'My Playlist', a better 'play all/random'

[fredklein]

Started on: 2008-3-5
last update: 2008-3-5

Summary:
'My Playlist(s)'

Description:
I have an idea which is somewhat similar to the 'play all in a dirctory' ideas I see here, but more versatile.

Let the user define certain folders (or subfolders, etc) that contain files they want to have played. (I'll assume these are episodes of a TV series.) The program parses through the filenames, and determines the correct play order for each series. The program then creates a 'playlist' of files to play, based on the length of the videos, and how many there are in each series.

A simple example:

I tell the program to use the following:
'Star Trip: Original Series', 50 episodes, ~45min each
'Star Trip: The Next Generation', 100 episodes, ~45min each

The program then looks and sees that there are twice as many 'st:tng' episodes as there are 'st;os' episodes. It comes up with a playlist something like this:

St:tng episode 1
St:tng episode 2
St;os episode 1
St:tng episode 3
St:tng episode 4
St;os episode 2
St:tng episode 5
St:tng episode 6
St;os episode 3
etc...

Now, all I need to do is choose 'My Playlist' (maybe it could be called something else?) and it would start playing those episodes, in that order. I can Pause or Stop the playback, exit 'My Playlist', come back another time, and it picks up right where it left off.

I could add series at any time, simply by navigating to the appropriate folder through 'My Videos' and hitting a button on the remote. The program would re-calculate the playlist based upon what un-watched episodes remain, combined with the new series episodes.

Much more complex playlists would be possible, of course.

A nice feature to have would be a way to 'skip' the show currently playing. There are three types of 'skipping' that should be taken into account:

1) Skip this episode, play the next episode of this series instead.
2) Skip this video, continue with the next scheduled video (even if it's from another series.)
3) Skip this series (ie: no longer play this series until the next time 'My Playlist' is opened), but play the remaining series episodes in their scheduled order.

As you can see, these all do different things. One is a 'I know this episode, but want to see the next episode of this series' button. One is a 'I know this episode, but want to see the next scheduled video' button, and one is 'I'm sick of this series, but want to see the other series' button.

Another feature that might be nice is a way to 'prioritize' the series'. Raise the priority, the playlist is re-calculated so the episodes from that series are scheduled to play more often. Lower the priority, they play less often.

There is also the posibility of multiple playlists, a 'comedy' playlist, a 'sci-fi' playlist, 'anime' playlist, etc...