playlist generator

[GodEater]

and how would "Specify" work ?

[robin0800]

How about use the existing system to get the random tracks and increase playing options to;

Play All
Play No.
Play Time

No. and Time would have to be configurable

[Zardoz]

What I had in mind was this: A menu item 'Create Playlist'. A submenu 'Number of tracks'. Another 'Include' 'All' or 'Specify' and if 'Specify' is chosen you're brought to the file browser to select which folders to include (With respect to the setting recursively insert directories)

[Llorean]

So again, I repeat, how is that different from just creating the playlist the normal way and then limiting the number of tracks that get played? That's what you've just described, just in the other order...

[Zardoz]

Well I thought if you created a playlist in the normal way and limited the number of tracks (to say 500) then you would end up with a playlist including only the first 500 tracks on the player?

[Llorean]

Not if you shuffled it... Plus you can pick and choose to create it from just certain folders, etc...

[Zardoz]

But shuffling it will just rearrange the play order. If i have a directory on my player called 'music' which contains in nested directories all of my music files and I set maximum playlist size to 50, browse to the 'music' directory, invoke the context menu and 'insert shuffled' I will end up with playlist of the first 50 tracks in that directory, albeit in a 'random' order. Whereas what I was suggesting was the ability to select 50 tracks entirely at random from all of the tracks on the player.

[Chronon]

That's not what Llorean suggested.  Create a shuffled playlist of all tracks, then truncate the list or halt playback after a given number of tracks.

[Zardoz]

ok but that creates a playlist of 18000 tracks plus which takes time to load and display. It was just an idea. sorry

[Llorean]

To randomly select from 18000 tracks, you need to know all 18000 tracks and their locations anyway. Thus your method wouldn't really be any faster for selecting 50 out of 18000 than the other method.

[Zardoz]

I don't understand? What other method? Say I want to listen to 50 random tracks. I want those 50 tracks to be selected by rockbox from among all the tracks on my player. The idea is I have very little input and that I don't know what tracks are being selected. (I appreciate that 'random' is a mathematical impossibility but I fail to see what's so difficult to understand about this proposal. Equally I understand you people are very busy, generous of your time, and that this is essentially your project, but I was just suggesting something.)

[Llorean]

What you're not understanding is that we DO understand your proposal. It's not difficult to understand at all.

What I've asked, several times, is what's different between "pick 50 random tracks and play them" and "shuffle all the tracks and then play 50" since, for the first one, you have to have a list of all the tracks anyway? They're the same thing, but you can already essentially do the second one.

[Zardoz]

the difference is time and resource. Adding 18000 tracks, shuffling and then limiting the tracklist to 50 makes no sense to me

[Llorean]

You don't seem to understand what I've said: You can't pick 50 out of the 18,000 without first knowing about the 18,000. It's not going to waste any more time or resources because you more or less have to do it that way already.

Let me ask you, can you pick 10 random cards out of a deck of cards without first having a deck of cards to pick from?

It's the same idea. To choose a random 50 songs from all of them, you first have to have a list of all of them.

[Zardoz]

Explain this further. Of course you have to have all the files to choose from. I have no idea what you're talking about.

so creating a 50 track playlist is no different to creating an 18000 track playlist?