Placeholder

lpresnell · August 08, 2012, 11:41:08 AM

I'm getting these in 1.90. What do they mean?
Thanks

Bryan Durio · August 08, 2012, 01:43:05 PM

It means that the song that was specified was not found in the place Ots expected it to be. That usually happens when you've saved a playlist as an OIL or OFL file and then import it back into Ots. Have you changed the directory structure of your music?

The easiest way to resolve this is to do a relink (File -> Import/Refresh -> Relink unavailable albums) to tell Ots where the song is currently located.

lpresnell · August 09, 2012, 11:19:24 AM

Thanks
Larry

DJMartin · August 09, 2012, 12:21:06 PM

Hi
I experience frequently placeholders in the playlists we have stored. Pretty annoying, since files haven't changed nor the directory structure. Weird.

Anyway, my long time wish to OTS folks is to right click on that placeholder and information about the 'missing' artist/title is showed. Nothing else. Pro would be speed up of playlist correction. Cons nothing I can imagine

Regards, Martin

Bryan Durio · August 09, 2012, 01:31:55 PM

Martin, SOMETHING changed for a <Placeholder> to show up. If the song is on an external drive and the drive letter is different now, that's one possibility. Your wish would be nice to have, though.

Dub2Dat · August 09, 2012, 08:27:02 PM

When I first started using the Playlist Templet Generator in 1.85 I seen the Placeholders too. What it means is that you are asking the generator to deliver a result that it can't do based on how you set it up. For me I was using the default of not playing the same artist no sooner than 20 plays ago. I didn't have enought tracks to do this. When I reduced the artist separtion to 10 plays the placeholders went away. All of your selections in the Playlist Templet Generator make a difference in your results.

This is a great feature OTS. Please don't change a thing.

Bryan Durio · August 09, 2012, 09:36:15 PM

You're correct, Dub. I hadn't thought of using the Playlist Generator.

Jumpin' Jeff · August 09, 2012, 09:40:00 PM

Yet, from what I read, his problem is with pregenerated playlists, that I assume once worked. So, I would agree with Bryan's first responce.

milky · August 09, 2012, 09:55:17 PM

Quote from: Dub2Dat on August 09, 2012, 08:27:02 PM
When I first started using the Playlist Templet Generator in 1.85 I seen the Placeholders too. What it means is that you are asking the generator to deliver a result that it can't do based on how you set it up. For me I was using the default of not playing the same artist no sooner than 20 plays ago. I didn't have enought tracks to do this. When I reduced the artist separtion to 10 plays the placeholders went away. All of your selections in the Playlist Templet Generator make a difference in your results.

This is a great feature OTS. Please don't change a thing.

This is exactly why things can change. Imagine the situation where you have only 180 tracks in your music collection. You run Ots for 12 hours and close it. You then open it, generate a new 12 hour template in which you specify "lastplay > 24 hours". HALF of the tracks in your collection would be ineligible, so they would generate Placeholders. Your template filtering (track/artist/lastplay/priority) MUST take into account the number of tracks that would satisfy the conditions.

DJMartin · August 09, 2012, 10:13:11 PM

Our playlists are pure manual selections of songs. Some of them are wishlists from customers, some are theme oriented. Some are 5 songs long, others 100 songs... At the time we create them, they all work since we listen to them, later select them in the history window and save as oil files.
This might not be the best solution, but it suites our needs. I would use categories when the implementation in OTS would be little better (long time ago I talked about that in here).

So to repair such a playlist, I would love to right click on the placeholder, see the missing song, seach for and drag it in, then delete the placeholder. Done. Easy, fast...

Our files might change over time. Every once in a while we do a cleanup session and remove duplicated songs out of the albums. There's no reason to have the exact same chart song just because it is placed on multiple sampler CD. While ripping the CD, we don't have the time to lookup each song for dups.

Hope that explains my situation little better. Thanks.

milky · August 09, 2012, 10:36:08 PM

From the Ots documentation under "Ots Item List Format"

Quote
The Ots Item List format is best suited if you require portability between various OtsAV installations and file/folder layouts. The items referenced within the list are identified by their title, artist and a special signature, making the references more immune to broken links after you reorganize your files, change filenames and/or folder storage locations.

Note: If an item referenced within an OIL file is later changed in a significant way -- it's title or artist information is edited, or the audio data is altered -- the reference may no longer be valid, as the correct item can not reliably be determined. If this happens you will end up with a placeholder directive occupying the item's position in the list. Bear this in mind when making changes to files in Ots Studio.

The point appears to be that, if the "special signature" is destroyed, there is no way that Ots can point to its new location. I take your point that it could display a pop-up showing the details of the track it could not find, so you could do a manual search for it or a replacement.

DJMartin · August 10, 2012, 09:17:36 PM

Milky, I didn't found the passion (and time) to exactly find out which of the hundreds of playlists get broken after which activity. At the time some years ago, I spent a lot of time to find a way on how to identify the missing song. I had then some sort of dump tool, which dumped an ascii version of the .oil file. This file could then be searched in the editor (e.g. notepad, pspad) for the song right before the placeholder is displayed. In clear text you can see there the missing artist and title.

That brought me to my proposal to OTS folks back in 2009 to have the right click or a hoover over window telling you exact that ascii string... the missing song

Hope you can follow what I try to say.

Martin

Nicolee · August 18, 2012, 09:44:02 PM

My problem is how do we get rid of these bad placeholders or bad file references within the library without deleting the library and totally refreshing it.

I know you can do it one by one but surely there must be a way just to get rid of the titles which are not linked to a file in bulk.

DJMartin · August 27, 2012, 08:03:15 AM

Nicolee, if I understand your wish correctly, then this should be done by using the import/refresh menu. From that menu I would give 'Re-Link Unavailable Albums (Files)' a try. Maybe that solves your needs.

Up to now I didn't found an easy way to correct placeholders in playlists in general.

Nicolee · September 02, 2012, 03:05:40 AM

Quote from: DJMartin on August 27, 2012, 08:03:15 AM
Nicolee, if I understand your wish correctly, then this should be done by using the import/refresh menu. From that menu I would give 'Re-Link Unavailable Albums (Files)' a try. Maybe that solves your needs.

Up to now I didn't found an easy way to correct placeholders in playlists in general.

I normally do a re-link but what I always seem to notice is I get duplicated references, one with the correctly refreshed title and then another which is stored as a placeholder which in turn needs to be deleted from the library, and I have to to this with all placeholders.

I have found it easier when there is many placeholders just to delete and re-import which normally means a loss of all the categories and titles I have stored to them.

I don't know why occasionally these placeholders appear, as the library I use never moves and I have a static drive letter and path assignment. No part of my library is stored on an external drive which you could understand would cause placeholders to appear if a drive letter changed but in my system this is not possible.