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Shaken, not stirred |
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3.1 Quick Start Instructions F. A. Q. Screen Shots Copy Album Art to Player Contact Author |
|
Shaken, not stirred |
Download Version
3.1 Quick Start Instructions F. A. Q. Screen Shots Copy Album Art to Player Contact Author |
Shaken, not stirred is a freeware jukebox program for people who like to hear some songs played very often and others only occasionally. The frequency of play is based on the 1 to 5 stars rating you assign in Windows Media Player.
The program generates shuffled playlists by randomly selecting songs from your entire collection, new songs, specified genres and/or existing playlists, or from any combination of those as you choose. How much more often favored songs are played, and how repetitions are separated, are options controlled by the user.
The random playlist can be created in .wpl format for syncing to your MP3 player or phone with Windows Media Player, or in .m3u or .m3u8 format for other sync programs.
Shaken, not stirred also includes a separate utility to copy album art from your computer to your MP3 player or phone, described on its own page.
The program uses Windows Media Player's database to know what songs are in your collection, and what their ratings are for setting how often to play each song.
If you use Windows Media Player to sync your player, and have assigned song ratings (1 to 5 stars),
no preparation is needed and you can generate shuffled playlists with Shaken
Not Stirred a few minutes after you download it. If you don't use Windows
Media Player, some extra steps are required, described in the F.A.Q. and more
fully in the program's Help.
For a simple example of what it's like to use this program, see the Quick Start Instructions, copied from the program's help file.
The selection example in the illustration to the right is more complicated than you probably would use, just to show some of the program's capabilities. The first item in the list "Song groups to include in shuffle" is ALL SONGS in your collection, with songs rated 5-stars played nine times as often as 1-star songs. This might be all you want to create a playlist, maybe choosing different frequencies, without bothering to add the other groups in the example list.
In the second group, the user sets all new songs added to the collection in the last 45 days to play more often than older songs with the same stars ratings. These new songs are already included as part of ALL SONGS, so their play frequency is in addition to how often they would be played based on their song ratings in ALL SONGS.
The last group included in the shuffle is songs to filter out of the generated playlist. In this example, the user likes to play Classical music some times, but doesn't want it included in a mixed playlist of their other songs like pop, dance, etc. No songs with the genre "Classical" will be in the generated playlist, even though they are part of the "ALL SONGS" group included in the shuffle.
The "Distribution of repetitions" options prevent the same song from repeating too soon after itself, as would sometimes happen with normal random coincidences. The default option, selected in the illustration, distributes repetitions in approximately equal intervals with some random variation.
Windows XP or later (Does not require .NET framework)
Tested on Windows 7 with Windows Media Player 12, and Windows XP with WMP
versions 10 & 11
Probably OK with Windows 2000 and Windows Media Player 9, not tested. Windows 2000 may need
to add gdiplus.dll
from Microsoft.
Shaker.zip 686 KB Version 3.1 released
9/5/2011
Download and use entirely at your own risk. No warranty of any kind.
Freeware. Copyright © 2007-2011 Matthew Ahmed. All rights reserved.
Installation: Unzip the download file to a temporary location, and run
(e.g. double-click) the enclosed shaker3.1_install.msi file.
Uninstall: In the Control Panel "Programs and Features", select
"Shaken, not stirred" and click Uninstall (or Remove in XP's "Add
or Remove Programs").
Alternative manual installation
Shaker_manual_install.zip 568 KB
Highly recommended if you're comfortable with manual installs, and like the old
simplicity of all configuration and temp files kept in the program's folder
(so just deleting the program folder completely uninstalls). Unzip the download
file to a subfolder of your user profile folder, e.g. "C:\Users\<your
login name>\Shaker" and run Shaker.exe. For convenience
you'll probably want to create a shortcut to Shaker.exe on your Desktop or
Start Menu.
Note: The program writes all files to its own folder (except generated
playlists where you choose) only if it's in a subfolder your user profile
folder. If you put it anywhere else (like the Program Files folder),
configuration and temp files will be written to your user profile's AppData
folder to avoid causing User Access Control warnings in Windows 7 or Vista.
New in this version
Bug fix for resetting default play frequency.
Added info in Help file for use with phones, particularly Android phones.