flatten media library

[tswaters]

This is more of a support request than anything else. Maybe I'm not understanding how this works, perhaps there isn't a way to do this -- but I can't seem to find a way to flatten the media library.

I've added a media folder and when I click "Media Library" it shows a series of nested entries -- a direct reflection of the directory structure on the filesystem. For me, this nested view leaves much to be desired -- every time I switch between different views (i.e. click "Playlist" then back to "Media Library"), it forgets where I was and because there are so many nested nodes I often have to open each one to get to where I was before. Also searching will flatten everything as well so to get my result to show up I need to open 5 different nodes.

I see in the preferences, under advanced there is an option for "Display playlist tree" which is disabled by default -- checking or unchecking this and restarting VLC seems to have no effect. Regardless of the setting the playlist will always use this nested view. There's also a "Use Media Library" setting which also doesn't seem to do anything. If I right click the root element in the media library and select "Add to playlist" switching to the playlist shows the same nested view.

Is there a way to completely flatted the media library and/or playlist?

[tswaters]

Irony at it's greatest. I never did figure out how that worked before -- but now I've got a new computer and in adding all my media entries, I can't get a nested view.

I've gone to Preferences -> All -> Playlist -> Use Media Libary [x] and Display playlist tree [x] -- Restarted VLC and it doesn't seem to have any effect

On the file system, I have a folder called "Music" which contains series of nested subfolders for artist/album,

Expected behaviour: Opening up 'Music' shows folders for each artist/album sub-folder
Actual behaviour: Opening up 'Music' reveals all files.

This is VLC 2.0.7

[tswaters]

Ok, I'm not sure what I did but I seemed to get it working.

I went to Tools -> Preferences -- "Display playlist tree" is actually listed here, I toggled it a few times and restarted vlc a bunch.

If I selected one artist subfolder (i.e. "Beatles" has a few subfolders) it seemed to work properly, but selecting more than 1 folder (i.e. both "Beatles" and "Bob Dylan") didn't do anything.

I think my problem was how I was selecting the folders. If so, this may be a windows problem, (wrong forum for this) -- if I go to "Add folder" and select the "Music library" it reports an error saying "select an actual folder, not a library"
-- so then I select the subfolder under the library for "My Music" -- and this is where I get the 'flattened' behaviour -- it adds "Music" but opening up that tree reveals a flat list of items.

If instead I navigate manually to the profile directory, C:\users\myusername\, and from here select "My Music" then it seems to work.

HM... Most of the time. Actually I've done this a few times and I can't seem to get consistent results... in all cases, the "Music" folder gets added -- if I double click it and it takes a few seconds, it's loading subfolders and it works. If it opens up instantaneously it'll show all items, flattened. This is both with and without "Display playlist tree" selected.

I note that on my other machine where I had the nested folders and wanted it flattened, "Display playlist tree" is not selected.