Thursday 2 August 2012

Issue in Windows or issue in Media File Players ?

Well , if you have used VLC , you must have noticed this issue.

if you open VLC-> Media-> "Open Folder" and select the folder , it plays files in random order.

It will always play in same order but the files selection is random. I am observing this issue for some time , but as i do not maintain the playlist and any order is fine with me. I never cared about the order.

Today i tried to investigate the issue, on what basis it is playing the files?

I opened  the folder and try to analyze the files. The track number for 1st song and second song displays same "1 only". The name of the first file started with "D" and second was "B" so it was not playing in alphabetical order. 

FYI, in VLC-> Tools->Preferences-> "Advanced Setting"-> Playlist->"Play files randomly forever " is not checked in.So it is not playing in random order, some order is there but which order it follows ?

I could not get anything after comparing these two files, so i went to play third and fourth files. Again everything was so random , no relation with track, file names, album, artist ?

OK, so next i asked friend  "Google".

And see what , it seems that "it all depends on creation date of the file" . Viola !!!

I checked all four files again and YES ! all has proper order , seconds difference in creation date and accordingly it was being played.

Well ! so now the issue is found , but solution Alas !!! Not yet fixed it seems !!

This issue exists because it seems Windows give the files in this order to media players and they play . The issue still exists in WINAMP and VLC players as of August 02, 2012.

So if you are developer, try to fix it and if you are testers, help me in finding the workarounds.


Ref : http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=55953
        http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=234010