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Topic: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling (Read 1306 times) previous topic - next topic
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Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Hi all.

I'm not sure if I'm posting in the correct section (could go in 3rd Party Plugins - since I use ColumnsUI - or even Support).

Anyway, I have an autoplaylist based on this query:
Code: [Select]
NOT %last_played% DURING LAST 50 WEEKS SORT ASCENDING BY %artist% - %title%
Sort pattern is empty and Force-sorted is NOT checked.

The issue I'm facing is that the playback order I selected  - Shuffle (tracks) - seems to be ignored (but works fine with other playlists): is this a bug, by design or am I missing something?

fb2k 1.4.3, CUI 0.5.1, Win10 Pro.

Alessandro

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #1
No one?

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #2
I don't think it's a bug. That autoplaylist changes its content at every play, because once a track starts playing it doesn't match the query anymore. That moves the cursor to the next track by default.
I'm late

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #3
Works fine for me.

You say the shuffle playback order is ignored, in what way? Does it play the tracks in sequence? Have you tried recreating the playlist with a different name?

Do you have playback follows cursor enabled? Can you list the components you are using? Something like Playlist Attributes?

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #4
You say the shuffle playback order is ignored, in what way? Does it play the tracks in sequence?
Yes.
Have you tried recreating the playlist with a different name?
No: will do as soon as I'm back home.
Do you have playback follows cursor enabled?
Usually no (will check this as well) but it shoudln't matter because I was not doing anything while watching the transition from one song to the next.
Can you list the components you are using? Something like Playlist Attributes?
Will post the list of my components, but I'm fairly sure foo_playlist_attributes is not used.
Quote from: davideleo
once a track starts playing it doesn't match the query anymore. That moves the cursor to the next track by default
That's what I thought, but I fail to see why/how removing the currently playing track from the playlist has any effect on the next track.

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #5
That's what I thought, but I fail to see why/how removing the currently playing track from the playlist has any effect on the next track.

I don't know how the shuffle mode works internally, but I guess when moving to the next track, it makes some calculations on the present track index. If the present track is not in the playlist anymore, it probably has to pick another track as a basis for that calculation.
I don't have playcount installed, so I couldn't actually test your autoplaylist, but the same happens to me with genre-based autoplaylists. If I change the genre tag to a genre which is not included in the query, the track is removed from the playlist while still playing. Foobar2000 will than move to the next track in the playlist, even if it is set to shuffle mode.
I have no idea why this doesn't happen to Daeron. After reading his post I thought this behavior could be affected by the cursor options, but I checked and it's not.

P.S.
On a second thought, I realized a tag edit affects the playlist immediately, whereas foo_playcount updates its tags only after 1 minute or so. @Daeron did you let the tracks actually play long enough to update the statistics? or did you manually move to the next track?
I'm late

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #6
If the present track is not in the playlist anymore, it probably has to pick another track as a basis for that calculation.
I see what you mean but since the mode is Shuffle tracks, the next track should be picked randomly (IOW, what was playing previously shouldn't matter).

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #7
I believe this is a limitation of the shuffle mode, which is necessary to allow playing previous tracks in backwards order. If you don't need this feature you can use the random mode, which behaves like you say.
I'm late

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #8
Did you let the tracks actually play long enough to update the statistics?
I did not. By waiting properly I could also reproduce the problem now.

That's what I thought, but I fail to see why/how removing the currently playing track from the playlist has any effect on the next track.
My understanding is that for shuffle to work (to not get repetitions basically) foobar takes the original playlist, makes a copy of it in memory, randomizes it and then plays that in a serialized fashion. When the autoplaylist updates, that internal playlist probably gets invalidated and thrashed (since it has no correlation to the actual playlist now), then foobar attempts to resume playback in the safest way possible - starting from the next valid track.

Perhaps it could be argued that playback could/should start with a random track from the playlist, then resume in shuffle-y fashion in this specific scenario to avoid this. Although I'm not entirely sure what the implications of it would be during let's say manual editing of playlists (would it be more confusing or natural to people).

 

Re: Sorted autoplaylist not shuffling

Reply #9
Apologies for the late reply and thank you both for your help.

It looks like "Random" mode solves my problem.

Cheers.