc and in there, music organised into artist playlists, and subdivided still into CDs.

Spend some quality time in emplode getting things exactly the way you want. To date, the empeg is still the only MP3 player out there to allow you to put your music where you want it, and not how the device wants it. Also look into jEmplode if you like the predifined playlists for artist, genre, album, etc. We commonly call those soup views.

Yea I know, but what I did was tag all of my songs, then I sorted according to genre and deleted from my rock playlist all the songs that weren't rock. I did it this way instead of picking and choosing all of the rock songs inbetween and copying them to the new rock or rap or whatever playlist. This was a bit quicker I thought but still, having just one big playlist, (if you don't have your cd collection on the mp3 just fav. songs) and having a better search mode would be optimal I think.

I don't see what the point is in the search and insert mode.

Its point is to allow you to call up one song and having it play without affecting or getting rid of all the other stuff you're currently listening to.

Example: I'm listening to a long playlist of background music while I'm working. Then I get a hankering to listen to a particular song. Maybe that song is in the playlist, maybe it's not. But I can search it up by title and it will play as the next tune, without interrupting the flow of the music that's playing right now. The song fits nicely into the list as if it were meant to be there all along, with the songs flowing smoothly along one into the other.

In fact, I don't see how that's much different from what you want to do, except that in this case, it has the advantage of not interrupting the flow of music, and also has the advantage of being able to look up songs that aren't in the current playlist. To do what you want to do (jump immediately to the seached song in the playlist) has pretty much the same audible result as a search/insert followed by pressing the next track button.

You still haven't answered my question, though, which is: Why is it critical for you to jump forward in the playlist? I would understand if playlist position was important when you're listening to an album sequentially, but you specifically said that you didn't rip all your albums and you only have your favorite songs on the player. So listening to sequential albums doesn't seem to be what you're after. So what is it then?

Why would you have the player take the song you said you wanted it to play and put it in front of the current song when you could be able to just play it now?

You can just play it now, that's one of the options ("replace"). You can also insert it, and play it now by pressing one button.

Although you keep saying "in front of", and I hope that's just a difference in chosen semantics. To me, "in front of" would mean before the current track. What "Insert" actually does is put it after the current track so that it comes up as the next song. If you really think that "Insert" puts it before the current track, then I understand why you would think that's useless. Good thing it doesn't work that way.

If you wanted it played directly after the current song then they should call it enqueing or something right??

Yes, enqueue is also one of the options. The difference between Enqueue and Insert is subtle, and is described in the FAQ.

Okay, I have my big playlist organized alphabetically. I think yn0t_'s comment put it best. Here it is:

"FWIW, I can actually understand why one might want this, but only in a scenario where your playlists have some specific sequence built into them. If the playlist is shuffled, then the effect becomes a lot like doing an Insert and then skipping a track. If the playlist is in order, however, the proposed functionality becomes a lot more like if you had an MP3 CD with 150 tracks on it and you're on track 30, but you want to skip ahead to track 120, and then listen to 121. In the empeg methodology, you can search for 120, but after it's done, it's going to play track 31.

I personally wouldn't have a whole lot of use for this search mode, but that doesn't mean it's not a valid request. Your listening and organizational strategies and mine aren't the only valid ones on the planet. "

When I use the search and insert mode, the alpha sorting gets all messed up. Granted you could just reload the playlist to bring it back to normal but that just seems inconvenient to me. As far as flowing smoothly from one to another, think about this scenario. I'm listening to rap and my girlfriend calls and pisses me off. Then I want to listen to hard rock. At this time I don't want to wait for it to flow into the song that I choose so then that 'advantage' means didly squat:) Sure the song is only a press away but why make it like that when you don't need to?? Those would be the 2 main advantages that I can think of: It doesn't mess up your alpha order of play and it simplifies the search process by a step. You ask why it's critical that I have this, it's not critical, I just think it would be a great improvement in my and I'm sure other people's cases. Have I answered your question?? P.S. I understand the diff. b/t enqueue and insert. P.S.S. I did mean after not in front of the track.

I'm listening to rap and my girlfriend calls and pisses me off. Then I want to listen to hard rock.

Heh... Forget debates about search modes and listening styles... I think we need to set aside a button just for this.

Well thank's to everybody for all of the imput. In reply to genixia's post. I actually have like 8 different playlists divided from the one big one but my point in starting this post was to see if anybody could come up with a way to make this search mode a reality.

Anything is possible, but what you are asking is not available today. This would require re-coding of the player software or a hack on top of the player software to make it work, both not likely unless there is huge demand.

Not everybody has the time to rip their entire cd collection and upload it onto their mp3. Also many people don't have and don't want to spend money on a good mp3 tagger so that they can create mood lists like was mentioned before.

How long have you been using your Empeg? I'm just wondering, since it has a tendancy to change the way you listen to your music. Since what you desire is not quite available yet maybe you could try to put fourth a bit of effort and see what happens. I've personally spent many hours re-tagging a lot of my music. It was all well worth it since now I have all my music tagged exactly the way I want, and I can shift my music to fit my moods very easily as a result.

MP3 Tag Studio is what I use and it is fully functional without registering (although it is worth the $20 I spent to register it).

Haha, yeah, maybe we can program it by redefining "punch all 5 buttons at once with closed fist".

Cushman, this is not directed at you, but you were the last post, so...

The only thing I wish the player would do is be able to randomize more than 1 playlist. Say for example that I'm listening to 80's, but also want the onion tracks thrown in for fun. As it is now, I can open the 80's playlist and have fun, open the Onion playlist ans insert it. All of a sudden, I have 1000 80's songs, with 200 Onion snippets stuck in the middle. It will NOT randomize all of them together. When it gets to the Onion bits, it'll play all 200 in a row. Randomized, but before it ever plays another 80's song.

This also happens a lot when I want to listen to the 60's AND 70's. No way to do it. Unless I create another playlist that has both groups in it. But with the number of possible combinations, there is no way to predict what mood I'll be in.

I mean, If I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd, Rush, and Zeppelin I have to either pick one, and listen to that group, then pick another, listen to that group, then pick the third.... It would totally rock if I could just add all 3 and let it randomize.

Ahh, but I do this all the time. Just re-select the Shuffle mode you would like and it will re-shuffle the current playlist.

Sometimes I'll queue up a custom playlist with Palantir, then add all my short comedy bits that I have in a separate playlist at the end. Then I just press Down, Shuffle, Random, and you've got a mix.

You HAVE to be kidding me. This has bothered me for 2 freakin years. I had no idea that would work. Thanks, man.

LOL..

Okay, I have my big playlist organized alphabetically

That seems really... weird. But no more weird than the way I have my 400-track "favorites" playlist organized.

I wanted some sort of pseudo-random arrangement for all the songs in the playlist so they would always stay mixed up... so my basic playlist sort is by length of song.

I usually randomize it in addition to the base sort, but even if I don't, I still end up with an interesting mix.

tanstaafl.

Okay, I have my big playlist organized alphabetically. (...) When I use the search and insert mode, the alpha sorting gets all messed up.

Okay, temporarily putting aside the question of why anyone would want to listen to a random collection of songs alphabetically...

Why is it important that you be able to jump to that location in the alphabet just to hear one song?

First, lemme just reiterate what everyone else is saying more directly: What you want doesn't exist in the player and is unlikely to be added.

I'm listening to rap and my girlfriend calls and pisses me off. Then I want to listen to hard rock.

Are you aware that you can tweak the currently running playlist by genre?