"Play in Winamp" on folders / sort by filename issue

[papi23]

Hi,

in winamp i've selected "when loading multiple files, sort by filename" under general preferences / playlist.
This works fine with the "add dir" command that can be accessed from the playlist window, but if i mark a folder and select "play in winamp" or "enqueue in winamp" from the context menu, sometimes the files aren't put into the playlist in the correct order but in the order i copied them to my hard disk.

Here are my PC's details:

1.6 Ghz Intel Mobile
512 MB Ram
WinXP with SP2

Filesys: FAT32

Winamp Skin: MMD3

[siebe83]

So it only goes wrong when you select files in Windows Explorer?

Are the files sorted on filename there?
Select the files, then right-click the first one and select 'Play in Winamp'.

[edit]
I probably misread your post...
I can't reproduce what you described.

[papi23]

Hi,

this only happens if right-click onto a folder that contains mp3 files and select "play in winamp".

With most folders this works, but in some case it doesn't. If the files were just copied to the drive, then it doesn't make any problems. But if I change the name of one of the files afterwards, then this one goes to the end of the playlist the next time i load the folder into winamp.

This is what the dir command (dos command line) shows me in such a directory:

30.06.2005 20:40 <DIR> .
30.06.2005 20:40 <DIR> ..
30.06.2005 20:31 9.240.993 02 - I Got it Bad And That Ain't Go.mp3
30.06.2005 20:29 3.150.241 03 - Don't Ever Leave Me.mp3
30.06.2005 20:29 6.267.297 04 - Someone to Watch Over Me.mp3
30.06.2005 20:29 6.455.713 05 - My Wild Irish Rose.mp3
30.06.2005 20:29 8.708.513 06 - Blame it on My Youth - Meditat.mp3
30.06.2005 20:29 8.997.281 07 - Something to Remember You By.mp3
30.06.2005 20:31 6.975.488 08 - Be My Love.mp3
30.06.2005 20:30 7.258.529 09 - Shenandoah.mp3
30.06.2005 20:22 3.602.451 10 - I'm Through With Love.mp3
23.05.2005 22:25 13.273 folder.jpg
30.06.2005 20:29 7.156.129 01 - I Loves You Porgy.mp3

The last file is the one I've renamed after copying the whole directory onto my hard disk.
The files are put into the playlist in exactly the same order, so the file 01 - I Loves You Porgy.mp3 would be at the end, although it shouldn't be there.

[edit:]
i've just seen that this effect doesn't occur on some folders, but i cannot figure out any reason why this is so, so i cannot tell for sure how to repoduce it.

[jmatthews112]

Is Preferences > Playlist > When loading multiple files, sort files by name checked? If not, try checking it.

Also, if I understand correctly, the file with focus when performing the above action is added last into the playlist, but I could be wrong about that.

jmat

[papi23]

-i don't select the files inside the folder but the folder itself. Inside my "My Music" folder I've put every single album into it's own folder, and I'd like to use the context menu of a folder to play this album _without_ having to open it and to select the files themsevels.

-yes, the sort option is checked

[papi23]

i've just tried to do it like you suggested by selecting the files inside that folder. What happens then is that the file I clicked onto at the end goes to the beginning of the playlist, the rest seems just completely screwed up, no matter in which order I've selected them

[siebe83]

Still cannot reproduce it here...

Dunno, but I think this is more of an OS problem than a Winamp problem. Windows sends the files in a specific order to Winamp, in your case the wrong order. I don't think there's a lot that can be done about that, although I've always found that when I select the files themselves (being listed in explorer in the correct order) and then right-click the first file > Play, the order is correct in Winamp.

As for the 'When loading multiple files, sort files by name' option, I believe that option is only relevant when loading files through Winamp itself, i.e. right-click Open button > Open file, or in the playlist editor Add > Add file (probably also for Open/Add folder? You could try...)
So that could be a workaround for you.

Another workaround (but maybe a bit far-fetched), would be Dynamic Library, which basically is an extended Windows Explorer within Winamp with a lot of extra features.

