Shuffle Mode

[dinosaur]

I couldn't find much about this in the PDF version of the manual...

Shuffle is appropriate for some playlists, not for others.  I can set the feature on and off under the setup menus.  Then it seems to apply to all playlists until I go back into setup and change it.

Is there any way to turn shuffle on/off on the fly before a given playlist without changing the setup?  I'm thinking of the kind of button most CD players have.

Thanks for the help.

[Llorean]

Check out the Quick Menu, which lets you quickly change Shuffle, Repeat, and File View modes.

[pixelma]

You could also use "Insert shuffled" on a folder or even on a premade .m3u( playlist - I just tried myself:

Invoke the context menu (it's called File menu in the manual) on the folder or the .m3u(, chose "Playlist", then "Insert shuffled" or "Queue shuffled". This will insert the tracks randomly into your playlist after the currently playing file, but also works when your playlist is empty.

These two options ("Insert shuffled" and "Queue shuffled") are not mentioned in the manual yet, but other possibilities of creating and manipulating a playlist are explained in the "Working with playlists" chapter. I personally prefer this method over globally changing the shuffle mode, especially since my device doesn't offer the quick menu, Llorean mentioned.

[dinosaur]

Thanks for the help!  I just tried the 'insert shuffled' menu choice while the setup shuffle option is turned off and it works just as advertised.

As I said above, I also have playlists that I manually edited from the disk contents.  Do you know of an option that I can type in as the first line of the playlist file that also triggers shuffle mode?  If this is possible then some playlists would always play randomly and others would always play in order.

Thanks.

[Chronon]

Can't you just shuffle the contents of the playlists that you want shuffled?

[dinosaur]

Sure, but it means turning on/off the shuffle each time, which is no big deal.  But I was just wondering if there was some undocumented option line that could be typed in at the top of each playlist that RockBox would respond to and randomly shuffle without manual intervention.

[GodEater]

No there isn't - but I believe there's a feature request for this already on flyspray somewhere.

[Chronon]

Sure, but it means turning on/off the shuffle each time, which is no big deal.  But I was just wondering if there was some undocumented option line that could be typed in at the top of each playlist that RockBox would respond to and randomly shuffle without manual intervention.

Why?  If you're willing to use a desktop app you can easily shuffle the entries of a given playlist.  Then you can just play everything with shuffle turned off.  I know Winamp can easily shuffle the contents of a playlist.  This involves using a desktop application, but if you know beforehand that you want certain playlists to play shuffled then it doesn't seem like that much of a hassle to simply randomize them with an external app.

Yes, it's a workaround.  But it at least gives a way to do what you want until such time as someone works on the feature request that GodEater mentioned.

[Febs]

Sure, but it means turning on/off the shuffle each time, which is no big deal.  But I was just wondering if there was some undocumented option line that could be typed in at the top of each playlist that RockBox would respond to and randomly shuffle without manual intervention.

Why?  If you're willing to use a desktop app you can easily shuffle the entries of a given playlist.  

Of course, that playlist would then play in the same order every time you play it, unless you shuffle it again with the external app.  I can understand the appeal of being able to control settings through a playlist entry.  

[Llorean]

It would make more sense (to me) to allow .cfg files to include an entry for a track or playlist to launch when the .cfg is run (similar to resume, except it has to start at the beginning) and have the user launch the playlist by running the .cfg, rather than adding non-m3u functionality to m3u files. It'd have the same net effect.

[Chronon]

Good point, Febs.

It would make more sense (to me) to allow .cfg files to include an entry for a track or playlist to launch when the .cfg is run (similar to resume, except it has to start at the beginning) and have the user launch the playlist by running the .cfg, rather than adding non-m3u functionality to m3u files. It'd have the same net effect.

I do like that this is a more portable solution and doesn't require editing of the files.  But perhaps there's some interest in being able to combine shuffled and unshuffled playlists into new playlists.  It would seem that this could be done by reading out comments in the .m3u files, but would be problematic for the .cfg method.

[Llorean]

For combining multiple playlists, why exactly aren't the "insert" and "insert shuffled" options suitable, since you have to use at least "insert" anyway?

In all honesty, if nothing's playing, you can "Insert Shuffled" a non-shuffled playlist to get shuffled playback anyway.

[pixelma]

The discussion lets me doubt that it came across in my previous post so I want to state it here again:

"Insert shuffled" will generate a shuffled playlist with the entries there are when used on an  m3u( file - I just tried it myself again and got 2 different playlists when "inserting shuffled" with the same root.m3u8. One small minus is that, if you don't start the playlist by doing that or don't have only one file in the currently playing list left, the added songs will be mixed with the leftovers.

The only thing (if at all) desired would be to have a "insert last shuffled" option that will shuffle the files in the .m3u (or folder) but keeps them together and then add them to the playlist. Don't know if that's worth the hassle... and I agree with Llorean that we shouldn't introduce an own m3u standard which could break compatibility with other media players.

[Chronon]

pixelma and Llorean, yes those methods suffice.  It seems we're quibbling over adding code for the sake of a couple of key presses.  And I also agree that Llorean's method involving .cfg files will do everything the OP wants.