Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas

random selection

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matthew1:
In addition to the existing shuffle option, I'd like to see a random selection option.  A random selection means any song from the playlist can be played next even ones that have already been played.  For small playlists shuffle might be preferred but for large playlists I'd prefer random.

saratoga:
You can only shuffle items that are in the current playlist, so that would imply duplicating some playlist entries.  Could be done but it would be a little weird.

matthew1:
No duplication of entries.  Let's say you have a playlist of 972 songs.  Each song is assigned a number from 1 to 972.  For the next song to be played you randomly select a number between 1 and 972 and play that song next.  If you go back a song the next song to be played would be different as it is randomly selected every time.  Other mp3 players do this.

saratoga:

--- Quote from: xxmatthew on January 13, 2015, 05:17:32 PM ---For the next song to be played you randomly select a number between 1 and 972 and play that song next.

--- End quote ---

You have to decide which track to play in advance so that it can be buffered.  So when you randomize, the order of the entire playlist will be fixed until you decide to randomize again.

[Saint]:
This is a somewhat odd, but not uncommon request.

In the past, the consensus of opinion has been that in general people don't actually want true random playback, unless we also offered a weighting system. This is possible, but not implemented.

The reason I say people don't actually want true random, over pseudo-random, is that the former presented a situation where it is legitimately possible to play the exact same track as many times in a row as as the playlist is long. And these odds increase (or decrease) with the playlist length.

Our current system ensures that you will never, not ever, hear the same track in a shuffled playlist twice. To add true random playback, it becomes rather essential to have a weighting system so that users can increase or decrease the odds of hearing a specific track more than once. With true random playback, if the user shuffles an album into into the playlist, and then skips a track they might not particularly like, there is absolutely nothing stopping that track from being presented to the user as the next track in the playlist, again and again, for a value of N where N is the playlist length.

I think I should also point out that the user absolutely does not need to make a specific selection of a given track before starting a randomized playlist. The last response in this thread could seem to imply this, but this is not the case at all. If the user inserts a directory into a playlist, using the 'insert shuffled' option, this decision is made for the user, and it behave exactly as one would expect it to, randomization with zero repeat collisions.

I hope this post has gone some way to explaining the situation as it pertains to Rockbox and shuffled playback.


[Saint]

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