Category Play

[w3wilkes]

If you play a category like a specific Genre what should happen when the player gets to the end of that category?? Should it stop? If not stop, what determines what's played next?

[MotleyG]

8 hours ago, w3wilkes said:

If you play a category like a specific Genre what should happen when the player gets to the end of that category?? Should it stop? If not stop, what determines what's played next?

The repeat mode. Long press to stop, repeat the current category, advance to the next, etc.

[andrewilley]

 

[w3wilkes]

Neither of these replies actually answers the original question. Here's more info. In my continuing quest for Queue only mode I've created a 1 second mp3 that is just silence and set the "Ignore Short Tracks to Don't ignore - Include all". I set the genre of this 1 second mp3 to zz and select to play the zz genre and repeat is set to off. I then will put something in the Queue and it plays to the end and stops as I've set the "On Queue End to Stay in Queue". If I then clear the Queue the now playing shows something other than the zz genre category that I previously selected. Shouldn't it have stayed in the same category that I had previously set before I started the Queue?

[andrewilley]

I just checked and, with those settings, at the end of queued songs PA will remain at the beginning of the final track in the Queue. If you then clear the Queue - so it has nothing left to consider as its 'current' song - PA will return to normal category playback mode, positioned ready to start playing the next song in order immediately after the one from which it left off. As if you had originally pressed the '>>' Next Track button in the player instead of starting a queue.

So if the last song played before entering the Queue happened to be right at the end of a category list, after exiting the queue PA will return to the very first song in the very first category. Most category modes wrap round to their star point in this way when they get to the end - so 'Advance Category' when you get to the end effectively means 'Repeat All Categories'.

The 'All Songs' category is the one notable exception, as that stops at the end rather than looping back round to the beginning again - in effect making 'Advance Category' mean 'Play All' in that one case. This seems to slightly confuse the queue exiting process, and the final song in the queue remains showing when you clear the Queue. The ">>" Next Track button then returns you to the final song in the All Songs list. You might be able to do something with that minor glitch - but as you already know, you are really trying to make Poweramp do something it was never designed to do, as its Queue is only a temporary interruption, not a permanent playback option.

Single song play won't help you either by the way, because since PA has been told to play only one song it will never actually leave normal playback to enter the queue at all.

Andre

[w3wilkes]

15 hours ago, andrewilley said:

So if the last song played before entering the Queue happened to be right at the end of a category list, after exiting the queue PA will return to the very first song in the very first category.

So in "normal" play mode if I've picked Genre "ZZ" and it has one song that's played and this is the last collated Genre and I hit either >> or clear the Queue the next thing set to play would be the first collating Genre of my Genres which is "Alternative"? So what you're saying is that Genre is the category, not "Genre - ZZ"?

With what you said about the All Songs category I've renamed my "Silent Track" song title to "ÿÿSilent Track". This puts this song as the last song in the All Songs category and I've selected this song from the All Songs category to play. Now if I hit >> or clear the Queue it stays on this 2 second track. And I've set "Library > Lists > List Item Click Action - Enqueue and stay in list".

Getting closer to my desired "Queue Only Mode".

Thanks for letting me know about the All Songs exception!

[andrewilley]

When you are listening by Genre, that is the 'Category' mode that has been selected for playback. To make things a bit easier to navigate, rather than seeing 100's or 1000's of assorted songs in (for example) a huge list of 'Rock', most categories are then subdivided by album name too. So the '>>>' (Next Category) button simply moves on to the next available album within the current Genre first, and so on until the whole genre has been played, at which point it moves on to the next Genre. After the last song in the last album of the last genre (i.e. end of all songs in the list) it goes back to the start again.

You will notice that 'All Songs' has no '<<<' or '>>>' buttons, which is because it is effectively an entire item in itself, one huge pseudo-category containing the whole Library of songs with no subdivisions. I guess that's why it is an exception that is handled slightly differently at the end, as it stops playback rather than returning to the start again.

