[2005george]

To me, #3 makes the most sense. I would consider auto play to be the answer to the question of what to play when the playlist is done because playing something is better then playing nothing. If the user wanted to play the whole album from song1, they should have played the whole album.

I agree. I've never understood why you would want the entire folder contents to be in Now Playing rather than just the song you selected. If I want the entire folder contents (or album), I'll press play on the folder, not an individual song.

[jmarshall]

Having songs that are going to be played next not show up in Now Playing seems the most unintuitive suggestion I've heard thus far.

Now playing will ALWAYS show what's playing and what's going to be played next.

Perhaps we need to do the following:

1. Remove all ability for the "Now playing" list to be used to generate a playlist. Make it only available to the skin via infolabels (thus it's a read-only list).
2. Add a separate listing to allow you to create a playlist.
3. Rename "Queue" to "Add to playlist".
4. When you "add to playlist" songs it adds to the playlist.
5. This list is never cleared unless you purposely clear it yourself - it's available as a "Current playlist" node in the library and/or the music playlist editor?

Cheers,
Jonathan

[rwparris2]

Having songs that are going to be played next not show up in Now Playing seems the most unintuitive suggestion I've heard thus far.

Now playing will ALWAYS show what's playing and what's going to be played next.

Perhaps we need to do the following:

1. Remove all ability for the "Now playing" list to be used to generate a playlist. Make it only available to the skin via infolabels (thus it's a read-only list).
2. Add a separate listing to allow you to create a playlist.
3. Rename "Queue" to "Add to playlist".
4. When you "add to playlist" songs it adds to the playlist.
5. This list is never cleared unless you purposely clear it yourself - it's available as a "Current playlist" node in the library and/or the music playlist editor?

Cheers,
Jonathan

This seems way more complicated than our current system and doesn't seem to serve any purpose but to appease a few vocal users in this thread.

Despite what others have expressed, I really like the way the current Now Playing works. A play next button in the context menu would be cool... but not if it requires or inspires a total reworking of the queuing system.

[csbook]

This seems way more complicated than our current system and doesn't seem to serve any purpose but to appease a few vocal users in this thread.

Despite what others have expressed, I really like the way the current Now Playing works. A play next button in the context menu would be cool... but not if it requires or inspires a total reworking of the queuing system.

I agree that the current system works how I would expect when I'm using it to play music. Most of the suggestions seem to come from when users besides the owner are using the system, such as at a party. Maybe some extra options for "party mode" would appease everyone

[jmarshall]

To be fair, playlist construction is a bit of an arse as-is, mostly because people want the playlist they're editing to be playing at the time in which they're editing it, and the music playlist editor doesn't really handle that case well (plus, it looks uglier, as skinners don't seem to like making it all pretty...)

As it is now, the Now Playing screen is kinda useless for the most part - I personally only ever use it for when playing stuff in partymode, and for the most part I don't actually use it then either. Given that most skins can and do display what's coming up next, I don't think it's necessarily a problem to replace that screen with a slightly improved version of the playlist editor.

My goal is always to make XBMC easier to use. It may well be that the above suggestion isn't as easy to use as some tweaks to the current - I dunno

I certainly don't have much time to work on it code-wise at this point anyway, but the discussion is still valuable in the meantime.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[rwparris2]

Maybe it just sounds more complex than it would actually be.

[2005george]

Having songs that are going to be played next not show up in Now Playing seems the most unintuitive suggestion I've heard thus far.

Now playing will ALWAYS show what's playing and what's going to be played next.

Perhaps we need to do the following:

1. Remove all ability for the "Now playing" list to be used to generate a playlist. Make it only available to the skin via infolabels (thus it's a read-only list).
2. Add a separate listing to allow you to create a playlist.
3. Rename "Queue" to "Add to playlist".
4. When you "add to playlist" songs it adds to the playlist.
5. This list is never cleared unless you purposely clear it yourself - it's available as a "Current playlist" node in the library and/or the music playlist editor?

Cheers,
Jonathan

I really like everything you've suggested here.

[2005george]

This seems way more complicated than our current system and doesn't seem to serve any purpose but to appease a few vocal users in this thread.

Despite what others have expressed, I really like the way the current Now Playing works. A play next button in the context menu would be cool... but not if it requires or inspires a total reworking of the queuing system.

Appease a few vocal users? There have been dozens of threads discussing this very same thing by many people. It is far from a 'few vocal users', try a search.

[wallbunny]

Enqueue - sends song to bottom of playlist
Play next - inserts song in to playlist below currently playing song - doesn't change playlist in any otherway.
Play Now - inserts song in to playlist below currently playing song and then system auto skips to next song to make it seemingly play now - doesn't change the rest of playlist in any otherway.

Thats exactly the feature I am hoping for.
A bonus to that would be if you could choose what "Play Now" does.
Method 1: Add song to playlist after current playing, and skip.
Method 2: Do the same, but remove song after it's done - or do not add it to playlist at all.

Method 2 is useful if you have a short playlist and you are sure you only want to hear a song once.

[jmarshall]

@2005george: To be fair, a search reveals that it IS a few vocal users.

That doesn't mean that those users are wrong, nor does it imply that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we have things. All it indicates is that we're not catering for a subset of users.

I shall have a further think about things over the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[J-Man]

jmarshall
I've been a lurker for a long while, I respect you and all developers of xbmc,
without you and the development team's effort, we'd only have lame handicapped programs like itunes.
ThankYou.

this is the direction I'm thinking will solve most problems

** music settings

*Auto Play Next Item
-on(default)
-off

*Clear Playlist on finish
-on
-off(default)

*queue
- queue new song after current song then stop. (a1,b1.stop)
- queue new song after current song then return to previous spot in play list. (a1,b1,a2...)
- queue new song + remainder of album after current song then stop. (a1,b1...)(default)
- queue new song + remainder of album then return to previous spot in play list. (a1,b1...,a2...)

** sidebar in music

*queue mode
-play on click(default)
-queue next on click
-queue last on click

[2005george]

@2005george: To be fair, a search reveals that it IS a few vocal users.

That doesn't mean that those users are wrong, nor does it imply that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we have things. All it indicates is that we're not catering for a subset of users.

I shall have a further think about things over the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Jonathan

I disagree, my search turns up many different threads with many different users complaining about this issue. If you did a poll you would find the vast majority of users find the current playlist method for playing music in XBMC very poor in terms of usability. Why the previous method of having a playlist window and a browsing window was removed for what we have now I don't understand. If you try any other media player, they have exactly what we once had (and what people have requested over and over). Try ITunes or Winamp for example. I've personally setup friends/family with path substitution and instructions for uploading playlists from their computers (winamp) since they find XBMC so frustrating.