[DrO]

Filesys: FAT32

that's the issue straight off. only ntfs filesystems appear to sort the files so when you enqueue a folder/group of files, on fat32 it's not guaranteed to add them in the selected order due to the order that the files were saved to the drive and also from any changes to the order when the files were saved (since the OS can move files all over the drive at the lowest level in order for them to be correctlt stored).

so really there's not a lot that can be done other than having the OS fixed to parse the files in the correct order or some nasty hacks to delay and then forward on enqueued events in a sorted order but since there's no way of properly knowing when the enqueue event ends it's effectively not possible to work around it

-daz

[papi23]

Well, i think a workaround would be possible at least when enqueuing a folder (right-click onto the folder icon -> select enqueue/play in winamp) in winamp, because in that case the name of the folder itself should be passed to winamp, not the name of the files.
Another solution i could think of would be to load a playlist with a standard name, e.g. !play.m3u or [folder name].m3u when enqueuing folders. i've been searching for a plugin capable of doing that, but haven't found any.

[DrO]

from what i'm aware of, the play folder thing is an XP menu feature since i don't have it on this machine (win2k) or any of the older Win9x installs i have. as for the way it's done, i'm guessing the OS just scans and sends the filenames in that folder to Winamp/whatever the associated program is as is done when manually doing it on the files in the folder. effectively at the end of the day most of these issues with things not being able to be sorted on loading via explorer are due to the way the OS is designed and seems to hold from the coding work i've looked into on the matter.

-daz

[papi23]

First of all, thank you very much for your response!

The strange thing is that on my machine the "play in winamp" and "enqueue in winamp" commands are listed in the properties of folders (as it can be seen in the "registered file types" list of the windows explorer options). As I looked into my registry I've found the entry for this option saying that the command executed is '"C:\Programme\Winamp\Winamp.exe" "%1"'. So, the folder name is passed to Winamp, and as for this there has to be some routine inside winamp that looks up the folder contents but doesn't apply any sorting algorithm. But, as I guess FAT32 doesn't have such a great future, maybe extending the winamp code or writing some sort of plugin may not be worth it.

But anyway, through this I've found a nice workaround for my problem.. I just added a new entry to the folder context menu that passes a standard playlist name to winamp ("C:\Programme\Winamp\Winamp.exe" "%1\folder.m3u"), so I just have to put a playlist named folder.m3u into my music folders which contains the songs in the correct order.

So again, thank you very much to all of the guys trying to figure out the problem.

Greetings from Germany,
David

[wakeup]

I have same error sometimes




Hip Hop

[papi23]

Ok, finally I decided that the simplest solution is to convert my Disk to NTFS, because with this filesystem the problem doesn't seem to appear.
To do this, select start/run and type "cmd" (without the quotation marks) to open a console window. Then type "convert C: /fs:ntfs" for example to convert drive C:. You may need to reboot and the conversion shouldn't take that long. And of course you should backup your data before doing this.

[DJ Egg]

And of course you need a ntfs-capable OS, eg. Win2k/XP, not Win9x/ME

(wakeup didn't specify this, and alas, i interpreted his post as nothing but spam)

Also note that when you use Windows Explorer context menus then it is Windows Explorer which sorts the files and sends them to Winamp (or any other program) like that, and with fat32 systems alas Windows sends files to apps using fat32 allocation (timestamps).

The only workaround is to use Winamp's Open File/Folder menus, or convert to ntfs.

[sc911]

Ok, lets bring this up once angain.

I do have exactly the same problem: I do have a mobile 30gb media-player with a fat32 formated disk. Converting it to ntfs is no solution because the firmware will not be able to handle this. All my cds are on this device and are sorted in an artist\album\track#-song.mp3 structure.

Now when I right-click on a folder and do select "play in winamp", in most times all songs are sorted in the right order. But sometimes they are not. So I click on "Misc->Sort->Sort on Path and Filename" in the playlist window and everything is fine. But thats some kind of uncomfortable and makes Winamp not so usefull. I know, that there is an option "When loading multiple files, sort files by name" but it does not work on this.

But there is one easy solution, but I dont know how to do this: the "Sort on Path and Filename"-Option should do its work every time multiple files or folders are passed to winamp. That would fix it!

So please help me with that, because I dont wont to loose my favourite mediaplayer!

thx in advance sc911