New 'Add Shuffled' mode for Playlists

[maxmp]

Btw, this was readjusted and should behave as expected.

[Si64]

And it does!  Thanks very much.   👍

[CJ41]

5 hours ago, maxmp said:

Btw, this was readjusted and should behave as expected.

Yes, thank you much!

[Si64]

Sorry, I lied.  It's still not working right.  So, if I take these steps:

1.  Select items (or all of a Playlist) and Add Shuffled to Queue

2.  Start playing Queue

3.  Add further items to Queue (Add Shuffled)

The newly added items are Shuffled, but all seem to be towards the top of the queue.  A single item added, even in Add Shuffled mode seems to be added to the top of the queue, under the current track playing, so when you add a single item to the Queue, it's always played next.

I've tried adjusting the Shuffle Randomisation but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Could it be something to do with the number of tracks in a queue?  I currently have 4600, and if I add, say, another 10 tracks, they are Shuffled, but I'd say only within about the top 100 tracks in the queue.

 

Just to try to clarify further, this is part of my 4600 track Queue.  The track playing is Sugar Mice, which can be seen highlighted in the list.  I then Shuffle Added five tracks from the debut Bad Company album, and you can see that the five tracks have been added right below the track currently playing, rather than throughout the rest of the queue.

[andrewilley]

I've just checked, and while the Playlist variant of this issue (which is the thread subject) seems to be fixed so that shuffle-inserted items are scattered fairly evenly throughout the existing playlist (after the playback position if the list is currently being played), inserting using shuffle mode into the Queue does still seem to favour the beginning of the unplayed portion, rather than scattering the new tracks evenly throughout the rest of the queue.

Also, while testing this I noticed that when creating a new Playlist using the 'Shuffled' mode, the tracks are not shuffled at all and get added to the new playlist in their original order. Creating a new Queue using shuffled mode works as expected though, and the resulting queue is correctly randomised.

Andre 

[Si64]

4 hours ago, andrewilley said:

I've just checked, and while the Playlist variant of this issue (which is the thread subject) seems to be fixed so that shuffle-inserted items are scattered fairly evenly throughout the existing playlist (after the playback position if the list is currently being played), inserting using shuffle mode into the Queue does still seem to favour the beginning of the unplayed portion, rather than scattering the new tracks evenly throughout the rest of the queue.

Also, while testing this I noticed that when creating a new Playlist using the 'Shuffled' mode, the tracks are not shuffled at all and get added to the new playlist in their original order. Creating a new Queue using shuffled mode works as expected though, and the resulting queue is correctly randomised.

Andre 

Thanks for the confirmation, Andre.

I have to respectfully disagree with your Playlist findings though.  

I have just selected a small existing playlist of about 250 tracks, and created a new shuffled playlist from it:

Open existing Playlist > Select All > Add to Shuffled Playlist > New Playlist.

The above results in a new, fully randomly shuffled playlist.  However, when adding another album to that playlist, using the Add Shuffled option, the newly added tracks are still bunched at the top of the playlist, and may of them are actually next each other, so you get two or three new tracks placed together. 

As an example, I added AC/DC's Power Up album to an existing playlist of 268 tracks and as can be seen, the new AC/DC tracks are all bunched towards the top, with a number added sequentially:

So, in my experience, the issue exist in both Queues and Playlists when Adding Shuffled.  

I wonder, could the issue perhaps lie within the functioning of the Shuffle Randomisation switch?  If it were set to the Less Random option, then it could be argued that the shuffle is working reasonably correctly.   But setting it to the Full Random setting, logically should scatter new tracks fully across a while Queue / Playlist, in 'complete randomisation', as it's states.  It's this which doesn't appear to be functioning correctly.  

Edited July 1, 2023 by Si64

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, Si64 said:

I wonder, could the issue perhaps lie within the functioning of the Shuffle Randomisation switch?

I wouldn't have thought so as that's for the Shuffle buttons during playback, but maybe it's using the same underlying code?

I'll do a few more tests.

[Later....]

I chose an artist with a lot of albums from the Artists category, long-pressed on the Artist name, and then used '+Shuffled' to add all their songs to a new Playlist, and also used '>>Shuffled' to add all their songs to the Queue. Total was 572 tracks. I tried the same with their master folder in Folders Hierarchy, which also has lots of subfolders for the albums.

Starting from an Artist Category artist, and from the Folders Hierarchy folder name too, the Queue result was in both cases completely randomised as expected.

Starting from an  Artist Category  artist, the resulting Playlist was completely randomised as expected.

However starting from a Folders Hierarchy folder name, the resulting Playlist contained multiple "clumps" of songs from the same subfolders (not necessarily the whole of each subfolder in one go, there might be another clump later):

Andre

[Si64]

Yes, I've found that starting a new '+Shuffled' Playlist or a new '>>Shuffled' Queue results in a completely randomised Playlist or Queue.  The problem starts when you add further albums / artists to those existing Queues / Playlists.  That's when all the newly added tracks all seem to congregate towards the top.

I might have found a workaround, and funnily enough this is how I used to do it years ago, but for some reason it started to not work properly.  

