support file/folder shortcut as if it was the actual file

[MrKlorox]

Okay, so after actually trying to type this out, it's looking more and more confusing even though it should be a very simple premise. Here's the simplified version of my request, followed by the initial longer explanation I started with: The "red" folders contain the actual videos. The "green" folder holds shortcuts to various "red" folders. I'd like to drag the "green" folder into VLC and have it play the videos inside the "red" folders.

Now for the longer, possibly more confusing explanation: I keep my videos in various folders that keep things sorted based on genre, network, and TV show title. I have a separate folder called "Playlist" where I keep shortcuts to the folders that contain the various shows I happen to be using to play as background noise while I sleep. What I would like to be able to do is simply drag the "Playlist" folder into the playlist window of VLC and have it recognize the videos in the actual folders that hold them. Instead, when I do this, it just shows the list of folder shortcuts (what's in the green folder) in the playlist window and doesn't seem to realize there are playable files in the actual folders that the shortcuts reference.

I realize I can drag each red folder into the playlist manually, then export as a m3u file or whatever. Or I could add each red folder to the end of a shortcut to VLC.exe and get approximately the same results. However I'd rather not change my system of keeping a list of shortcuts to my existing folder library since this method works excellently in some other softwares, is extremely fast, and doesn't require any typing (which makes changing-out shows an easy task when lying in bed half asleep and doesn't risk waking me up to the point where I can't get back to sleep). I'd rather use VLC instead of my other software (primarily Winamp) since it's less prone to crashing and doesn't screw up my podcasts when it does.

I tried searching for this feature request, but all I could find were posts about keyboard shortcuts or command line switches for custom VLC.exe shortcuts.

[humpalumpa]

I also like to just drag'n'drop file shortcuts into VLC - not shortcuts to whole folders, but instead just to one video file. That always worked fine for me, since I updated to 2.0.5 yesterday, it won't anymore - it tries to play the shortcut file and fails, instead of trying to play the file the shortcut links to. Before, I had no problem with this, and was doing it all the time - was the feature removed? Did I mess up some setting or something? Can I restore that behavior to the current version of the player?