4 ms·

Apparently shuffle is still not working as intended... Man this issue must be around for ages now. This problem makes VLC useless as my default music player :'

Apparently shuffle is still not working as intended... Man this issue must be around for ages now. This problem makes VLC useless as my default music player :'(

jlgreco 13y ago
Unless "shuffle" means something other than what I think it means, I don't see how it should even be possible to mess it up. What sort of issue is there?
- pyrocat 13y ago
  I'm completely unaware of the VLC shuffle issue, but a surprising number of media players implement "shuffle" in non-obvious ways. Some shuffle your playlist and always play through it in that order (over and over again, if you've put it on repeat), others grab a random track only when the "play next" event happens, others will shuffle on the "play last" action as well as "play next", .etc Just because something seems intuitive doesn't mean all developers will implement it the same way.
  - codygman 13y ago
    I guess correct depends on if you want a "playlist shuffle" or a "random song" :D
    - w4rh4wk5 13y ago
      I'd like to have both available. Most other music players provide an option to shuffle the current playlist (which rearranges all the songs in a random order, and stay in that order) And they provide a "random song" option where all the songs from your current playlist are played in a random order for ever. VLC shuffles the playlist upon hitting the shuffle button and does not alter the order until shuffle is disabled and reenabled again. I'd like VLC to go through the whole playlist in a random order once, and when every song has been played instead of reusing the same pattern again, reshuffle.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Yeah, I guess it seems obvious to me that the right way to "shuffle a playlist" is to shuffle a playlist. Literally just take a list of songs, and Fisher-Yates shuffle the bugger; give the user exactly what the button claimed.
jbk 13y ago
Yep. Noone seems interested in fixing that...
- e12e 13y ago
  Is there a bug filed somewhere? Surely this can't be hard to fix... (famous last words)
  - jbk 13y ago
    Yes, or a dozen. It is not hard to fix, but it needs someone who wants to spend one week-end on that part.
zanny 13y ago
Why use VLC as a music player when it is suited for a movie player? I use (and contribute to) clementine (qt based, foss, same class of cross platform-ness as vlc) because I like watching videos in one program and music in another, where both are tailored for the task rather than the kind of muddy middle ground like windows media player has.
- ToastyMallows 13y ago
  Thanks for contributing to Clementine, I use it all the time!
contingencies 13y ago
Every day I'm...
aperture 13y ago
I can attest to this. I tested on python a music playlist and randomly arranged the numbers, and also tried the same on vlc. I found in python, numbers were really random (done maybe a month or two ago, so they implemented the new algo). However, in vlc, this was the issue: Songs would come in as [6, 7, 8, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5] So the "random" or "shuffle" was kind of half-done. You would have the same artist's songs being played because if you sorted by album they were right next to each other. I went on #vlc once and I tried submitting a bug report. I seem to recall one or two was submitted online, but many claim it is simply not a bug. Random or shuffle, either way the definition is skewed as there is some linearity. Luckily, I have cmus, and I connected that with cmus-remote to my android. ;) Trust me, once you have a nice linux ncurses player for terminal, it is very hard to seriously consider any competitors. Vlc is still nice though to tell my friends to install on windows machines for anime. And because they have a music library of ~30 songs, they will probably not notice the shuffle issue.
- driverdan 13y ago
  This exactly the result you'd expect from randomization. There will always be some sequences that are in their original order. It sounds like you want some kind of pseudo-random playlist with no artists next to each other. That is not random.
  - aperture 13y ago
    I am sorry, got back from work and noticed I wasn't very specific. What I mean to say is imagine a deck of cards, to be "shuffled". Most players will shuffle by rearranging the cards, and you'll get the occasional adjacent cards next to each other, or you may not, it is just random all around. In vlc, you get more of a beginner's shuffle (say, from a child). Cards are mixed, but not shuffled fully. This results in play which prefers groupings of cards (Ace of spades, 2 of spades, 3 of spades), but at a common rate. Therefore, we can say it is "sort of" shuffled. I preformed about five tests, and found as little as ten songs will show the effect. My test was install the newest vlc (windows 7 64-bit build), add 10 songs to playlist once it opens, then hit shuffle and record how the 9 songs are shuffled (assuming you are on song 1 in the playlist). To have comparable random data, I did "import random" in python and then random.shuffle with an array with values in the range of ten. From this, I gathered vlc was not random "enough", which for a music library of around 10,000 (11,000 now, but 10 at the time), this became irritating enough that I view vlc more as a starter multimedia platform. Were this issue to be fixed (or even seen as an issue!), I would be quite surprised.

