The VideoLAN Forums

Hi, when I use 'Play All' in Windows Vista Explorer when viewing a music folder the tracks appear in order but VLC begins playing from a random track, not track 1.

If I left click and drag a rectangular marquee over the files to select them then drop them into VLC they are not even in order.

Clicking on the first (or last) file then pressing shift and clicking the last (or first) file to select them then dropping them into VLC they are in a different order again.

Trying the same technique with other folders gives me different results!

I love VLC and use only it to view videos but this problem has stopped me from using it as my primary music player, I would love if someone could please solve this (without me having to create playlist for all my albums!)

Thanks!

Open Tools -> Messages (set Verbosity to 2), then drag and drop. The message dialog should show what is the order of files that VLC gets.

Well I did all that and, yes, it shows the mixed up order that VLC is playing the songs. So what? This does nothing to fix the problem. I thought that the object of a Q and A forum was to find fixes for problems.

Mine is WXP_SP3 and the songs in my folders all start with their track number, such as 01-songname.mp3, 02-songname.mp3 and VLC still won't play them in that order.

And when you said "drag and drop" it took a minute to figure out where you meant to drop to. I mean, one minute we're in the 'tools, messages' window and it doesn't work dropping anything in there. Found that you meant to drag and drop into the playlist, then it shows the out-of-order playlist info.

So, the question remains, what to do to get VLC to play the songs in their original order, without going through the long task of creating an .m3u file for every album.

If you shift select files in explorer, it is easiest thing to select the last track first, then the first one. That way the order should be correct.

This is the result I get from doing that:

Just pressing "Play All" results in:

I don't know if this helps or not but I still can't get files to play in the correct order!

Did you try Media->Open folder?
T

Did you try Media->Open folder?
T

Hi, that works perfectly alright but I don't want to have to do that every time I play an album!

Don't get me wrong, I love VLC and couldn't use anything else for playing video but when it comes to the basic functionality of playing songs in order it's not very successful. Is this track order problem common with other VLC users or is it confined to my/machine/OS/whatever?

I’m afraid it seem to be a common problem I had it with XP and now Window 7 I could never workout how to get it sorted, I tend to use iTunes for music.

This is a serious issue which *HAS* to be fixed.
I don't believe this is intentional, as all other players I know keep the selected order.
Selecting the same set of tracks twice leads to two different track orders in playlist.
So it is clear that VLC puts them in random order, following no rule, which is absolutely unexpected behaviour.

I'd rather see this as a bug which makes it really hard to use VLC.
Please take care of this!

As far as the VLC developers currently know, the order is set by Windows Explorer. VLC cannot guess what the order was if the Explorer does not preserve it when invoking VLC.

You can complain all you want. The VLC developers think the bug is not within VLC, meaning they cannot fix it. Unless someone has some hard technical data proving the opposite, nothing is going to happen (presumably the data would include the solution).

Then why do other media players manage the same task without such unwanted results?

As far as the VLC developers currently know, the order is set by Windows Explorer. VLC cannot guess what the order was if the Explorer does not preserve it when invoking VLC.

You can complain all you want. The VLC developers think the bug is not within VLC, meaning they cannot fix it. Unless someone has some hard technical data proving the opposite, nothing is going to happen (presumably the data would include the solution).

Hi Rémi, we're not complaining, we're trying to solve an issue we have. Are we not in the Windows Troubleshooting forum? A place where people post problems to be solved?

And yes, why do other media players manage the same task properly? Surely it's not that difficult to order tracks in VLC's playlist numerically?

we're not complaining, we're trying to solve an issue we have.

Indeed, thank you.
Current workaround for me is actually using drag+drop instead of select>rightclick>add to VLC.
Mysteriously this works OUT OF EXPLORER...

Still, bad enough though, that it's not possible to explore the library incl. subfolders within VLC without interrupting the current playlist or playback.
According thread: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=101031
Using explorer should be obsolete...
cheers

I just noticed if you right click the album folder and choose ‘play with VLC media player’ songs play in the correct order, strange when using 'Play All' in Windows Explorer the tracks are played randomly. This is assuming (or should that be presuming) you have separate folder for each album which I guess we all do. I am on Windows 7 so not sure if it’s different on Vista, XP and so on.

I had this problem for days, It was driving me crazy. I found in another thread that the random toggle button needs to be clicked. On the player control element beginning from left to right (play, return, stop,....and so on) look to the last button the ultimate right in this area, This is the "random play" button. If it looks pushed in, click again, to turn it off" (button looks like coming out)

THANK YOU!!
hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
looks like the rest of them are too sick to say thanks so I just registered to say..
THANKS!!

