One of my favourite software apps past far is VLC Media Actor. I beloved how information technology plays annihilation you throw at it and I particularly like its playlist features likewise.

If you're in the flow, work-wise, there'south nothing worse than having to stop all the time to start a new MP3 anthology or one single new vocal. It is much nicer to be able to preload several albums into VLC Thespian all at the same time and let it do its thing.

Today we will look at how to set and manage those playlists.

Opening Up VLC Player

When you open up upwards VLC Actor for the outset fourth dimension, you will see an empty playlist like this.

If you lot don't, go to View and either choose Playlist or Docked Playlist. You lot should at present see the playlist view.

Every bit it says in the chief window, the first option is to either drag a media file or folder into the window. This will take the media files and load them in sequential social club.

Yep I similar the Backstreet Boys. Don't judge me.

Alternatively, you can await at the options on the left to find media to play. Either media on your figurer or internet media such as podcasts and radio.

There actually is a 3rd way of loading tracks (simply only in Windows). When you lot install VLC Thespian, you volition get 2 new options in the right-click menu, as you lot can run across below.

Choose ane and the tracks you highlighted will automatically get added to the VLC playlist.

The difference between the 2 is that "Add to VLC media player's Playlist" will add the tracks to the stop of the playlist and volition play when the previous tracks are finished. "Play with VLC media role player" on the other manus overwrites the rest of the playlist and plays the highlighted tracks immediately.

Saving Playlists

Sometimes you will want to save playlists if you have a sweetness setup going and you lot don't want to continue reconstructing the same playlists over and over again.

To save your current playlist, just go to Media–>Save Playlist To File.

By default, VLC Player will try and save playlists as XSPF format. But I would suggest going instead with M3U format instead.

In one case you have given a name to your M3U playlist and saved information technology to your computer, double-click on the playlist and it volition automatically load in VLC player and kickoff playing.

Only saved playlists also record the location of those media files on your computer, as they are basically text files with the location of each media file. So y'all can't move the location of those files on your computer, or look that saved playlist to work on another calculator. Otherwise you volition get error messages.

If you MUST movement the music to some other location, you volition need to brand a new saved playlist again which points to the new folder.

Shuffling and Looping

Once you have your playlists all set up, there's nothing to stop y'all from shaking things up a bit and introducing some randomness into your life.

First, the last 3 controls at the bottom of the media player are to practise with playlists.

From left to right :

  • The offset is to toggle the playlist on and off.
  • The second is to loop the playlist, so when it is finished, it starts once again.
  • The tertiary is for VLC Actor to randomly choose the next song from the playlist.

If you right-click on a song, the context carte du jour will besides give you sorting options.

Conclusion

Playlists are actually a rather overlooked characteristic in many media players. People are content to load i song or one album at a time, when there is absolutely no need to do it piecemeal like that.