Starting from Albums library, select several random albums (or copy an existing Playlist), and create a new Playlist.  

Start playing in normal mode, then switch to Shuffle All mode (the basic one with no dots).  The remaining tracks play in what seems to be a randomly shuffled sequence, and adding further tracks seems to result in the newly added tracks (NOT +Shuffled) appearing scattered throughout the remaining playlist.  

The 'problem' with this method is that you can't actually view the queue which is currently playing, but I guess that isn't a deal breaker.  The only way I could see where the new tracks were added was to scroll through the tracks with the >> button until I came across them.

The other issue is that it's very easy to accidentally touch the Shuffle button on the Now Playing screen, which will totally mess up the playing queue, and would be extremely annoying if you'd got a good way into a long Playlists and it all got 'reset' unintentionally.

I would prefer adding to a Shuffled Queue to work as it should, but the above might be an interim solution.  If only there was a way to disable the Shuffle button on the Now Playing screen.  🤔

Edited July 1, 2023 by Si64

[maxmp]

Thanks for the reports on edge cases. These are improved for the next build.

Also note that Play next shuffled is now basically the same as Queue shuffled (both randomly distribute added tracks after the currently played/last played song), the only difference is that Play next shuffled also accounts for playback Shuffle mode and will try to mix added songs the way they are guaranteed to be played in Shuffle mode, but this is already pretty much the case for Queue shuffled, so Play next shuffled probably will be removed later.

 

[Si64]

54 minutes ago, maxmp said:

Thanks for the reports on edge cases. These are improved for the next build.

Also note that Play next shuffled is now basically the same as Queue shuffled (both randomly distribute added tracks after the currently played/last played song), the only difference is that Play next shuffled also accounts for playback Shuffle mode and will try to mix added songs the way they are guaranteed to be played in Shuffle mode, but this is already pretty much the case for Queue shuffled, so Play next shuffled probably will be removed later.

 

Hi Max,

Does that relate to the issues we've been discussing regarding tracks not being very randomly distributed when adding to shuffled queues / playlists?

[maxmp]

@Si64 that's improved. It may happen now when number of items (past played one) is small or when number of added items is small - it should be much better in the next build.

[Si64]

@maxmpGreat, I'll look forward to it.  👍

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, maxmp said:

Also note that Play next shuffled is now basically the same as Queue shuffled 

To be honest, I don't really see the point of the existing functionality of the 'Play Next' button anyway now. All it originally did was basically "Insert at Start of Queue", which would now make more intuitive sense as one of three options for the '>>Queue' button (to match the three options for '+Playlist') - i.e. "Insert at Start of Queue", "Insert Shuffled into Queue" and "Add to End of Queue".

Andre

[Si64]

I'm experiencing another oddity now.  I'm 117 tracks into a 4600 track playlist, playing the playlist itself in Shuffle mode, and I've just realised it only seems to be playing tracks from artists named alphabetically from A to D, so only the top portion of the entire playlist.

PA certainly does seem to have some unique tricks that no other music app can manage, but can anyone explain why this could be happening?!

[andrewilley]

A playlist should not care about Artist names, all it knows about is filenames. Is the order of the items in the Playlist sorted alphabetical by artist perhaps? Could it be playing from the first 20% of the list only for example?

[Edit] I just created a playlist of 650 of so items from about 15 relatively long albums, and playing that in shuffled mode seemed (subjectively anyway) to be picking pretty randomly from the whole 650 tracks. 

Andre

[Si64]

33 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

A playlist should not care about Artist names, all it knows about is filenames. Is the order of the items in the Playlist sorted alphabetical by artist perhaps? Could it be playing from the first 20% of the list only for example?

 

Yes, the playlist is sorted alphabetically by artist, and I think it probably was only playing the first ~20%, in fact, probably only ~10% but I've no idea why. 

I've now done a reshuffle and checking the next few upcoming tracks, it seems more evenly spread now.

[Si64]

As I said, I reshuffled the playlist and it was more evenly shuffled, but I've just added another album to it, and once again, on checking the upcoming tracks, it's only playing the first ~10% of the tracks in the list, ie, artists A-D.

I really want to use this player but I think I'm going to have to wait until the next release, when hopefully some of these bugs will be fixed.  

Edit to add: I just scrolled through to see if there was any pattern and indeed, after about 400 tracks, it did revert to the rest being properly shuffled.  So, it seems something is happening when tracks are added to a playlist, when the playlist is already playing in shuffle mode.  

Edit to further add: The track numbers also change when adding new tracks to a 'shuffling' playlist.  I'd expect the 'to play' number to increase with the number of tracks added, but the 'tracks played' number DEcreases, but by a lot more than the number of tracks added.  All very weird!

Edited July 8, 2023 by Si64

[Si64]

By Jove, I think he's only gone and done it!  Thanks @maxmp, adding shuffled to queues and playlists now seems to be functioning well.  👍🙂

I know it's a different issue and mentioned in another thread, but is the missing album art when playing through Bluetooth on the agenda?

