Well, I still can't quite figure out how to fashion a playlist with vlc. Sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not. Because of this, I decided to just separate all my music into different directories to use instead of trying to create playlists. But, selecting a directory resulted in vlc picking music from one directory and music videos from another for reasons I cannot figure out.

The trick with VLC is that when you go to save the playlist (File > Save Playlist To File), it won't automatically include the ".xspf" extension. This can cause problems when you go to open it, again. So, to create a new playlist, drag all your songs into VLC, in the order you want to play them, and then "Save Playlist To File", and make sure to put ".xspf" at the end of the filename.

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I agree with DaneM, this is exactly behavior I encounter with vlc, it allows you to save the playlist, but (1) never remembers the directory where you last saved it, and (2) doesn't default add the xspf extension.

Admittedly what I've done is I click to browse to the correct directory and then click to select an existing playlist to get it into the file type, and then edit the name of the file to make my final choice.

However, ALSO admittedly, I've gone too far and overwritten a playlist unintentionally because I went too fast! So if you choose to mimic my style, just be careful. Sad that vlc works great, but has these shortcomings.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.

I can't get over how tricky I find even creating a playlist is within vlc, never mind saving the playlist file. I begin by trying to locate the playlist window. When I finally do locate it, I get a window that tells me, "Playlist is currently empty. Drag a file here or select a media source from the left." So, I go to the media sources, but then this eliminates the window where I'm to drag files to. No matter. I go into a directory from the selected media source, and begin choosing song files (using the Ctrl button to select several songs). After doing this I right-click and choose "Add to playlist". Instead of simply adding the files I chose, it adds the entire directory, and duplicates the files I chose along with this. Asinine. Talk about non-intuitive. Perhaps I'd have better luck working with a file manager along with vlc to create a playlist.

ETA: So, I tried to use a file manager to drag & drop to create a playlist. First I cleared the playlist, then dragged and dropped the files. Everything looked fine. Then I pressed play. It played one song from the actual playlist, and then just began randomly choosing files from the entire directory (and other subdirectories), ignoring the ones chosen from the playlist. Asinine. Apparently vlc's understanding of "drag and drop" and mine do not correspond.

ETA2: Okay, the file I saved ("selected.xspf") did work when I opened, in that it opened the songs that were selected and restricted itself to just songs on the playlist. I'll see if I can figure out how to edit it now.

ETA3: Okay, editing the file seemed to work too. So, seems that to make a playlist, the thing to do is to work with an external file manager for drag and drop, save the playlist to file, close vlc, open it and clear anything in the playlist window, then add the file and make sure to double-click it so that it's recognized, then viola! --> the files you wish to hear will actually be selected. I figured I'd write down what worked here because I suspect I'll forget the sequence later. It's kinda nuts that I can't just select files and play them without going through all this rig-amoral, but oh well.

I'm glad you figured it out; it certainly does take some wrangling. I'm wondering if another application, like Rhapsody or SongBird might better do what you're going for? They're designed for managing your music collection from within the program.

Regarding the creation and management of playlists as well as the play order controls, here's some of what I've noticed.

There are two widgets. One selects random versus not. You obviously want random off. The other widget selects between loop all, loop one, and no loop. You probably want "no loop". My issue with these widgets is that it's not really intuitive what you've selected. I believe however that they are both set correctly when you start a default player, but once changed it remembers where it was set.

As far as populating a playlist from the file manager, that's great IMHO. I select all the files I want in a given playlist and then right mouse and say "open with VLC". Granted it will open it in the order in which the files are there from the file manager, however then you can click and move things up or down. Unfortunately there appear to be no keyboard shortcuts to allow you to do the same. I'd prefer that. But then you can save that playlist and once saved it will be how you want it.

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