Smart playlists

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Revision as of 14:44, 16 April 2013 by >Udepub (→‎Format of a smart playlist file: adding back the music smart playlist i replaced, with updated code)
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XBMC supports smart playlists for all types of media (excluding pictures), which essentially use a set of rules to limit the results from the databases. They can be created either by using the built-in GUI smart playlist editor accessible from the Playlists section, or by creating an XML file with the extension XSP (XBMC Smart Playlist).

Creating a smart playlist in the GUI

Incomplete.png INCOMPLETE:
This page or section is incomplete. Please add information or correct uncertain data which is marked with a ?

Format of a smart playlist file

Smart playlists are plain text files that can be parsed by an XML reader (e.g. Visual Studio and Notepad++). Any text editor can be used to create them. They should be saved with the extension XPS and placed in your Userdata directory (smart playlist XSP files cannot be read off of remote shares at present).

The format is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="songs">
    <name>All U2 from after 1990</name>
    <match>all</match>
    <rule field="artist" operator="is">
        <value>U2</value>
    </rule>
    <rule field="year" operator="greaterthan">
        <value>1990</value>
    </rule>
    <limit>50</limit>
    <order direction="descending">playcount</order>
</smartplaylist>

Types

Smart playlists can be of one of the following types:

  • songs (default)
  • albums
  • movies
  • tvshows
  • episodes
  • musicvideos
  • mixed (audio and music videos)

Name and Match

Basically there are two header tags, <name> and <match> and then a set of <rule> tags that define the rules to use, along with an <order> tag to allow sorting and a <limit> tag to limit the returned results. Note that the tags and attributes are all case-sensitive. The <name> tag is the name of the playlist and the <match> tag indicates how the <rule> tags should be matched. If <match>all</match> like in the above example, then only songs which satisfy all the <rule>'s will be included. If <match>one</match> is specified, then songs that satisfy any one (or more) of the <rule>'s will be included.

Rules

The <rule> tags, of which there can be as many as you wish, have two attributes (field and operator) and a <value> tag.

Fields

Depending on the type of the smart playlist different fields are available:

field music video
Name Data type songs albums artists movies tvshows episodes musicvideos mixed
genre string Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
album string Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes
artist string Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes Yes
albumartist string Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes
title string Yes No No Yes No No Yes Yes
year number Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
time number Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
tracknumber number Yes No No No No No No Yes
filename string Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
path string Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
playcount number Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
lastplayed date Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
inprogress boolean No No No Yes No Yes No Yes
rating number Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
comment string Yes No No No No No No Yes
dateadded date No No No No No No No No
plot string No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
plotoutline string No No No Yes No No No Yes
tagline string No No No Yes No No No Yes
mpaarating string No No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
top250 number No No No Yes No No No Yes
status string No No No No Yes No No Yes
votes number No No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
director string No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
actor string No No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
studio string No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
country string No No No Yes No No No Yes
numepisodes number No No No No Yes No No Yes
numwatched number No No No No Yes No No Yes
writers string No No No Yes No Yes No Yes
airdate date No No No No No Yes No Yes
episode number No No No No No Yes No Yes
season number No No No No No Yes No Yes
tvshow string No No No No Yes Yes No Yes
episodetitle string No No No No No Yes No Yes
review string No Yes No No No No No Yes
themes string No Yes No No No No No Yes
moods string No Yes Yes No No No No Yes
styles string No Yes Yes No No No No Yes
type string No Yes No No No No No Yes
label string No Yes No No No No No Yes
hastrailer boolean No No No Yes No No No Yes
videoresolution number No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
audiochannels number No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
videocodec string No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
audiocodec string No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
audiolanguage string No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
subtitlelanguage string No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
videoaspect number No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes
set string No No No Yes No No No Yes
tag string No No No Yes No[1] No No[1] No[1]
instruments string No No Yes No No No No No
biography string No No Yes No No No No No
born string No No Yes No No No No No
band formed string No No Yes No No No No No
disbanded string No No Yes No No No No No
died string No No Yes No No No No No
playlist string Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Operators

The operator attribute specifies the rule that should be used to match the parameter to the field. All matching is done case-insensitive. The allowed operators are:

contains
True if the field contains the parameter as a substring
doesnotcontain
True if the field does not contain the parameter as a substring
is
True if the field matches the parameter exactly
isnot
True if the field does not match the parameter exactly
startswith
True if the start of the field matches the parameter
endswith
True if the end of the field matches the parameter
lessthan
True if the content of the field is less than the parameter
greaterthan
True if the content of the field is greater than the parameter
after
True if the content of the field comes after the parameter
before
True if the content of the field comes before the parameter
inthelast
True if the field falls in the last range specified by the parameter. Only applicable for a date field.
notinthelast
True if the field does not fall in the last range specified by the parameter. Only applicable for a date field.

