AutoPlaylists

What sets SnackAmp apart from most music players and playlist managers is its ease of use. If you have hundreds to thousands of music files, and get tired of managing individual playlists or organizing files by genre, the AutoPlaylist feature is for you. You use the AutoPlaylist manger to organize your files within a directory structure in you media library as you see fit - typically music type, artist, then album. You can then select individual folders (or folder trees) and save those settings under a name. Applying that AutoPlaylist will create a playlist with all of the files sorted per the sorting option in effect.

Launching the AutoPlaylist GUI

The AutoPlaylist and track manager is launched (or closed) by toggling the button on the main user interface, or selecting the AutoPlaylists/Manage AutoPlaylists menu selection.

Creating AutoPlaylists

The AutoPlaylist directory tree has checkboxes next to each directory. You may check each box to enable that folder for AutoPlaylist inclusion. You may also set an entire folder from the pop-up menu or Ctrl/Alt-S key combination. After you have the desired folders checked, save this as a new AutoPlaylist file. You can also apply it send tracks contained in any of the selected folders to the active play list. You can then use the sort/shuffle feature to play in the order you choose. Different AutoPlaylist files are retrieved form the AutoPlaylists menu pulldowns. Below is the AutoPlaylist manager.

With the AutoPlaylist feature, you can save settings that reflect your musical preference rather than specific songs. For instance Classical, Hard Rock, Dance, Relaxation would all be appropriate names.  Each file you save will show up in the AutoPlaylists menu to allow you to apply it easily.

Setting AutoPlaylists

Each AutoPlaylist you save can be applied from either the SnackAmp or AutoPlaylist GUI using the AutoPlaylist menus. If you have the Play Settings -> Save Playlist when changing AutoPlaylists settings on, a regular playlist will be saved containing the current playlist using the base AutoPlaylist name. This allows you to switch between different AutoPlaylists and still have the ability to recall a prior playlist.

Finding Files

At the top of the Auto Playlist window you will find a search entry box. You may search for folders by entering some of the text and pressing Enter or selecting the Search icon. If you hit Ctrl-Enter or the Search File icon, you will locate the next matching file instead. You may also use the search icons to the left of the search entry box.

Filtering/Searching Files

To locate all instances of a track, you may enter text into the filter entry box (next to the find entry box) and select the filter icon. This will search the database for the criteria specified and show those matching tracks. To the left of the entry field is a combo box to select what the fields you are search in the database. If the Incremental Search option is set for the Auto Playlist settings, the filtering will take place automatically after you enter each keystroke. Pressing the Reset button will return the APL track list to the select folder. This feature is similar to the search features on Winamp 5, iTunes and Windows Media Player.

Showing Multiple Levels

At the top of the GUI you can select the number of subfolders to use to display tracks, . This allows you to view an entire directory tree of tracks, say for instance of an entire Artist. Most functions (ID3, Auto Leveling) that can be applied to nodes will also apply subfolders down to the level you have selected.

Table Cell Editing

Selecting the Cell Editing icon allows you to edit many of the track attributes (ID3 tags, file name, gain) in-place, like a spreadsheet. Pressing Escape while editing a cell will lose the current changes but stay in cell editing mode. Pressing Enter will commit any changes to disk. You can hit Escape twice, or press the icon again to exit the cell editing mode.

Folder History

At the top of Auto Playlist selecting the History menu (or down arrow) will show a history of the recently visited folders. You also have navigation buttons to go through the history list. These are useful when you are moving files around.

Favorites

You can save highlighted nodes as favorites from the menu to make it easier to return to them later.

Native Drag-N-Drop

See Drag-N-Drop for native support of Drag-N-Drop operations.