Auto expand folders to allow dynamic multi-folder lists

[jezztek]

Howdy,

Lets say I have a playlist composed of 10 directories (folder_1, folder_2, folder_3, etc...), each with 100 files in them, I would like to be able to simply set VLC to shuffle and play all 1000 files at random by opening the playlist. However in reality it will load the playlist as a set of ten items each representing a folder, pick one at random and expand it, and play a random file from that folder. Now the playlist is composed of 109 entries: 100 files from the first randomly selected folder and the other 9 folders. As soon as the first file finishes, it will randomly jump to a new entry, but the odds are overwhelming that it will simply be another file from that first folder.

This is a bummer.

The only apparent solution right now is manually expanding all the folders each time you open the playlist before playback starts (time consuming and annoying), or doing this once and saving the playlist in its expanded state, which would be fine for static folders, but means the playlist is no longer dynamic. Which for me is a problem since I like to setup playlists for groups of TV shows (say, animated comedies, or procedural dramas) where I am continually adding new episodes to my collection as they air, and I would like for the playlist to be up to date with the new episodes each time I open it. With an .m3u playlist in Winamp this was trivially easy to do, but here in VLC it doesn't appear possible unless you fine folks add the ability to have all folders automatically expand before playing the playlist.

Thanks much!

[angelus1]

I would like to second this motion, came on to ask for the very same thing. Would save a lot of time to check this as an option under playlists. "Auto Expand"

[SkySkimmer]

You can work around this using symbolic links:

Code: Select all

mkdir -p ~/Links/Music/ cd ~/Links/Music/ for i in $folders_to_include; do ln -s $i; done

Then your playlist should contain ~/Links/Music/ as a non expanded directory, so instead of expanding a bunch of folders you just do it for this one.
(google symbolic links if you're on windows, it should be similar)