Apparently shuffle is still not working as intended... Man this issue must be around for ages now. This problem makes VLC useless as my default music player :'(

jlgreco 13y ago

Unless "shuffle" means something other than what I think it means, I don't see how it should even be possible to mess it up. What sort of issue is there?

pyrocat 13y ago
I'm completely unaware of the VLC shuffle issue, but a surprising number of media players implement "shuffle" in non-obvious ways. Some shuffle your playlist and always play through it in that order (over and over again, if you've put it on repeat), others grab a random track only when the "play next" event happens, others will shuffle on the "play last" action as well as "play next", .etc Just because something seems intuitive doesn't mean all developers will implement it the same way.
- codygman 13y ago
  I guess correct depends on if you want a "playlist shuffle" or a "random song" :D
  - w4rh4wk5 13y ago
    I'd like to have both available. Most other music players provide an option to shuffle the current playlist (which rearranges all the songs in a random order, and stay in that order) And they provide a "random song" option where all the songs from your current playlist are played in a random order for ever. VLC shuffles the playlist upon hitting the shuffle button and does not alter the order until shuffle is disabled and reenabled again. I'd like VLC to go through the whole playlist in a random order once, and when every song has been played instead of reusing the same pattern again, reshuffle.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Yeah, I guess it seems obvious to me that the right way to "shuffle a playlist" is to shuffle a playlist. Literally just take a list of songs, and Fisher-Yates shuffle the bugger; give the user exactly what the button claimed.

jbk 13y ago

Yep. Noone seems interested in fixing that...

e12e 13y ago
Is there a bug filed somewhere? Surely this can't be hard to fix... (famous last words)
- jbk 13y ago
  Yes, or a dozen. It is not hard to fix, but it needs someone who wants to spend one week-end on that part.

zanny 13y ago

Why use VLC as a music player when it is suited for a movie player? I use (and contribute to) clementine (qt based, foss, same class of cross platform-ness as vlc) because I like watching videos in one program and music in another, where both are tailored for the task rather than the kind of muddy middle ground like windows media player has.

ToastyMallows 13y ago
Thanks for contributing to Clementine, I use it all the time!

contingencies 13y ago

Every day I'm...

aperture 13y ago

I can attest to this. I tested on python a music playlist and randomly arranged the numbers, and also tried the same on vlc. I found in python, numbers were really random (done maybe a month or two ago, so they implemented the new algo). However, in vlc, this was the issue: Songs would come in as [6, 7, 8, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5] So the "random" or "shuffle" was kind of half-done. You would have the same artist's songs being played because if you sorted by album they were right next to each other. I went on #vlc once and I tried submitting a bug report. I seem to recall one or two was submitted online, but many claim it is simply not a bug. Random or shuffle, either way the definition is skewed as there is some linearity. Luckily, I have cmus, and I connected that with cmus-remote to my android. ;) Trust me, once you have a nice linux ncurses player for terminal, it is very hard to seriously consider any competitors. Vlc is still nice though to tell my friends to install on windows machines for anime. And because they have a music library of ~30 songs, they will probably not notice the shuffle issue.

driverdan 13y ago
This exactly the result you'd expect from randomization. There will always be some sequences that are in their original order. It sounds like you want some kind of pseudo-random playlist with no artists next to each other. That is not random.
- aperture 13y ago
  I am sorry, got back from work and noticed I wasn't very specific. What I mean to say is imagine a deck of cards, to be "shuffled". Most players will shuffle by rearranging the cards, and you'll get the occasional adjacent cards next to each other, or you may not, it is just random all around. In vlc, you get more of a beginner's shuffle (say, from a child). Cards are mixed, but not shuffled fully. This results in play which prefers groupings of cards (Ace of spades, 2 of spades, 3 of spades), but at a common rate. Therefore, we can say it is "sort of" shuffled. I preformed about five tests, and found as little as ten songs will show the effect. My test was install the newest vlc (windows 7 64-bit build), add 10 songs to playlist once it opens, then hit shuffle and record how the 9 songs are shuffled (assuming you are on song 1 in the playlist). To have comparable random data, I did "import random" in python and then random.shuffle with an array with values in the range of ten. From this, I gathered vlc was not random "enough", which for a music library of around 10,000 (11,000 now, but 10 at the time), this became irritating enough that I view vlc more as a starter multimedia platform. Were this issue to be fixed (or even seen as an issue!), I would be quite surprised.