Keeping audiobooks out of the shuffle list

[mamarley]

I use Poweramp to listen to both music and audiobooks on my phone. I keep all the music in one directory and each audiobook in its own directory outside of the music directory. The problem is that if I tell Poweramp to shuffle, it will play the audiobook files along with the music files. Could you please add some method of keeping these separate, such as limiting the shuffled songs to a single directory? Thanks!

[andrewilley]

This has been asked many times, and hopefully better long-file support is coming in version 3. Max/Wen, is there a general outline of what is planned to be implemented in this area, and how you see it working from an end-user point of view?

For the record, I would suggest something along the following lines:

A new 'Long Audio Track Options' submenu in the 'Folders and Library' category (or could be called 'Audiobooks/Podcasts/Spoken Word'). This should contain:

Folders List <--- This would display a folder tree showing all the currently selected MusicFolders, with tickboxes to chose which of these folders should be treated specially as containing 'long tracks' (or whatever the term eventually becomes). Nested folders should auto-select with the parent folder.

Genres <--- A list of genres to always treat as 'long tracks', with tickboxes beside each one (e.g. 'Audiobook', 'Podcast', 'Radio', 'Spoken Word', etc). This could probably be simplified to a Yes/No option actually, covering all of the common genres in one go.

Track Length <--- Selects the number of minutes that any random track needs to be in order to also be considered as a 'long track'.

Skip Tracks in Shuffle mode? (Y/N) <--- The requested feature above, i.e. to skip podcasts/audiobooks/etc when listing to random music in Shuffle mode.

Remember Previous Playback Positions? (Y/N) <--- As a lot of these tracks can be several hours long, allows the user to go off and listen to something else in the meantime and then come back to any podcast/audiobook exactly where they left off.

Have I missed anything obvious that people might want? (I also think new Skip Back <nnn> Seconds and Skip Forward <nnn> Seconds options should be available for all songs, rather than only for audiobook/podcasts, although they will be most useful for these longer formats).

Just my $0.02 anyway, hope it's useful.

Andre

[andrewilley]

I noticed this old thread again while trawling through searching for something else, and several other similar ones. It's great to see that many of the items discussed above have gradually been implemented over the years (skip fwd/back by 10 seconds, save positions in long tracks, define duration for 'long' tracks, etc) but the original request of being able to avoid certain tracks completely when listening to Shuffled music is still missing.

@maxmp Any thoughts on whether it might now be possible to add an option which alters the behaviour of the Shuffle system so it can auto-skip certain Genre files or folder names - such as Podcasts, Audiobooks, Radio Shows, and other user-specified folders or Genre tags?

Andre

[CrimsonBird]

Would it be possible to create subsections within the library system for audiobooks and podcasts? Musicbee uses this solution, so the audiobook and podcast folders can be monitored along with the Music folder. I think it uses some tag analysis that ends up placing some of them in their respective subsection automatically, but the user has the option to select a podcast or audiobook album and manually put it in the subsection. After doing this it won't show up in the Music artist or album list.

[andrewilley]

@CrimsonBird You can already use the Genre system for separating such files, or put them in their own folders. However some sort of filter option in a category's List Options screen that provides the ability to whitelist or blacklist certain content in particular lists might be nice - e.g. to not display tracks with specific named genres such as Podcast, Audiobook, or Radio, or which are stored inside particular folder names.

Andre