[andrewilley]

@Si64   @maxmp  Playlists do seem to be working fine now, but I'm not convinced about inserting shuffled into the Queue as yet.

For example, I place 500 songs into the Queue, and then before starting playback I insert a new album's songs using >>Queue in shuffle mode. The result is that the 11 new tracks get interspersed within the first 10-15 existing items in the Queue, instead of being scattered randomly throughout the entire 500 songs.
 

The 'Play Next' functionality seems even stranger. As above, if I have existing items in the Queue (not yet playing) and I wish to use Play Next, it doesn't matter whether I've selected 'Add to End' (which doesn't make sense anyway, surely it should be 'Insert at Start'?) or 'Shuffled' the result is the same. The new songs get interspersed in every other position in the Queue, still in their original sorted order.

To clarify, if I already have ten songs in the Queue numbered from Q1 to Q10, and I use 'Play Next' (either in 'At End' or 'Shuffled' mode) to insert five new songs A1 to A5, the resulting order is always:

Q1
A1
Q2
A2
Q3
A3
Q4
A4
Q5
A5
Q6
Q7
Q8
Q9
Q10

If I'm honest, I'm still not sure how much use 'Play Next' is now anyway. Even if working properly, all it effectively should do is provide an Insert at Start of Queue function. It seems to me that it would make much more sense, both logically and intuitively, to create a third option for the '>>Queue' button - so corresponding exactly with the '+Playlist' options, the '>>Queue' button would offer 'Insert at Start', 'Add to End', and 'Shuffled'.  

Andre

[Si64]

@andrewilley @maxmp - Last night I jumped in the deep end and added about 4600 tracks 'shuffled'  to a new Queue.  Once the queue was playing, I then shuffle added just another 3 tracks, and had to scroll down at least half way before I found one of them, so they certainly didn't float to the top.  I will keep an eye on it for when I add another complete album, and report back.  

One thing I would like in the Queue settings is the ability to remove duplicates, like there is in Playlists.  

@andrewilley - How is your Shuffle Randomisation set?  Mine is set to Full Random.  Wonder if that makes a difference?

Edited July 15, 2023 by Si64

[andrewilley]

On 7/15/2023 at 5:25 PM, Si64 said:

 How is your Shuffle Randomisation set?  Mine is set to Full Random.  Wonder if that makes a difference?

Full Random too. If I ask for random, that's what I like to get.

I wonder if the Insert Shuffled mode works better when you are already playing the Queue? I did all my tests referred to in the previous post with a newly-build Queue that hadn't started playing yet.

Andre

[Si64]

@andrewilley I've only been adding an odd two or three tracks here and there to my playing Queue, but they're certainly not clustering towards the top like they were before.  In fact, if I added a single track before it would appear as the next track to be played, and that isn't happening now.

This is with a 'pre-shuffled' Queue (ie, select all tracks from a Playlist > Add Shuffled to Queue), then the queue is playing in 'normal' mode (ie, with Shuffle off), as the tracks are already shuffled.  I like this because if I come out of the queue and go back into it, the tracks are still in the same shuffled order (if that makes sense) as they were before.  Although, this is why I asked for a Resume / Memory function, as obviously the more tracks that are played, the more scrolling you have to do to continue where you left off, if you leave the Queue and play something else. 

[andrewilley]

As I said in the other thread, I'm not sure why the position in the Queue isn't being remembered when you leave the Queue and come back. As long as you are using 'Shuffle Off' mode, it should know where it had got to and return to there - I even seem to recall previously-played tracks used to be greyed-out, but perhaps that was on PA v2?

The order of the existing items in the Queue (either how you added them or what you did since) shouldn't really make a difference when adding new stuff, it's just a list of songs.

Andre

[Si64]

8 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

As I said in the other thread, I'm not sure why the position in the Queue isn't being remembered when you leave the Queue and come back. As long as you are using 'Shuffle Off' mode, it should know where it had got to and return to there - I even seem to recall previously-played tracks used to be greyed-out, but perhaps that was on PA v2?

How would you resume play in a Queue, once you've left it?  If I leave the Queue at song 200 and play another album, my only way back to the Queue is via the Library menu, yes?  When I select the Queue, the Now Playing track is still the last track played outside of the queue.  If I click the Play button in Queue, it starts the Queue again at the beginning, so the only way to find your past place is to scroll down to it.

Maybe if the Queue was included in the Category (<<< and >>>) buttons it would then resume where it left off?

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, Si64 said:

How would you resume play in a Queue, once you've left it? 

It used to resume automatically, so if you had anything left in the Queue it would re-trigger and start playing the next enqueued item after any currently playing song (or after the current Category, depending on your settings) until either the Queue is finished or you clear its contents. We had a few users in the past who couldn't figure out why (for example) their Playlists weren't continuing to play in the expected order after the first song, and it turned out they had left some songs in the Queue which were automatically resuming. 

That no longer seems to be happening though, you have to use the Play icon in the Library=>Queue list to restart the Queue, which as you have noted now seems to start again at the beginning even though some of the tracks had already been played. 

Andre