MP3/MP4 sequence

[wizofos]

I run VLC on Fedora 16 and generally use it to play music while I work in my office.
When I open a directory it does not start with the first song.
How does VLC choose the sequence to play?
I have looked in most of the preferences and can't find any way to alter the play sequence.
It seems to run the same sequence but I can't figure it out, file name, date, size, ????

[edwardw]

I run VLC on Fedora 16 and generally use it to play music while I work in my office.
When I open a directory it does not start with the first song.
How does VLC choose the sequence to play?
I have looked in most of the preferences and can't find any way to alter the play sequence.
It seems to run the same sequence but I can't figure it out, file name, date, size, ????

This is normal. POSIX doesn't guarantee that readdir will read files in any order, so you will probably need to use the VLC GUI to sort your media files (e.g. by title, by artist, by genre) then save it to a playlist or Media Library.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

VLC 2.x sorts alphabeticall by default.

[wizofos]

Thank you all for the responses. I have been fooling around with it and determined that your suggestion about creating the playlist is the best way to do it or to just let them play out of sequence. Apparently there is some other data that is available in MP3 tags that some players read so that the 'tracks' play in the same sequence as they are on the 'albums'. This is not a big thing for me just that when I play from my desktop using VLC then go to the CD player in my car I get a new sequence and that messes with my mental sing along playlist.
I have a few musician friends who have cut 'albums' and they tell me that they are careful of the sequence of the songs on an 'album' to get the correct mood or ambiance. It might be a nice addition to VLC to read the track number in the MP3 tags and at least allow the option to play in that sequence. Apparently iPods do this as they play music in the correct CD sequence.

Thanks for the info.