VLC Android, Android Auto; occasionally forgetting audio file position (redux)
Posted: 04 Nov 2023 06:22
Earlier this year I posted https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=162415 about this question and another; we focused on the other (and got a new feature added, regarding audio ducking; great!) and I sort-of dropped this question because I couldn't reliably reproduce it.
Reminder, here's the text from that earlier thread:
I managed to provoke the problem on a recent long drive: i.e. turn off car, disconnect Android Auto USB cable from my Pixel 6a, come back a while later, plug back in, and on the Android Auto console of the car, ask VLC to continue/play the audio file, and it re-started from zero .. but then I backed up (in the UI, not the car :-) ) and asked again and it did resume from the previously played position.
I was able to reproduce it again with logging active, and I've got the log file. I'd like to submit the log for someone who understands this WAAAAY better than I do(n't...) to look at it and see if it's user confusion, and if it might point to a way to make the UI clearer, or if there actually is a way of the user asking to play/resume a file which really should resume from previously play position, but actually sometimes does restart from the beginning incorrectly.
To whom/ how would I submit the log, and, do VLC logs contain any data that I might want to sanitize before sharing the log?
thanks,
Jay
Reminder, here's the text from that earlier thread:
I'm fairly sure that the forgetting-position,restarting-at-beginning is user confusion (PEBDSAC, variation on the old PEBCAK -- Problem Exists Between Driver's Seat And Console, variation on the old Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard) - that is, I was tapping the wrong part of the UI and actually asking to re-start the audio file from the beginning .. although then that might raise a question of whether the UI could be clearer about this. I'm still not sure.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?
I managed to provoke the problem on a recent long drive: i.e. turn off car, disconnect Android Auto USB cable from my Pixel 6a, come back a while later, plug back in, and on the Android Auto console of the car, ask VLC to continue/play the audio file, and it re-started from zero .. but then I backed up (in the UI, not the car :-) ) and asked again and it did resume from the previously played position.
I was able to reproduce it again with logging active, and I've got the log file. I'd like to submit the log for someone who understands this WAAAAY better than I do(n't...) to look at it and see if it's user confusion, and if it might point to a way to make the UI clearer, or if there actually is a way of the user asking to play/resume a file which really should resume from previously play position, but actually sometimes does restart from the beginning incorrectly.
To whom/ how would I submit the log, and, do VLC logs contain any data that I might want to sanitize before sharing the log?
thanks,
Jay