Req Music Library Filtering From Sideblade - what filters?
#1
I've just discovered the filter facility that lives on the side blade of the music library. It has bugs, that I am working on fixing, and leads me to wonder how many people use it or even know it is there? Meanwhile I started thinking that I would personally like some other options on that dialog, so here's the question:

What kind of things do you want to be able to use to immediately filter the lists of artist, albums or songs?

That is of course, in addition to the standard genres > artists > albums > songs navigation provided by the default nodes.

Currently in v16 we have (although not all work or are even visible)
Artists:
FieldArtist - artist name contains
FieldGenre - song genre value(s) from a list

Albums:
FieldAlbum - album title
FieldAlbumArtist - album artist from list
FieldYear - year between values
FieldGenre - song genre value(s) from a list
FieldMusicLabel - publisher label from a list *
FieldRating - rating between values
FieldUserRating - user rating between values
FieldAlbumType - album or single

* as a separate issue I would like to set album label from tag data (TPUB) if present. Currently it can only be populated by NFO.

Songs:
FieldTitle - song tile contains
FieldAlbum - album from list
FieldArtist - song artist from list
FieldTime - duration between range of values
FieldYear - year between values
FieldGenre - song genre value(s) from a list
FieldPlaycount - number of times plays between range of values
FieldRating - rating between values
FieldUserRating - user rating between values

Personally I would not be limited to a list of names for album artist, and have name filtering be exact unless I use wild cards. But more would like to be able to filter by composer, conductor etc. Anything else people would like from the data that Kodi already holds?

Would a dialog more like the smart playlist editor be a good thing or a bad one?
Reply
#2
Filter on the source path would be great! And/or on Number of Channels (codec)

I have lots of MCH music and of course stereo. Would be great to be able to filter in/out the stereo

These are in different root folders:
Audio\stereo
Audio\surround

So source path filter would work (contains 'stereo' etc). Or the codec filter on Channels would do it too (Channels > 2 etc)

Thanks
Reply
#3
(2016-07-28, 23:37)HomerJau Wrote: I have lots of MCH music and of course stereo. Would be great to be able to filter in/out the stereo

Yes. This.

I don't have my multi channel music in a separate folder. So, source path filter would not help me.
Reply
#4
I've never used it in favor of smartplaylists, but I did have a user who wanted both adv and simple filters for movies (so he could just start typing in a title). Not sure if that is relevant to music though. That's a skin issue, already supported in the code.

scott s.
.
maintainer of skin  Aeon MQ5 mods for post-Gotham Kodi releases:
Matrix see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Matrix release thread
Nexus see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Nexus release thread
Aeon MQ 5 skin and addon repo 11.1.0
Reply
#5
The getting "just start typing.." effect to work is more a skin thing, but I'm not sure what core support it needs.

I suspect that the filter dialog is not used much, it certainly has longstanding bugs that no one has complained about. If it was used then I feel that they would have. Users tell me if I am wrong! But the idea of an immediately available filter, rather than add a new playlist, is attractive. But only if it has useful filter items, hence my question.

Of course you can filter the results of a smart playlist too (but the results can be a bit wonky at the moment), so it is not an alternative to playlists, but an extension. Perhaps you would like to give that a bit of thought Scott.

Music file path is something I am more likely to use in a playlist rather than as a immediate filter, but could be added if there is general interest. Stereo is a recording property not held in the library a database field, I don't think there is a ID3 tag for it. But if there is then I will look at adding it.
Reply
#6
Some screen shots, current filter items (more than show in Jarvis that had a bug)

Filtering for artists
Image

Filtering for albums

Image

Filtering for songs
Image

For me rating is the least useful item so I would move it to the bottom, but maybe that is just me.
Reply
#7
(2016-07-30, 15:13)elee532 Wrote:
(2016-07-28, 23:37)HomerJau Wrote: I have lots of MCH music and of course stereo. Would be great to be able to filter in/out the stereo

Yes. This.

I don't have my multi channel music in a separate folder. So, source path filter would not help me.

