Refresh button has little effect

[Rogerduncan]

Hi,
I am using VLC mainly as an Audio player, and all my audio files are on an SD card.
I found that after changing the contents of the SD card (e.g. add/modify/remove files) it can be hard to make VLC recognize the changes.
Before I noticed the problem, I hade inserted the SD card, started VLC and selected the SD card as the only folder with media files (through the menu).
VLC had scanned the files on the SD card so that they were available under "Audio".
Then I did the following:
1. I replaced some files on the SD card by new versions with different MP3 tags.
2. I started VLC. As it showed still the old MP3 tags, I pressed the "Refresh" button in the orange bar at the top of the screen.
-> The status bar showed for a very short moment 1 or 2 files being scanned, but after that the modified files still showed the old MP3 tags.
3. I started the preferences menu and unchecked the complete SD card folder.
-> All the files from that folder were still available in VLC and it was still possible to play them (not as expected).
4. I removed the SD card via the Android preferences menu, then removed the card physically and started VLC
-> All the files from the SD card were still shown under "Audio". When trying to play one, VLC showed a message that the file was missing.
5. I inserted the SD card again and started VLC again.
-> The files on the SD card were scanned again and after that could be played again. Now the new (updated) MP3 tags were displayed.
This was still not what I had expected, as the SD card folder was still unchecked in the menu.
6. I found that the problem can be avoided the following way:
7. I went back to the menu and checked the checkbox for the "Music" folder in the internal memory.
-> After returning from the menu, it was shown that the media file was not available
8. I returned to the VLC start screen and selected "Audio" from the side bar.
-> The files from the selected folder (and only them) were displayed (as expected).
9. Now I went back to the menu, unchecked the internal Music folder and checked the SD card folder againg.
-> The files from the SD card folder were loaded / refreshed (as expected).

From the above behaviour it is not clear for me what the "refresh" button does: I would expect that pressing the refresh button has the same effect as my actions described above (from step 6 on).
Normally I would expect that after changing the folder selection in the menu, VLC scans the folder again and shows the contents of the active folders. If nothing has been selected, the previous selection should no longer be active.

As I found a workaround, the whole thing is not a problem for me, but the current behaviour is not what the user expects and thus confusing.

[edwardw]

The problem is that if we wipe the media database, re-catalogging everything is far too slow for the user. Refreshing normally catches files added/removed. If something in the database is *really* screwed up, try "Clear media database" in advanced preferences.