How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

For questions and discussion that is NOT (I repeat NOT) specific to a certain Operating System.
nuttapillar
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 9
Joined: 28 Sep 2017 07:10

How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby nuttapillar » 28 Sep 2017 07:35

My music files are slit up into folders according to artist. When I try to play the whole lot at random, VLC will only expand the folder containing the random song it has chosen. Now, when it goes to play the next random song, the bulk of the playlist is made up of songs fromt eh same artist, due to that folder being expanded, with the rest still closed. So it keeps playing music from the same artist, instead of the variety I wanted from using "shuffle". If it expanded all of the folders, then it will have a roughly equal chance of playing music from the other folders/artists.
1. Artist 1
2. Artist 2
3. Artist 3
4. -Song from artist 3
5. -Song from artist 3
6. -Song from artist 3
7. -Song from artist 3
8. -Song from artist 3
9. -Song from artist 3
10. -Song from artist 3
11. -Song from artist 3
12. Artist 4
13. Artist 5

According to this example of folder structure, once it expands an artist folder (artist 3 in the example), the majority of that list is now populated with music from artist 3, and there is a low chance of expanding any of the others. In real life, I actually have a lot more songs in each folder, so the repetition is greater than in this example.
I've been using another program called MusicBee, to get around this issue. It just plays at random, absolutely any song, no matter how far down the heirarchy it is.
But music bee has the issue of when I erase my search term, the playlist doesn't update to go back to playing everything without interrupting the currently playng song.

nuttapillar
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 9
Joined: 28 Sep 2017 07:10

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby nuttapillar » 09 Oct 2017 13:15

bump.

gaplant
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 11 Oct 2017 02:23

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby gaplant » 11 Oct 2017 02:27

bump bump for me, too.

I have noticed that once it happens, if you resave the playlist, you at least keep those open folders open. Crazy tedious to open them all manually though.

NOT a solution though.

nuttapillar
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 9
Joined: 28 Sep 2017 07:10

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby nuttapillar » 14 Oct 2017 09:28

I have hundreds of artist folders. Yes, very tedious. and each artist folder has about a dozen album folders within. I don't have time to open thousands of folders.

nuttapillar
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 9
Joined: 28 Sep 2017 07:10

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby nuttapillar » 02 Nov 2017 04:59

bump

mederi
Big Cone-huna
Big Cone-huna
Posts: 1951
Joined: 15 Mar 2011 16:38
VLC version: 2.0.8
Operating System: Windows Vista/XP

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby mederi » 03 Nov 2017 22:13

You can generate a playlist for VLC. A batch script example:

Code: Select all

>playlist.m3u DIR /B /O:N /S *.mp3 *.avi *.mp4 *.mkv

nuttapillar
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 9
Joined: 28 Sep 2017 07:10

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby nuttapillar » 03 Nov 2017 23:25

Thanks, but Will that be effective for over 3TB of music? And will that be able to play each song referenced by .cue files, which Music Bee does? Some albums have a single .flac file, and the .cue file tells it all the info about the songs contained within. Music bee works this out, and shows all the songs in the list, even ones contained within the whole-album .flac files.

EodiV
Blank Cone
Blank Cone
Posts: 92
Joined: 15 Jul 2017 16:50

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby EodiV » 20 Nov 2017 01:30

Thank you for your report Nuttapillar. You reminded me of a bug I forgot to file a while back. I have filed it now as ticket 19119.

arafelyb8
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 24 Sep 2018 14:31

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby arafelyb8 » 24 Sep 2018 14:46

I faced with this problem of 'expanding' folders when I updated to the new version (3.0.4, Aug 2018). To solve it I reinstalled the version (2.2.6 Dec 2017) and when I click 'open folder', it automatically finds and lists all the audio files recursively.

Sealy
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 04 Oct 2018 00:11

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby Sealy » 04 Oct 2018 00:14

Hello all,

My wife and I had the same issue with the latest VLC and we have a workaround. In order to play all audio files in multiple folders you have to select "shuffle" and "loop all". Normally you would only have to select "shuffle" to play random songs but since the update you have to select the "loop all" as well.

