creating a simple dynamic playlist

[pmennen]

Sorry to ask since I'm sure this must have been asked before, but my question is so simple and general that I could not figure out out to search for the answer.

I'm using the Sansa Clip Zip with a fairly recent Rockbox version (cdaef6f -121214). I see that many fancy things are possible with playlists, but my desires are quite primitive. I just want to create a playlist containing all the music on my player. I know this is possible, because on page 35 of the manual it says:

"To create a playlist containing all music on your player, you can use the Create Playlist command in the Playlists menu found in the Main Menu . The created playlist will be named root.m3u8 and saved in the root of your player’s disk."

Since this is EXACTLY what I want to do, of course I went to the main menu to look for the playlists menu expecting to find the "create playlist" command in there. My problem however is that I do not have a playlists menu in the main menu. My main menu looks just like figure 5.1 on page 39 which has a "Playlist Catalog" menu, but not simply a "Playlist" menu. Of course I tried the Playlist Catalog menu, but clearly this is not the same thing because I don't see a "create playlist" command there. (I just get a brief "No files" message).

This is weird, because the manual seems to go thru each main menu item in turn eventually getting to the "Playlists" menu in section 5.10 at the bottom of page 44. Right below that it again lists the "Create Playlist" command that I so desperately need but cannot find.

It also mentions that you can create a play list from the WPS context menu or from the File/Folder context menu. I would prefer not to do it that way since it seems more complicated than I need, but nonetheless I tried that out of desperation. But again I do not see the create playlist command from either of those context menus either!

What is going on? Obviously I'm missing some basic idea that has gotten me so hopelessly out of sync with the manual.

Even if I can't figure out what the manual is trying to tell me, I would be happy if I could find some sure fire way to just load up player with a few dozen folders and have it play them in order. (Even any order would be fine!!!)

Thanks for any help you can offer.
~Paul

[JdGordon]

The manual is (waaay) out of date here.. hold down select/ok/middle button (whetaver it is on the clip) so you get to the context menu on the "playlist catalogue" item and the "create playlist" option is there

[pmennen]

Ok ... wow. It now works following your instructions. But wait ... isn't this "create playlist" thing pretty much essential. Shouldn't it appear in the main menu so it could be discovered without a manual? Maybe I could have figured this out if I didn't have the manual ... but long press on playlist catalogue would certainly not be an easy guess. And with the manual, I had no chance. (Perhaps this manual should be deleted, as it may be doing more harm than good.) Don't thousands of people learn how to use this? This manual is dated yesterday ... but perhaps there is a more up to date manual that people are looking at? Otherwise I'm still confused about how people use this.

~Paul

[saratoga]

The manual is (waaay) out of date here.. hold down select/ok/middle button (whetaver it is on the clip) so you get to the context menu on the "playlist catalogue" item and the "create playlist" option is there

Can you post an updated text?  I don't know how the playlist catalog is supposed to work, otherwise I would do it.

[[Saint]]

I think there's only one human on the face of the earth who knows how this works.

It got through with no documentation despite radical changes to functionality.


[Saint]

[JdGordon]

Ok ... wow. It now works following your instructions. But wait ... isn't this "create playlist" thing pretty much essential. Shouldn't it appear in the main menu so it could be discovered without a manual? Maybe I could have figured this out if I didn't have the manual ... but long press on playlist catalogue would certainly not be an easy guess. And with the manual, I had no chance. (Perhaps this manual should be deleted, as it may be doing more harm than good.) Don't thousands of people learn how to use this? This manual is dated yesterday ... but perhaps there is a more up to date manual that people are looking at? Otherwise I'm still confused about how people use this.

~Paul

Creating a single playlist of every file on your DAP is a very niche feature, proof of that is the very few (if any?) complaints about it being moved. IIUC you do the same by just using the database or the file manager anyway.

[pmennen]

> IIUC you do the same by just using the database or the file manager anyway.

I found that the way you described in your earlier reply (i.e. "create playlist") is the easiest.
The problem I had with the File manager method is that sometimes "Insert" would clear the current playlist before adding the selected files and at other times it would add the files at the end of the existing playlist. Which it was going to do always seemed completely random to me ... although I just figured it out. It depends on whether a song is actually playing or not. (But this isn't obvious since I rarely have the earbuds in when dealing with such issues.) I now recognize that the manual does describe this behavior ... a behavior I find quite odd and counter-intuitive. I think it should have "Replace", "Replace-shuffled", "Insert", "Insert-shuffled" at the top of the menu (along with the other selections) regardless of whether a song is playing. Replace would do the same as Insert except that the playlist is cleared first. To me this would make far more sense. Is there a "feature request section" where I can post my idea?

