shuffle over all files in all directories

[RockBoxer1977]

Hello!

I'm new in Rockbox and I have the problem not find a way to play all music of all directories shuffled. In the Manual I also can not find a workaround to do this.

Thank you for your help!

[JdGordon]

turn on recursivly insert directories, then insert shuffled on the top directory. or use the database

[bobbydriver]

The way I do it

Go to Playlists

Choose Create Playlist

This will then insert every music file into a playlist file

Then go back to Files and scroll down until you see the new playlist file which will be called root.m3u8

Select this m3u8 file and it will play everything - just make sure that you have the player set to shuffle too

[[Saint]]

The way bobbydriver mentioned is needlessly complicated, go with JdGordon on this one.


[St,]

[bobbydriver]

Needlessly complicated?

I don't even understand the post by JDGordon!

At least I told him what menus and options to choose

I would say that the JDGordon method is needlessly uninformative & vague!

The guy says he is new to Rockbox so he probably needs more clues than that. I've been using Rockbox for over a year and I can't follow what JDGordon means..

Actually if it's less complicated than my method I'm interested in learning how to do it!

[pondlife]

- Go into "Database" (and wait for the database to build if it's the first time you've used it)
- Highlight "Track" and show the context menu (long SELECT, normally)
- Select "Playlist" > Insert Shuffled

pondlife

[AlexP]

Actually if it's less complicated than my method I'm interested in learning how to do it!

There is an option called "Recursivly insert subdirectories".  Turn it on.  This only needs to be done once.  Now navigate to the top directory that contains all your music and bring up the context menu.  This is is usually by holding select, check the manual for your target.  From the context menu select "insert shuffled".

[bobbydriver]

Ok - I had a look at this in a spare minute and the full instructions are

Only need to do Steps 1-4 once:
1) At main Rockbox menu go to Settings
2) Then choose General Settings
3) Then choose Playlists
4) Then choose Recursively insert subdirectories
 and set it to ON

Then
5) Back to the main Rockbox menu and choose Files
6) Navigate to the top directory that contains all your music and press & hold the Select button
7) Choose Playlist
8 ) Choose Insert Shuffled
9) Play a song and it should then proceed to shuffle all your music

Or you can do the "needlessly complicated" way

Only need to do Steps 1-6 once:
1) At main Rockbox menu go to Settings
2) Then choose Playback Settings
3) Then choose Shuffle
and set it to YES
4) Back to the main Rockbox menu and choose Playlists
5) Choose Create Playlist to insert everything into a playlist
6) Back to the main Rockbox menu and choose Files

Then
7) Navigate to the playlist file which will be called root.m3u8 and press the Select button. it should then proceed to shuffle all your music

[GodEater]

So it looks to me like the "needlessly complicated" way is in fact two steps shorter than the other method... By most definitions that's *less* complicated.

[[Saint]]

It really needn't be that difficult, and there really is no need to make a playlist to do this.

Step 1: Not even really a step. Not even necessary if you use the Database, just make sure recursively insert directories is set to on if you use the "Files" browser to do this..

Step 2: You can do this in the database, or the files menu:

Files: If you have a music directory (as in .rockbox/Music/), bring up the context menu on this directory (the manual can help you here, context menu is "long select" on the iPods), choose "Playlist", choose "Insert Shuffled".

Database: Open the Database, bring up the context menu on "Track", select "Playlist", select "Insert Shuffled".

After step 2 (either Database or Files method), your music will begin to play automatically


Step 3: Done.



[St.]

[icheyne]

Thanks so much for this explanation all. In the end I used the database approach, as it's easier to exclude directories with "database.ignore" files.

Shouldn't this be a bug in Rockbox? It's a fundamental use case in modern MP3 UI design. Apple even design a music player around it this single feature.

I'll never persuade my Mum to use Rockbox without it.

[evilnick]

Shouldn't this be a bug in Rockbox?

What are you talking about?

There are loads of ways of creating playlists in Rockbox, and it's far more intuitive than at least the iPhone OF (the only one I've used to any degree)

[icheyne]

I'm saying that it's very unintuitive - far more unintuitive than the default firmware on my Clip+.

I'm not the only one with this problem.  Try searching for all forum topics with "shuffle" in the title. Two pages full of unique topics.

[evilnick]

Perhaps it's horses for courses, or that RB gives the user chance to ignore the database entirely if they prefer using a directory structure, but I'm unsure as to how this could be (easily) improved.

I do see your point about the number of users who were having problems trying to shuffle all songs. Is this something that is best addressed in the manual, or should there be more effort made to present Shuffle All as something specifically that should be "pushed" at the users?

I'm not asking that as anything other than to get some discussion.

[icheyne]

Sorry for the delay in replying, but I wanted to check my Clip+ default firmware to see how shuffle is done:

1. The first option in the Music menu is "Play All".
2. Change the play setting to "Shuffle" in the context menu.

Sansa have made this an easy two-step process. In Rockbox it's a multi-step process and requires user guide reading. I could not even work out how to do it from the manual and had to go searching in this forum.

I don't want to raise this as a bug, but I think it's an important usability feature request.