The VideoLAN Forums

My video collection has grown to fill one hard drive and I have a second I will start to use. I'd like to be able to load an ever expanding collection up (no playlists) right when I start VLC. I want to load two folders into VLC's playlist and have it expand and sort both alphabetically.

Right now I'm using a shortcut and have edited the target to

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" "F:\Movies" --random

in order for it to load that folder and put it on random. I've also been able to add a second folder by adding "Q:\Movies"

The problem I'm having is that it does not automatically expand both folders, just the one random chooses first. I've tried to use the --recursive={expand} command but it doesn't seem to work to expand the directory itself.

Next would be to get the playlist to sort the sum of the folders alphabetically. I've seen the --directory-sort command but not sure if when I do get them to both expand it would sort them as a whole or individually in the order they load.

The main concern would be to get the two folders to expand so that random has a full selection to choose from. I could ultimately just use the gui to sort the playlist after it loads, but that's not nearly as convenient--I'm going for a one click launch.

If anyone can help figure out how to get this working that would be much appreciated. I've been trying to figure it out from the Command Line Help page but its a lot to take in all at once.

Why not add both to the media library?

Oh god, media library... I hate those things. Media libraries are resource hogs and tend to skip recently added files and otherwise problematic (like wanting to replace the playlist when your merely browsing). If you keep your file-directory structure in tact you wont need a media library hogging up your computer.

--I.e winamp just has my one music directory with 25,000+ songs directly into the main playlist and I'll decide from there what I want to listen to. I actually switched to Linux to use Amarok but had to switch back because it was too heavily dependent on the media library (and I found where the Queue List feature was in winamp) so I switched back.

And when you reformat, oh wait, gotta tell the player to rescan and have to reorganize and re download stuff (album art). When I made the mistake of buying an Ipod I was immediately plagued with the terror of iTunes as I watched it scan and rearrange and name all my files to something they would find more fitting--like changing file names and folder structure of the artist like "Beatles" to "The Beatles", but with no set order. They started listing artists by contributing artist and 'album artist' which are often slightly different. They would create a new artist for one track on an album for some songs if they were in any way different. For example, my actual iPod listed two bands: "Alice in Chains" and "Alice In Chains" because the "I" was capitalized on two or three of the songs.

Its much more beneficial to my time to edit and maintain a proper file structure of the files I plan to keep, rather than to spend my time to tag label and build a database that is disposable and not easily sorted without proper file tags.

So no, no matter how fast VLC's media library is or invasive it is now I will not convert. I've also tried it in the past and didn't like it.

What I think I'm going to have to end up doing is creating a folder that has two hard-linked shortcuts (shell links) and just load that folder and have the 2+ sub folders expand/sort upon loading into the playlist.

Would I be able to have those two folders sort alphabetically or will it do it in series like I'm suspecting? Is there no command line for sort current playlist alphabetically?

Like I mentioned earlier I could just manually sort with the gui when they're both expanded, but the idea is for a one click launch. Winamp remembers the playlist which is good for a slower growing collection, but with VLC and video collection that is continuously growing I need to just load the directories up fresh every time.

The VLC media library, is just a XML/XSPF file, where you can put your 2 folders, nothing more.

But, else, if under Windows 7 or 8, use the Video Library and the Video Service Discovery.

And how would I get that to launch with one click to load the media library completely into the playlist and start playing on random?

Maybe not, sorry.