VLC Android, Android Auto; occasionally forgetting audio file position; audio ducking/auto pause-and-resume?

[libove]

I listen to audiobooks (10+ hours-long single audio files) while on long car journeys with my Google Pixel 6a connected to the Android Auto interface of my car (a 2019 Skoda Octavia). [The car's built-in play-audio-from-SD-card software interacts so terribly with audio ducking/ priority of Google Maps, and loses its place so often, that it's not even worth it).
VLC on the Android phone generally works well in this use case for remembering audio position between sessions, though a couple of times it too has forgotten.

Question 1: What are the conditions that cause VLC on Android to forget where it was last at, playing an audio file (so that tapping that file e.g. through History would NOT resume at the last played audio position?) Or, alternatively, what are the absolute requirements that must be met so that VLC on Android will specifically remember last played audio position in a file?

Audio ducking/ automatically pausing-and-resuming VLC audio playback when Google Maps Navigation directions speaks; how can I get VLC to automatically pause audio playback while Google Maps Navigation is speaking, and then automatically resume playback? Right now, it "ducks" - VLC audio is silenced while Google Maps Navigation is speaking, but the VLC audio continues 'playing' silently, and I lose a few seconds of audio. Ideally, actually, VLC would automatically _backtrack_ 5 seconds and automatically continue playing audio when Maps Navigation is done speaking. Or at least, VLC could simply pause at the moment that it's forced to duck under Maps.
Question 2: What's the best available result, when the same Android device, using Android Auto, is connected to a car, playing an audiobook in VLC, with Google Maps Navigation in action, to avoid missing several seconds of audiobook audio from time to time when Maps speaks?

thanks!

[Aza]

Question 1: the condition is: the audio is more than 1 hour long (or) more than 30 minutes long and no album set (or) file has any of these genres: podcast, audiobooks, audiobook, speech, vocal

Question 2: VLC automatically sets the volume to 1/3 and continue playing while ducking. This is the standard behavior advised by Google. We unfortunately do not provide any setting for that.

[libove]

Hi @Aza,
Please forgive my ignorance - I never set any type-of-file tags, so I don't know whether it is tagged as one or another genre. Similarly, I don't know whether the audio source has an tag to indicate it as being part of an album or not.
Okay, looking at the Properties of the file in Windows 10 File Explorer, it DOES show text in the Album metadata field, and genre is "Audiobook".
The audio file is about 10 hours long.
How does this affect whether/when VLC will remember/forget position? As a reminder, VLC _usually_ remembers position (when playing through Android Auto to my car), but, occasionally, it resets to the beginning of the file.

About audio ducking, I'd like to propose a feature request, since Google's standard way of doing it - like so many Google things - sucks.
Please add an option that the user may select "pause playback entirely" while anything else might cause ducking or over-speaking.
Or, if there isn't a reliable way to know for how long to pause before automatically resuming, then simply pause entirely whenever anything could cause interference, so that the user may manually resume when they're ready. (In the case of Google Maps navigation spoken directions, this may be the best choice, because Maps navigation directions tend to come in the form of "In X meters, <do something>" followed just seconds later by "<do something>", often followed just seconds later by a further instructions .. then with no more interference for dozens or hundreds of kilometres.

thanks!

[Aza]

1. If your file is 10 hours long it should then be enough to make VLC always remember the last position. Do you remember doing something special when it happens? For example, does it happen at the end of the file? Or if/when VLC is crashing, closed or something?
Also, if it happens again, could you please share some logs? Reproduce the issue and then go to: Settings > Advanced > Debug logs. Then share the logs with the sharing service you prefer (Google Drive, Dropbox, pastebin...).

2. You can add your feature request here: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc-android/-/issues However we try to limit the number of settings in the app and we will probably wait for that behavior to be asked multiple times before doing it.

[libove]

Thanks, I've posted the feature request.
The most recent time this issue occurred, I'm fairly sure that:
* I had been driving, with my Pixel 6a connected to Android Auto, in Maps Navigation mode, with VLC on Android playing the 10+ hour audiobook that we mentioned.
* I manually paused playback as I exited the highway to drive to a lunch stop.
* I parked the car, turned the car off, and pulled the car's Android Auto head unit USB cable from the phone.
That's it.

When I got back in the car, VLC no longer remembered the playback position of that audio file. (I didn't have any other previously-in-playback audio files to check, to see whether VLC remembered position in any of those files).

If it happens again, I will get the logs and post a link to them here. Thank you.