Also I tried creating the playlist using the Database as you suggested. That seemed to be even less intuitive. I never was able to create a playlist in Album order even when selecting "Album". It would put all the tracks into the playlist but in some strange order that remains a mystery to me.

~Paul

[[Saint]]

The behaviour seems non-obvious if you are unfamiliar with the fact that all playback in Rockbox is playlist based, perhaps its not particularly obvious even then.

The options presented differ between the playback and stopped states because when there is no playback, there is no playlist to manipulate or replace.

Also, there is a feature ideas section. It used to be names feature requests but this was changed as it gave the impression that if someone made a request that someone else would actually do something about it.


[Saint]

[pmennen]

Yes, the manual stresses that Rockbox is playlist based, although Rockbox's behaviour still often seems mysterious to me.

I can use a momentary push of the power button to stop the music from playing, and I can see that this changes the playlist options that I'm presented with. However I dispute your contention that there is no playlist to manipulate at that point. If I press the home button, the music will again start playing and if I view the playlist, it looks identical to what it was before I stopped the music. So the terms "Replace" and "Insert" that I proposed to distinguish the two possible operations still seems appropriate to me.

Even when I've paid for software, I don't expect that a feature that I requested would actually be implemented - and even less so for free software. Although it shouldn't be necessary, I understand why "feature requests" was relabeled as "feature ideas".

~Paul

[[Saint]]

I can use a momentary push of the power button to stop the music from playing, and I can see that this changes the playlist options that I'm presented with. However I dispute your contention that there is no playlist to manipulate at that point.

A resume point is saved when playback is stopped, but when playback is stopped, there is no current playlist.


[Saint]

[pmennen]

>but when playback is stopped, there is no current playlist

I don't know how you can say that.
Suppose I pick 5 songs on my player and add them to the playlist using the "Insert" function.
When I resume or select "Now Playing" it plays these 5 songs in the order I selected (in a circular fashion).
When I stop the playback the playlist does not disappear. I can resume the playback and the same 5 songs will continue to play.
If that is not a playlist ... what is? (If it walks and quacks like a duck ... )

- In fact it's even called a duck. If after stopping the playback I scroll down to "Playlist Catalog", long press select, and choose "View Current Playlist" it shows the 5 songs I have selected with the heading "Playlist" on top!

[JdGordon]

That is a quirk of how rockbox stores its resume information. To rockbox there is no difference between pressing stop and turning the device off. When stop (or poweroff) happens a file is quickly written out which tells it how to recreate the in-ram playlist - which is not itself a playlist - which is what is being read when you restart playback. "view current playlist" is a bit odd but close enough.

[saratoga]

If the database doesn't present tracks in order I would check that they have track number tags.

I think playlists are totally unloaded on stop. Its why you can do things like play games that require the entire audio buffer. The memory is actually free in this state since its all flushed to disk.

[pmennen]

> which tells it how to recreate the in-ram playlist - which is not itself a playlist

So both you and Saint are insisting this is not a playlist despite the fact that it behaves like a playlist in every way including being displayed properly when I select "view current playlist"? Perhaps your stance comes from the implementation details, but a user cares only about what it does, not how it is implemented. It seems to work fine, and it's really of no material consequence what we call it, although your response is strange enough, perhaps I have yet to grasp what you are talking about. My complaint that started this thread was with the manual, since I could not find the create playlist command. That was solved by an early response in the thread, although I continue to be concerned for new users. I thought the manual was misleading enough that we would be better off deleting it for now ... but clearly nobody else had much concern about this. I was thinking of volunteering to fix the manual myself - although I'm not sure I quite understand it properly yet.

> If the database doesn't present tracks in order I would check that they have track number tags.
Thanks saratoga ... but that wasn't the problem. My tracks are properly tagged and in fact when I view the database I can view it in any order I like. For instance if I select "Album" it lists all the albums in alphabetical order. I can then select one of those albums and create a playlist including those songs. My confusion was when I tried to create a playlist including all the albums (using "All tracks") the playlist would always be created in alphabetical order according to the track title, regardless of what database category I had selected. That seems like an amazingly useless order, although this no longer bothers me since now that I have found the create playlist command I have an alternative method of creating a logical playlist. (I also have found this can be done nearly as easily using the File context menu.)

~Paul

[[Saint]]

You appear to be very passionate about this. I respect that.

However, when someone asks a question and then receives an answer to that question, they probably shouldn't attempt refute that answer based on what they believe to be correct if it doesn't align with the answer they were given, especially not in combination with stating that they haven't a proper understanding of the workings behind the scenes.


[Saint]