Shuffle mode needs to be refined

[Trouilliez vincent]

I use RB to play an eclectic collection of 184 MPS's, with a total duration of
over 13 hours.
I use the 'shuffle' mode to play these. The problem is that it regularly play
the same song twice in a row, or 3 times in just 20 minutes.

I used XMMS to play this songs in the past (before using RB ie), and IIRC, XMMS,
in shuffle mode, will wiat for the entire playlist to have been played, before
allowing a song to be played again. So it's better, but not perfect, because if
the playlist is very long, it could take days before a song plays twice. Also,
IIRC, once it has played all the songs, it will not 'shuffle' them anymore : it
will just play them in the same order that they got played the first time :o(

I think a better solution would be for example to wait some time before playing
a given song again. Say, wait at least 30 or 45 minutes before playing twice the
same song, or make it configurable with some Gconf key or something. This way
you don't get the same songs twice in a row, nor do you wait 3 days to hear a
song twice. Best of both worlds... :o)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

There is some bugs upstream about that,
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165863 by example.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

*** Bug 23047 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

***Bug 16862 was rejected on 2005-05-15.

Re: inotify oops Posted by ChuckShort at 2005-05-15 15:27:42 MDT

2.6.11 is in universe and not supported***

Can this be confirmed as still valid?

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Need to insure this is still a valid bug, Bug #16862 which was referenced has been rejected as being in universe package

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

> Can this be confirmed as still valid?

Yes, confirmed.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you still have that problem?

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

Yes.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

marking confirmed and opening an upstream task so it doesn't stay on the bug triager list

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

On Wed, 2007-01-31 at 15:11 +0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> do you still have that problem?
>

Sorry, I didn't have that problem. All I did was what you are doing and
have others confirm it.

--
Charlie Kravetz
<email address hidden>
Linux User #425914
ref link http://counter.li.org/
Helping spread awareness and education about Multiple Sclerosis

[StuartYeates (stuart-yeates)]

There is a workaround for this problem described at:

http://www.last.fm/group/Rhythmbox/forum/8096/_/288791

cheers
stuart

[Endolith (endolith)]

Seems like "random by age" might be a better choice for Ubuntu's default setting?

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

On Wed, 2007-10-24 at 23:38 +0000, Endolith wrote:
> Seems like "random by age" might be a better choice for Ubuntu's default
> setting?
>
I couldn´t tell you. I just verified that the bug report was still
valid. Perhaps Vincent-trouilliez, who submitted the original report and
has verified it each time will be able to answer this also.

--
Charlie Kravetz
Linux Registered User Number 425914
Never let anyone steal your DREAM.
Plumber, bicyclist, retired with too much to do...

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

Here I am ;-)

Well I am not dreaming of anything fancy really. Basically to make me happy, all I would want is:

1) keep the random generator as it is, that is, "truly" random (as far as random makes sense in a computer ie ;-)
2) THEN, check the song number, and if that song has already been played, say, in the last 10 tracks, well then just generate another random number, and that's is ! :o)

[Endolith (endolith)]

It shouldn't be the last 10 tracks, though. It should be more like "never play the same song twice during one session, unless every song has already been played". It's how you define "session" that's the problem.

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

> It should be more like "never play the same song twice during one session, unless every song has already been played".

Wow, please don't do that ! That would be horrible, at least for me ! :-(
I mean, I don't like all my songs equally... so there are songs that I don't even want to hear, and others that I like a lot, which I really don't mind if I hear them several times per evening. I just don't want to hear the same song litterally twice in a row, or 3 times in 10 songs, because that really is "too much". But I have nearly 600 songs in my library, and if I have to go through 600 songs before I have a chance to hear again a song I like, I will suicide ! ;-/

That's why I proposed to wait only a few songs, be it 10 or 20 or whatever, this way it garantees that I won't hear the same song twice in a row, yet I won't have to wait 3 months before I can enjoy it again. There is a balance to be found somewhere between 0 and 600 ;-)
Maybe RB could be adaptative, and determine this threshold automatically, to find an appropriate value based on the number of songs.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Fixed upstream, thanks.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

there is a new version in hardy now which fixes the issue

[Gary Bickford (garyb-fxt)]

No, it isn't fixed. I am really, really tired of hearing the same ten songs at least once or twice every day, out of 1800.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Gary, please comment on the upstream bug located at: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165863 ; thanks you.

[Vern Wall (vernwall)]

I had so much trouble with playlists that I don't use them any more. I navigate to a directory and use CTRL-A to select everything, then click ADD. It seems to work well with none of the problems that playlists have.

[Juan Pablo (juanps90)]

Not fixed, at least not on Karmic. Haven't tested it on 10.04 though.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Please comment on the upstream bug located at: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165863 ; thanks you. Since Gnome considers this fixed, if they do not hear from you, it will not change. Thanks for helping.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

according to the upstream folks this was fixed, if you don't think its please file another bug in the usptream bts. thanks.