Hope that helps, it certainly helped us.

Best regards

ethanwdp
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 10 Oct 2018 18:25

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby ethanwdp » 10 Oct 2018 18:28

Isn't this basic functionality? How has this not been added in 17 years?

d69898
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 2
Joined: 10 Sep 2016 22:53

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby d69898 » 12 Oct 2018 00:21

bump, this really is basic stuff that should be implemented (along with some default sort order whenever a new song/folder is added to the playlist)

dirtydaddyo
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 15 Oct 2018 10:47

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby dirtydaddyo » 15 Oct 2018 10:50

Drove me crazy as well, but found the solution. You have to expand the folders in vlc settings.

Tools -> Preferences -> All -> Playlist -> Subdirectory Behavior -> Expand

It's probably set as collapsed.

Sandra
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 16 Oct 2018 18:56

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby Sandra » 16 Oct 2018 19:28

Drove me crazy as well, but found the solution. You have to expand the folders in vlc settings.

Tools -> Preferences -> All -> Playlist -> Subdirectory Behavior -> Expand

It's probably set as collapsed.

Thanks.
In my case, the "problem" was:
In 3.0.3 the default subdirectory behavior was set on "collapse" but it still expanded all folders.
In 3.0.4 "collapse" really did what it should and had to change it to "expand".
That's why I haven't thought of changing this setting before.

wonderingtrader
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 30 Oct 2018 16:48

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby wonderingtrader » 30 Oct 2018 16:57

hello. I've followed the instructions above and set behavior to expand, but still when i drag and drop a folder into the playlist, the display remains as a folder rather than expanding the files inside.

it used to be possible to drag and drop a bunch of folders into an empty playlist and immediately they would expand to show all files contained. how can we get back to that option?

RobertBC
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 31 Jan 2019 23:54

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby RobertBC » 31 Jan 2019 23:59

I had the same problem when upgrading to the new version.

Following some threads here, this worked for me:
1) Tools -> Preferences -> All -> Playlist -> Subdirectory Behavior -> Expand
2) Media -> Open Folder -> <select folder and accept>

This appended the new folder, completely expanded.
NB:
a) I stopped and restarted VLC between steps 1 & 2 for other reasons (trying some other stuff), but I am not sure if that was necessary.
b) I tried drag and drop folder into the playlist, it didn't seem to work. However, I did not close/restart VLC to check that

Hope it helps.

cirosantilli
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 2
Joined: 27 May 2016 10:14
Contact:

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby cirosantilli » 04 Mar 2019 20:52

Code: Select all

vlc --recursive expand my_music_folder
Tested on 3.0.4.

Sjerpvanwouden
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 1
Joined: 09 Jun 2019 19:04

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby Sjerpvanwouden » 09 Jun 2019 19:07

Hey all,

so this settings solution gets me going on my windows machine.
I also use VLC on Android. Which is similar, but in some ways subtly inferior to 'full' VLC.

This setting regarding subfolder behaviour is not present in Android. Or am I missing something? Is there another fix in Android?

regards from Amsterdam

adlerhn
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 2
Joined: 06 Aug 2019 15:59

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby adlerhn » 06 Aug 2019 16:01

Indeed, the setting does not seem to be present in the Android version.

imx
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 6
Joined: 27 Feb 2016 10:25

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby imx » 23 Apr 2020 09:36

I don't see the option in the latsest 3.0.8 version for Windows either...

onetruecliff
New Cone
New Cone
Posts: 4
Joined: 18 Jun 2020 01:40

Re: How can i get VLC to expand all folders in the playlist?

Postby onetruecliff » 10 Apr 2021 22:14

Drove me crazy as well, but found the solution. You have to expand the folders in vlc settings.

Tools -> Preferences -> All -> Playlist -> Subdirectory Behavior -> Expand

It's probably set as collapsed.
Thank you very much. This solved 95% of my problem.


Return to “General VLC media player Troubleshooting”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 16 guests