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[feature-request] Directory tree mode in media player

asked 2014-11-02 14:33:19 +0300

oku gravatar image

I like the media player in Jolla, but for me it lacks an important feature. There is no ability to browse the filesystem and play files based on directory. I find the tracker approach impractical for me as I have organized my music by putting them in directory trees.

Album, artist and all songs -views work if I only have a small number of songs and they are from small amount of artists. The problem becomes apparent when I have lots of music files from many different artists.

  • When I have music from many various artists -> artist view is full of artists with only one or two songs, useless
  • I have lots of music at all -> all songs view is slow and hard to browse
  • Albums list is somehow usable if I only want to save full albums, but if I want to save a mix from various albums I have to strip the album id tags from the files. Otherwise the "mixtape" albums will render the album view useless.

Having music put on a directory tree overcomes those problems, is simple to use and works on all systems (except Jolla at the moment).

My workaround at the moment is to have a a script that makes playlist files out of my directory trees. It's usable but far from optimal. It could be an option in the media player main menu, where I can choose between playlist view, all songs, albums and artist views.

Also if someone knows another media player for Jolla that can play music by browsing directory tree, I'm listening.

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I very much agree. The Jolla media player is almost unusable for collections over a few hundred tracks. :(

fivepointsquare ( 2014-11-06 10:23:20 +0300 )edit

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3

answered 2014-11-02 15:52:57 +0300

Victorious gravatar image

QuasarMX can do it

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I installed it and don't think it's quite what I was looking for. While I can set what directories it scans, I still cannot browse manually through directories.

Thanks for your answer though. It was worth checking and it seems to have some nice features. One big downside is that the UI tries to fit too much information in such small place.

oku ( 2014-11-02 16:15:25 +0300 )edit
1

I agree with you + Having a large music library - very useful to be able to delete unwanted songs directly from the player...

Victorious ( 2014-11-02 16:23:08 +0300 )edit

The delete option is a really good idea. I didn't even think of that.

oku ( 2014-11-02 16:25:01 +0300 )edit
3

answered 2015-01-01 03:30:23 +0300

marsch gravatar image

This is a feature I've been asking for quite some time ago.

It's really cumbersome to play compilations or non-tagged albums (hitting me in particular when wanting to listen to ripped LPs from pre-digital times)

Please implement this directory view.

It would be really an advance regarding native media player functionality compared to other platforms.

Thank you.

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2018 - version 2.2 - still missing - WTF has been going on with Jolla - N9 was able to do this - is it too hard to implement something that was already there time ago? really getting slowly upset

deloptes ( 2018-06-10 03:05:49 +0300 )edit

Hey I don't think this is fair, and it's definitely not something to get upset about. This site is for making requests, not demands. As far as I know, music directory browsing in the media player was never promised to be implemented, so you can't really expect that it will be done. I guess it's not desired by many users, and would complicate the user interface for everyone else.

Personally, I just make sure I get everything tagged properly - which also lets me add album cover art. For compilations, I either tag the album with the compilation name, or just make a playlist.

Andy Branson ( 2018-06-10 12:15:04 +0300 )edit

Oh really, so we have to id all the songs, to be able to see them in different albums- otherwise I have a total mess out of ringtones and music - you tell me this is fair.

Directory play is immanent feature of all players I have used so far in my past '96 computer experience. Jolla/Sailfish is the first one to surprise me with argument like this. And honestly I do not see what is soo hard to get a list of files in a directory and let them play in a row. Did I mention N9 already?

Sorry if it makes you feel uncomfortable - I usually measure myself and if I say something like this I usually really really mean it. I need to look forward either for another player or for compiling something that does exactly this, as this exactly renders Sailfish once again to unusable (I already have 3 points for things working in N9 needed by me on daily bases and not supported anymore).

What you suggest adds overhead - why should I have overhead? Are we doing progress or not? Of course I can tag as well - it's just stupid I have to change something that worked for the past 7y.

Anyway - I don't see any other option.

regards

deloptes ( 2018-06-10 22:44:39 +0300 )edit

You've already made it clear how important this is to you, but this is not your personal software house. This suggestion has only 17 upvotes at the time of writing, which is not a sign that it's important to many people, nor that this functionality will be implemented any time soon.

My music collection wasn't very well tagged in 1996 either - the ripping tools didn't really handle it outside of the CDDB and re-tagging afterwards was laborious. However nowadays these tools have improved a lot, and can search multiple online databases for music metadata making the process mostly automatic. IIRC, I used a tool called 'Tag & Rename' a few years ago to make sure all my older music files were properly tagged, but there are lots of others available.

Like I said, folder browsing is unlikely to be implemented. I'm actually trying to help you get around this problem, though you're being so rude that my patience is wearing rather thin. Improve your attitude if you actually want help, because if you continue to troll then you'll be on your own. It's quite rare that a company gives you a space like this to engage directly with development. Don't ruin it for everyone else.

Andy Branson ( 2018-06-11 11:00:54 +0300 )edit
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Asked: 2014-11-02 14:33:19 +0300

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Last updated: Jan 01 '15