The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

I just sorted a lot of study/tutorial videos in different ways using aliases, but now when I try to play the alias files (like you can with QuickView and QT), I get the error
is there any workaround for this, that let's VLC resolve the absolute path from the alias file?


Thanks!

What are alias files?

Hi, sorry for the late reply. Aliases are like symbolic links in *nix that will resolve to a specific file somewhere else (http://www.kb.iu.edu/data/achy.html).
It's very useful when you want to organize your files in several ways or if there is some overlap between your files that makes you unsure of where to put them.

Say I have videos that I want to have organized by source and subject, like this

Math source A
Math source B

Math subject A
Math subject B

Just with that I can avoid making duplicate files and save space by first putting the videos in the source folders, and then making aliases that I put in the subject folders.
It can also with overlap, where I might have a video in Math source A that both relates to Math subject A and B.

Hope it makes sense why I do it and I realize this might not become a top priority any time soon thanks.

Ok, then this is a missing feature.

Hi, I would just ad on remark to this topic. Aliases are not resolved also in media browser. Since Front Row does not allow you to browse other folders on Mac people have to add aliases of folders where they store movies to "Movies" folder in Home directory. You can add there alias for "Volumes" and search whole computer as well. It woks well. But VLC can not recognize those aliases so I can't see my media files on external HD.

I found that I can throw folders into Media Library but it does not seems natural for me neither intuitive. It could stop working when I reorder folder structure.

I would welcome aliases recognition or ability to add other sources under My Computer section.

Thanks

Frantisek

I also recognized problems concerning aliases: if I open an alias via "open with" or droping it on the dock icon, it works, but it does not work or is not resolved if I just drop it to the playlist. I don't know if maybe the OS resolves the alias with these open with functions, but nevertheless it still would be great if it was fixed (I'm not a developer, so I can't do it myself).