I've actually been asking for the Repeat button wording to be clarified somewhat for a while, and one thing I thought ought to happen is the difference between 'All Songs' and every other playback mode should be eliminated, allowing the user to always choose what happens at the end of any playback session. Basically instead of the current mode called Advance Category there would be two options: Play All Categories (i.e. stop at the end of the last track, which is how 'All Songs' currently behaves), or Repeat All Categories which would repeat forever in the same way most other categories currently behave. Maybe one day Max will humour me and implement this - it would certainly save me a lot of time in explaining what 'Advance Category' means. 

Andre

[w3wilkes]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I've actually been asking for the Repeat button wording to be clarified somewhat for a while, and one thing I thought ought to happen is the difference between 'All Songs' and every other playback mode should be eliminated, allowing the user to always choose what happens at the end of any playback session. Basically instead of the current mode called Advance Category there would be two options: Play All Categories (i.e. stop at the end of the last track, which is how 'All Songs' currently behaves), or Repeat All Categories which would repeat forever in the same way most other categories currently behave. Maybe one day Max will humour me and implement this - it would certainly save me a lot of time in explaining what 'Advance Category' means. 

Andre

If it worked the way you are requesting then my first attempt of having Genre = ZZ in my 2 second "ÿÿSilent Track" track and being the only song in that Genre it would have stopped like it does at the end of "All Songs"?

And for those golden eared people my "ÿÿSilent Track" is High Res. 🤣 

[andrewilley]

26 minutes ago, w3wilkes said:

If it worked the way you are requesting then my first attempt of having Genre = ZZ in my 2 second "ÿÿSilent Track" track and being the only song in that Genre it would have stopped like it does at the end of "All Songs"?

Yes, that would be one of the implications if those changes were introduced.

Andre

[w3wilkes]

On 8/15/2021 at 4:07 PM, andrewilley said:

The ">>" Next Track button then returns you to the final song in the All Songs list. You might be able to do something with that minor glitch - but as you already know, you are really trying to make Poweramp do something it was never designed to do, as its Queue is only a temporary interruption, not a permanent playback option.

Andre

Now here's something odd. I set the last song in All Songs as I previously said. The put an Album in the Queue that has 10 songs. Clear the Queue and it still shows the last song and the Queue shows 10 / 0. If I hit the >> it still stays on the last song of the album I previously had in the Queue even though i've cleared the Queue. If I don't clear the Queue at end and hit >> it also stays on the last song in the Queue rather than going to the last song in the "All Songs" category. I then let the screen on the phone switch off (time out). When I wake the phone up the Queue goes to "Empty" and the "All Songs" category is now on song 10 / 24533 of "All Songs". If the Queue had 24 songs in this scenario when I clear the Queue and let the screen sleep and then wake it up the Queue will go to "Empty" and the all songs will be on song 24 / 24533. So this sleeping and waking of the screen is causing something funky to happen where the Queue switches to empty, but the count of songs that were in the Queue is where the "All songs" category is positioned. My phone is a Moto X4 / Android 9 and I have no screen lock or fingerprint set.

[andrewilley]

@w3wilkes I suspect at this point your methods are getting so esoteric in trying to force Poweramp into being something that it isn't, and doing something that it was never designed to do, that I'm not entirely surprised if a few strange operational glitches are surfacing. I did mention that earlier about the All Songs category: "This seems to slightly confuse the queue exiting process, and the final song in the queue remains showing when you clear the Queue". If you use the app as intended though, these problems won't happen.

In Poweramp, regardless of what you would prefer it to be, the Queue is an interruption to regular playback, not the normal method of listening to music.

In the case you mentioned above, messing around with the Queue at all is completely unnecessary: to play a 10-song album in Poweramp, go to the Albums list and find the album you want, then simply tap on the Play icon (or I more commonly just tap on the first song I want to listen to). As long as Repeat mode is Off, you will hear just the ten songs from that album, and then playback will stop. That is how the app is designed to work.

Andre