Playing folders in succession

[Leprechaun]

Hi all. I hope I'm in the right place;if not feel free to move this to the right place.
I have the xduoo x3 with vortex rockbox. My files are flac and tagged with mp3 tag.
They are organised in albums,I don't make playlists. What I want to do is this: play an album
and leave it going until it finishes,and then go to the next album(or folder). Now what happens is
that the album plays the last track in the folder and then stops.
This is important for me because I want to use the xduoo as a music player while I'm riding my bike(motorcycle). I don't want to stop every time to select another folder. I've tried everything
to do this,without success. My old galaxy s1 can play my folders one after the other; I select any
folder in the list,and it plays all the folders in succession without any further input from me.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks

[saratoga]

See this setting:

https://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-sansaclip/rockbox-buildch7.html#x9-1260007.9

[Leprechaun]

Thanks for the suggestion,but according to the manual,this only works using file browser. My
files are tagged;if I use the file browser it plays them in alphabetical order,not the original order
of the album. As I said, my old Galaxy S1 plays the music the way I want, even my wife's old Sony NWZ 845 does this, my old Sansa clip+ played folders all the way through and continued to the next folders. Is it possible that Rockbox can' t do this simple thing?

[saratoga]

The file browser does play albums by file name and folder, not by tag.  The database organizes music by tag.

Which are you using?

[Frankenpod]

File browser would play tracks in the original order if you named your track files with the track number at the start of the file name (with leading zeros).  Is this not the normal way to name music files?

There are utilities that will do that in bulk, I think (mp3tag _probably_ does, though I can't remember).  Maybe you could run one of those over your music collection, then use the file browser?

[Leprechaun]

As I said,my files are tagged,the filenames are not preceded by a number. All my flac files are
tagged in this way. Do I have to rename all my files so I can play them using Rockbox? This is
a very serious defect. There"s no way I'm going to rename all my files.

[saratoga]

Do I have to rename all my files so I can play them using Rockbox?

No, if you haven't named your files suitably for playback by file name, you can always use the database, which shows you file tags rather than file name. 

We were assuming you wanted to playback by file name because of the title of your thread. 

[Frankenpod]

As I said,my files are tagged,the filenames are not preceded by a number. All my flac files are
tagged in this way. Do I have to rename all my files so I can play them using Rockbox? This is
a very serious defect. There"s no way I'm going to rename all my files.

It's not that big a deal though, surely?

I recall using a mass-tagger to remove non-jpg embedded artwork on several tens of thousands of tracks (and then put jpegs in) just to get the art to show up on Rockbox!  Admittedly it was only a problem in the first place because crappy iTunes had been putting pngs in there without my knowledge.  iTunes's habit of doing things like that is one reason why I went to Rockbox in the first place.

Anyway, point is, it's not that big a deal, just a small script and away it goes.  Almost certain mp3tag can do it (load all tracks, select the 'tags to file names' option and write a small script).

Or you could just put all your tracks in one playlist, in album order, which is surely a pretty simple task in a music manager?  Or you could do it within Rockbox, though that would be a way more tedious process.  (When you say you want rockbox to play 'the next album', what would determine what the 'next album' was, if not a playlist?)

third suggestion removed 'cos I'm not sure its even needed, now I think about it...

[Leprechaun]

When I say albums I mean folders. They are named "artist" then "album name". For this reason,the list of folders is in alphabetic order, so the next album is the next folder in alphabetical order. I use GMMP  player on my Galaxy. This gives me the option of going to the next folder(album) without any input from me. I just choose a folder(album), start playing, and
it continues playing until I stop it. This is what I want to do with the Xduoo.

[Frankenpod]

Well using the file browser will do that, but because its a _file_ browser its not going to know about meta-data like track number, it's only going to know about file structures, ergo to get the tracks in the right order within folders you'd need to name them with a leading track number.  I thought most cd-rippers did that in the first place, so that's how I've always done it so have never run into the problem.  Like I say, it's not difficult to get mp3tag to rename all your tracks in bulk with leading tracknumbers (and disc-numbers if necessary).  Music managers usually have such an option as well.

The original app you refer to seems to be using a mixture of meta-data and file structure to determine play-order.  I don't personally find it unreasonable that rockbox keeps the two separate, i.e. either look at tracks as files or look at them via their metadata - that actually seems more logical to me than the approach you are talking about.  I guess the decision not to use a hybrid approach was baked in to the code a long time ago, and would be a huge amount of work to change now.

I did experiment with using the tagnavi_config file to make a tracklist that was ordered by album, which would achieve what you want via the database, but I have too many tracks for using the tracklist as a playlist to work.  For what it's worth, the following tagnavi_custom.cfg file would give you a tracklist with the trackname prefixed with the album name, thus meaning tracks are shown in album order, which might be a way of getting the same effect as you are talking about.  Though when I try it the tracks are ordered by artist then album, and I can't work out why.  Also it looks kind of messy having the album name prefixed to the track name.  Really think the simplest answer is to name the files a bit more logically and use the file-browser.

Code: [Select]

#! rockbox/tagbrowser/2.0

%format "fmt_albumtitle" "%s.%d.%02d. %s" album discnum tracknum title ? discnum > "0" 
%format "fmt_albumtitle" "%s.%02d. %s" album tracknum title ? discnum = "0" 

%menu_start "custom_tracksbyalbum"  "Tracks ordered by Album"
"Tracks ordered by album" -> title = "fmt_albumtitle" 

%menu_start "custom"  "custom menu"
"Tracks By Album" ==> "custom_tracksbyalbum"

#EOF

[Leprechaun]

I rip the CDs,then I normalise and  cut a lot of the silence between tracks. Then I  remove the track numbers so I can burn to a CD. The program attaches the track number when the CD is burned. I also do this because I make compilations from different discs and I don't want to have a lot of duplicate numbers on the compilation.

[Frankenpod]

To be honest I don't follow what your cd burning involves (red-book audio or audio as data?) or why the filenames are important to it, but I guess if there were a solution to the problem you'd have found it yourself already.  I suppose if you haven't got vast numbers of files (i.e. too big for a single playlist) that tagnavi config might be a work-around - you'd end up with an all-tracks-ordered-by-album option in the database, and start playing one of them it should keep going through all albums with the tracks in the right order for each album.

[Leprechaun]

Thanks. I'll try that. I burn red book not data.