Limit and Order

The <limit> tag simply takes a number of songs as it's limit. A missing limit tag, or <limit>0</limit> will retrieve all matching songs. The <order> tag has a direction attribute, the values of which can be ascending or descending, and it's value is a field as above, or can be <order>random</order> if you want a random ordering returned. Note that random should be used with care - it is quite slow if the returned results from the <rule> sets is large (more than 500 items).

The above example, therefore selects all songs whose artist field is U2 and whose year field is greater than 1990, orders them by the number of times they've been played (most played first) then limits it to just 50. Thus, the top 50 songs you've played from all U2 songs published after 1990.

Grouping

Template:Gotham

The <group> tag allows to group the resulting list of media items by a specific category. The final list will consist of folder nodes containing matching media items. Depending on the type of the Smart Playlist the following grouping categories exist:

field music video
Name Data type songs albums artists movies tvshows episodes musicvideos mixed
none string No No No Yes No No No No
genres string No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
years string No Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
actors string No No No Yes Yes Yes No No
artists string No No No No No No Yes Yes
directors string No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
writers string No No No No No Yes No No
studios string No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
countries string No No No Yes No No No No
sets string No No No Yes No No No No
tags string No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Emblem-important-yellow.png NOTICE:
There's an important difference between not providing a <group> tag (or providing an empty <group> tag) and setting the value of the <group> tag to none: The latter will overrule any mixed grouping that would be applied by default to a list of media items (specifically for a mixed list of movies and movie sets if the setting Group movies into sets is enabled).

Mixed grouping

For the sets grouping category there is support for additional so called mixed grouping. The difference to normal grouping is that the resulting list will not just be a list of grouped folders but a mix of media items and grouped folders. Mixed grouping can be controlled using the mixed attribute in the <group> tag with a boolean value (true or false).

Combining Playlists

The playlist field can be used to combine several playlists together. When playlists are combined, the <limit> and <order> tags of the included playlists are ignored; only the <order> and <limit> of the final playlist are used.

As a simple example, lets create a new playlist combining the "Rock Music from the 1970s" and "Recently Played Songs" playlists above, to produce a playlist with the recently played rock songs from the 1970s.

Recently played rock tracks from the 1970s

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<smartplaylist type="songs">
  <name>Recently played  Rock Tracks from the 1970s</name>
  <match>all</match>
  <rule field="playlist" operator="is">Rock Music from the 1970s</rule>
  <rule field="playlist" operator="is">Recently Played Songs</rule>
</smartplaylist>

Using this system allows very complex queries to be built. Note that in a single playlist, you can only match ALL of the rules, or ONE (or more) of the rules. This is basically either ANDing the conditions together, or ORing them together. You cannot mix AND with OR in a single playlist. To build up a playlist with both AND and OR operations on the rules, you use multiple playlists to group the AND operations and the OR operations, then combine them as above.

Examples

Music examples

Recently played songs

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="songs">
  <name>Recently Played Songs</name>
  <match>all</match>
  <rule field="lastplayed" operator="inthelast"></rule>
    <value>2 weeks</value>
  </rule>
  <order direction="descending">lastplayed</order>
</smartplaylist>

Top 100 songs

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="songs">
  <name>Top 100 Songs</name>
  <match>all</match>
  <rule field="playcount" operator="greaterthan">
    <value>0</value>
  </rule>
  <order direction="descending">playcount</order>
  <limit>100</limit>
</smartplaylist>

Rock music from the 1970s

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="songs">
  <name>Rock Music from the 1970s</name>
  <match>all</match>
  <rule field="genre" operator="is">
    <value>Rock</value>
  </rule>
  <rule field="year" operator="greaterthan">
    <value>1969</value>
  </rule>
  <rule field="year" operator="lessthan">1980
    <value>1980</value>
  </rule>
</smartplaylist>

Movie examples

TV show examples

Notes