Actually now that I'm implementing more metadata throughout my music collection it doesn't make sense to have separate folders, so my request is to add a filter for Stereo or MCH (channels = 2, channels > 2). Although some may also have mono, so maybe a dropdown list with:
Mono
Stereo
Multichannel

The other Wishlist item is dealing with Genres. There are so many 'mixed' genres that it would be nice to enter a contains type word filter to find a 'key' genre. Example for 'Rock':
Hard Rock
Soft Rock
Classic Rock
Progressive Rock
Southern Rock
Rock
Etc

So entering 'Rock' would find all the above (genre contains Rock, not genre = Rock)

There seems to be an endless mix of genre keywords in my collection, sometimes I just want to filter by the keyword not an exact search, is it Jazz Funk, Jazz/Funk, R&B Funk, Funk Rock etc?
Reply
#8
I agree with Homer's last post, I would also like a genre filter with Contains. Thanks.

Regards,

Bart
Reply
#9
Personally I did not know of the filter feature and I have to admit I don't think I'll use it in the future no matter what filters can be used.
Reply
#10
(2016-08-03, 14:37)DarkHelmet Wrote: Personally I did not know of the filter feature and I have to admit I don't think I'll use it in the future no matter what filters can be used.

DH I find your confident negative intreaguing. Any particular reason you would not use filtering? How do you browse your collection and decide what to play? No pressure, I'm just curious how people manage their music Smile
Reply
#11
Either through smart playlists or by using the last.fm playlist generator. My database is quite big, so indeed I need some kind of filtering. I found that the last.fm playlist generator best suits my needs. After all the filtering is just the first step to playback or creating a playlist.

This is the addon that I talk about:

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2108642

It dynamically creates a now playing list based on the "similar tracks" function of last.fm. If you want it "filters" my music based on similarity for playback.
Reply
#12
Interesting to know, thanks for sharing Darkhelmet.
Reply
#13
Might be off topic. Apologies for that. The biggest obstacle for me right now is that I have four separate databases in Kodi and haven't found a way to "filter" these: Local, Spotify, Google Music and Amazon Prime Music. I have to admit that I'm slowly switching from buying music to streaming music. The offers by the streaming services are just becoming better and better. So far there is no way to "unify" these databases even though they can be accessed through kodi plus addons. The Spotify addon had a function "add to library" that kinda worked but playback failed from kodi's library.

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2374095

Might not be something for the short term but on the long run having an option to add items from addons to the music library, filter and play these would be wonderful.
Reply
#14
Highjacking my thread, whatever next Smile

I know there are some people interested in integrating streamed music into the library, so could happen, but it is all beyond me. I am an old dog, I like to own music in a physical form and lossless, so I have never streamed it. I torrent video, that I watch from my NAS drive using Kodi, but have never streamed anything of any kind through Kodi, I wouldn't even know where to start. My limited 10Mbps internet connection (rural location that's as good as it gets over 3 km of wire) may have something to do with it too.

But anyone thinking of doing the integrating please talk to me about the library side of it. Left alone in "music corner" I have become quite territorial about the music database Smile
Reply
#15
(2016-08-04, 12:09)DarkHelmet Wrote: Might be off topic. Apologies for that. The biggest obstacle for me right now is that I have four separate databases in Kodi and haven't found a way to "filter" these: Local, Spotify, Google Music and Amazon Prime Music. I have to admit that I'm slowly switching from buying music to streaming music. The offers by the streaming services are just becoming better and better. So far there is no way to "unify" these databases even though they can be accessed through kodi plus addons. The Spotify addon had a function "add to library" that kinda worked but playback failed from kodi's library.

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2374095

Might not be something for the short term but on the long run having an option to add items from addons to the music library, filter and play these would be wonderful.

That's exactly what this is aimed at providing http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=224794 so there is a glimmer hope for the future that this may come to be, however it is only a faint glimmer since development has ground to a halt with Montellese having no time for Kodi related things recently.
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
Music Library Filtering From Sideblade - what filters?0