Better playlist management?

jmarshall Wrote:If you want to build a playlist, use the playlist editor.

"Ad hoc" playlist building via the "now playing" list AND an intuitive playback interface via the same list are like oil and water. Choose one or the other - you can't have both.

Cheers,
Jonathan

This is a common complaint and these 'workarounds' and using the Playlist Editor have been discussed before. The point everyone always makes is that the change to 'Now Playing' from the old Playlist toggle was a poor choice. The UI for anyone but an avid XBMC user is not intuitive at all. It's at the point where you can't allow anyone to use XBMC at a social gathering because your playlist will get erased no matter how many times you try to explain the system. The vast majority of users all prefer the old system but the devs refuse to accept that and leave it as is. The solution is to not let anyone but yourself use XBMC This is the difference between software you buy and software made by hobbyists, the developers will do what they prefer rather than what the majority prefer. XBMC is no longer very useful for playing music if you're using it for a party or other household member that is not really used to XBMC.

Some thoughts from me:

One disadvantage of the playlist editor: I haven't found a way to play it while I'm creating it: Add two or three songs, then start playing the list and then add some more to them. I have to save it first, open it again and then start playing the playlist all over.

I would also like to have an option to add a song from the library to an already existing playlist. Right now there are options to queue it in the now playing list or direct playback. An option "add to playlist xy" and then showing a list of saved playlist would be nice. Of course the playlist where the file was added to, would have to save the newly added song.

The thing that hitting playback erases the now playing playlist has been bugging me as well. Even though I'm pretty much used to the behaviour and know how to avoid it, this is not so for guests who would just hit enter to add a song which erases the playlist completely. I have to say though that the behaviour of xbmc is totally consistent. My wish however would be:

1.) Hit enter==> play song (and play album) and erase playlist (just like it is right now).

2.) Hit enter when there are already songs from DIFFERENT albums in the now playing list: Queue the song in the now playing list. Obviously in contrast to 1.) there's a playlist in the now playing list which was put together manually by the user (otherwise there would be songs from one album only in the list) so the user would probably not want the list to be erased. One flaw though, once a manually put together playlist is in now playing, it would be impossible to return to the "old" behaviour (play an album). Therefore some switch would be needed. Maybe through the options window which now would let you choose to queue a song instead of playing it, maybe "play album" or something like that.

I know, different behaviour for the same action, but for ME, this would solve the issue

Yeah, that's not really as intuitive as I'd like. I'm sure there's a solution, I just need someone to think through the questions I asked and come up with reasonable answers to it

The main one is identifying how the "autoplay next item" interacts with the rest of things really. Clearly these are of a lower "class" than user-queued items, so the problem is really just figuring out what to do with them (i.e. should we regenerate that list at all whenever we queue something new, or should we just ignore it, or... - basically the questions I asked earlier.)

Cheers,
Jonathan

+1 to the "Play after currently playing track" context menu. Or perhaps add/change the queue button to two buttons: "queue first/next" and "queue last". The way I usually use the music library is to select a song in an album and then usually let it autoplay for a couple of songs while I do something else. But then I want to change/queue up new songs, I don't want to interrupt the currently playing song, but I do not want to wait for it to finish either. The play after currently playing track functionality would solve this.

Please answer my questions then:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=379728&postcount=9

Cheers,
Jonathan

I would say that option 2 sound the most reasonable, that is kind of how it works in spotify anyways, in the sense that the auto-queued songs have lower priority.

I would prefer option 2. If you decided to queue an album it should stay in the list.
I would still prefer the option to press OK to queue a song after currently playing AND start it immediatly.
But even if it is only implemented for queueing, it's great. I could always just bind ok to queue, and press skip when I want.

If this gets implemented, please make queue after current work inside now playing.
Having that work inside will make it easy to move your 10 favorite songs so they will play before the other 90 (even if in reversed order)

jmarshall Wrote:Please answer my questions then:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=379728&postcount=9

Cheers,
Jonathan

I like Option 1, but 2 is fine as well. I still don't think this addresses the most common complaint does it? That when you press Select on a song you erase your entire generated list.

I'm not sure to be quite honest - effectively that would be changing the default mapping from "Play and clear playlist" to something more like "Play but only clear the autoplay items from the playlist". IMO that's non-intuitive.

Please take further comments to the thread I linked to above, and I'll close this one.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=379728&postcount=9

Cheers,
Jonathan