Now Playing relative to Tabs

[MMFrLife]

An option to have the Now Playing area tab dependent.

In other words, if I clear the Now Plying in one tab it doesn't clear in other tabs,
if I add or remove a song from one Now Playing it doesn't happen in any other tab's Now Playing, etc.

[Lowlander]

How'd the Player now which Now Playing to respect?

[MMFrLife]

Of all the Now Playing activities: adding, removing, ordering and playing (or anything else I left out),
I would assume that playing would be the only one that would affect the player. I mean, does simply adding a track to the Now Playing list
directly communicate with the player before anything is actually played?
The only conflict I can think of off the top of my head is if you try to play two tracks at once from different tabs which isn't
even possible with a single Now Playing. You'd have to have more than one instance of MM running.

If you have a tab open and play a track from it and then decide to change to another tab, the "play focus" would stay on the first tab,
but you could still switch to another tab for viewing, adding, removing and ordering purposes only. Then, "only" if you click to play in a tab
other than the original one does it switch the play focus to that one.

Can you think of any possible conflicts or where my logic is off in the way the player is programed to behave?

Thanks for the ear, Lowlander.......or is that, eye

[Lowlander]

Now Playing is what the Player uses to determine what to do. Thus multiple states of Now Playing would be a problem for the Player. It'd be better to use Playlists for staging.

[rivorson]

To me it seems that another way to express what you want is a set of normal playlists that remember the last track played so that you can quickly switch between two or more without having to skip over the tracks that you've already played. For example if Playlist A contains some music and Playlist B contains high energy tracks for exercising you could listen to the first five tracks of Playlist A, then do some exercise with Playlist B, then resume Playlist A and have it automatically continue from track six.

Is that about right, or did you specifically want the ability to play two tracks simultaneously?

[MMFrLife]

Hey Rivorson, I appreciate the input.

Two tracks at the same time was just a thought on how a conflict could occur with multiple playlists, not something I desire.

Also, I already thought of playlists and do not want that for this use.
For me, playlists are something with a more solid purpose (for exercising; driving to;
all-time favorite songs; reading to; falling asleep to; special events: party, wedding, and so on, etc.

For this request I was thinking more in terms of "whim" listening. Sometimes I just like
searching around for whatever and staging it to Now Playing. While I'm listening to that, I may want
to make another set of just whatever songs and in the middle of the first Now Playing, switch over to that one.

After I'm done, I don't care about how it was ordered and what it was for.
I clear it out and start over. If I happen to create something during this approach/mood that I'd really like to keep, then
I'd save it as a playlist but not typically.

I can't imagine what a workaround would be, if indeed all "non-playing" Now Playing activities alter the code of the player, as if to prepare it beforehand
so it will know what to do when a track actually plays.

[rivorson]

The Now Playing list is essentially just a normal playlist that has some special interactions with the playback engine. Maybe a quick access playlist similar to Abode Lightroom's Quick Collection would work for you. It would be like a playlist that is designed to be transient and have a hot key to quickly add/remove the currently selected track. Ideally it would also have a hot key to quickly clear the playlist when you're done. Then if you like the collection that you've built up you could easily save it as a normal playlist. It doesn't get you two Now Playing lists that you could switch between but it's half way there and should be much easier to build.

[MMFrLife]

Yeah, ok. But anything singular seems to defeat the purpose of what I was wanting (half way there is still pretty far away).
On the plus side, it does sound interesting for what it is, though. I'll try to look into it.

Thanks again!

[Bandolero]

I agree with the original poster and it is something I wish MMW would do. I also use MMW in the same manner. I open my Entire Library; sort, search, scroll, etc if I see a song I like, I add to "Now Playing" and do this for as many songs as I would need to keep us entertained for a while.

There should be only one single "Now Playing" window or pane and the player should be attached to that panel. The tree should be attached to a tab so we can have several tabs looking at the library via different filters (genre, playlist, entire library) and when "Add to Now Playing" is hit from any of those tabs, it would populate the ONLY Now Playing panel with the only play/pause, rew, ff, skip, etc controls.

Now that would be ideal.

I wish I could have tab for a playlist and drag and drop single songs from another playlist tab or songs from the entire library tab into it taking advantage of my two monitors.

[Lowlander]

All that already works. Currently MM has a single Now Playing and it's tied to the Player. You can populate it from any node/tab. You can have tabs for Playlists and drag & drop files onto the tab to add it to the Playlist (also works on the Playlist node in the Media Tree).