The VideoLAN Forums

Hi, I'm using Android 5.0.2 and my phone is an Alcatel Idol 3 with VLC for Android, version 3.0.11.

I noticed that if I put two files in a folder that VLC recognize (like a mp4 and a m4a file) and with the same file name,
VLC only displays the mp4 file.
Also I noticed that if I append extra characters to the m4a filename, the file is also not displayed by VLC,
BUT if I rename it with a shorter filename, the file it is displayed by VLC.

Examples:

Original files in a folder:
multimedia.mp4
multimedia.m4a
-> only the mp4 file is displayed.

If the m4a file is renamed with a larger name, then the files in the folder are:
multimedia.mp4
multimedia1.m4a
-> still only the mp4 file is displayed.

But if the files are:
multimedia.mp4
multimedi.m4a

-> both files are displayed.

I reinstalled VLC with the latest version and rebooted my phone, but nothing new happened.
I tried renaming files in both the phone memory and the SD card, but the same happens.

- Is this a bug or is it something with my phone? (or maybe something with a setting?)
- Does this happen with other files with the same name but different extensions?

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

Just to be sure, you're not talking about the folder view? I can't reproduce so far, maybe it has to do with how the files are tagged? Could you send me those 2 files so I can try to write a test for this?

Hi, thanks for responding.

I'm using the 'Directories' option to navigate through folders.

In this link you can download the 'multimedia' files (mp4 and m4a) and see a screen capture I did
showing what I described before:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 38IO_OmKpg

Also, not only this happens with these 'multimedia' sample files, to me all mp4 and m4a files that are in the same folder
have this behaviour.

Thanks again.

Oh ok so this is not a problem with the media library, the "issue" is that VLC believes that this file is an alternate audio track (just like it would do for subtitles).

While the code shows that this is completely intentional, there seem to be no way to disable this behavior... I'll check with some other developers what they think of this

I think this is the intended behavior.

Because they can be external audio tracks of a video, example:
video.avi
video-english.mp3
video-italian.mp3
videoANYTEXT.mp3

And since they are classified as external audio tracks they doesn't appear as separate files.

Thank you for your answers.

If this is the intended behaviour,
Is it possible that this could be turned off/on with a setting? (like 'Show all files')

I prefer to navigate the files using the 'Directories' option because I know where the files are, and
also this could be useful in a folder where there are files with the same name but they are unrelated,
or when one wants to listen the same audio converted to different types of audio files and still being able to watch a movie with the same name
(Ex. sound_of_music.mp3, sound_of_music.m4a, sound_of_music.mp4) .

Thanks one more time.