Having the same problem, I have discovered the following:

1. drag and drop does not solve it.
2. random toggle button does need to be in the "out" or off position, but that does not solve it.

My solution:

1. Select tracks from any folder and Add to playlist by any of several methods (doesn't matter which one because they will be in random order by any method).
2. Right click on the randomly ordered playlist in the VLC media player pane to get menu.
3. Left click on Sort By.
4. Left click on URI.
5. Click on ascending.

The are now in the correct order. This sounds like a lot of steps, but only takes a few seconds.

Jeff in ATL

As far as the VLC developers currently know, the order is set by Windows Explorer. VLC cannot guess what the order was if the Explorer does not preserve it when invoking VLC.

You can complain all you want. The VLC developers think the bug is not within VLC, meaning they cannot fix it. Unless someone has some hard technical data proving the opposite, nothing is going to happen (presumably the data would include the solution).

I don't care what the developers 'think' they know about this issue, because what they know is just plain wrong. I'm backing this up with three things:
1) google-search tells me users have been complaining about a 'random' order since at least 2009 (are all those people wrong?)
2) My own brain allows me to reason: which order could windows use? tracknumber? no. alphabetical? no. any other seems weird (but still possible I guess)
3) When all else fails, try it yourself. adding the same group of files in the same way twice, gives two differently ordered playlists.
Are you telling me, that since 2009 users have been saying the playlist order is messed up and developers have just been saying 'nope, not the case' without even checking it themselves?
give it a try yourself sometimes and then tell me it's based on windows sorting.

btw. should it matter: using windows 8 64bit VLC 2.0.5. and 2.0.6. (the builds for which I can confirm it anyway, I've been using VLC quite a bit longer than that)

I don't care what the developers 'think' they know about this issue, because what they know is just plain wrong. I'm backing this up with three things:
1) google-search tells me users have been complaining about a 'random' order since at least 2009 (are all those people wrong?)
2) My own brain allows me to reason: which order could windows use? tracknumber? no. alphabetical? no. any other seems weird (but still possible I guess)
3) When all else fails, try it yourself. adding the same group of files in the same way twice, gives two differently ordered playlists.
Are you telling me, that since 2009 users have been saying the playlist order is messed up and developers have just been saying 'nope, not the case' without even checking it themselves?
give it a try yourself sometimes and then tell me it's based on windows sorting.

btw. should it matter: using windows 8 64bit VLC 2.0.5. and 2.0.6. (the builds for which I can confirm it anyway, I've been using VLC quite a bit longer than that)

Nevermind, only with drag and drop the explorer orders first the file beneath the mouse pointer, continuing with those that follow it and finally with the above it, but with the context menu options doesn't work (randomly as you say).

Hmmm ... It is the same in all windows operations on this PC (Vista Ultimate 64 - VLC 2.0.6), whether drag and drop copying from drive to drive, or dragging and dropping onto the VLC playlist.

1. Select 3 audio and/or video tracks in WinExp
( X, Y and Z for example)
2. put the mouse pointer tip over one of them (X, Y or Z), drag and drop into the vlc playlist.

If I do step 1 with the mouse pointer over: X, it writes X first; Y, it writes Y first: Z, it writes Z first.
If I change the order in which WinExp displays (sort by name, sort by date modified etc.) it will perform step 2 in exactly the same way

If I do this and then drag and drop copy to a new dir - it performs in exactly the same way. If the source window is sort by date modified and the target is sort by name, it will write in the order of the source (checked by switching the target WinExp to same sort order, it is always in the same order as the source).

My conclusion - Whichever file is X will always be at the top, in whatever sort order the WInExp source is displaying them in - WinExp tracks down the list from onmouseclick and rollsover to the top of the list, continuing down until it reaches the mouse pointer again and the filename it is over.

Well it is now 2014. Still not working.
Hit Play all in a folder with VLC as default player and it still generates random playlists, shuffled order and starts at random song. Itunes and build in WIndows media player set to default players do not do this. The only workaround I have is to go out of the directory with the tracks and do the "right click --> play with VLC media player selection" option as mentioned above. Annoying as hell since I only wanted to keep a singular lean mean media player. I guess there is a room for someone else to make a better app for us all?

This is just sill and needs to be fixed!! +1