Navigating between playlists

[TheRyanGuy]

Hello. I have about 40 video game playlists set up in Winamp; however, the program only lets me queue one at a time. I can then use the 'jump to box' function, which is bound to ALT+W. I use this to search each individual playlist for specific songs.

This is all well and good, but I'm wondering if there's some way to navigate between playlists, preferably using a global hotkey bind. That way, if for example I decided I'm sick of music from the Zelda playlist and want to switch over to my Mario playlist, would there be any way to do this without manually opening the Winamp GUI and selecting it from the list?

If it's not an already existing feature of the program, is there any such plugin that would allow me to do this?

Thanks.

[ryerman]

I can queue any or all Library playlists at once so I'm puzzled when you say "the program only lets me queue one at a time".

However, Winamp has command line switches.
On my system, this command will clear the Playlist Editor and start playing the new playlist:

code:
"%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Winamp\winamp.exe" /CLEAR /ADD "%APPDATA%\Winamp\Plugins\ml\playlists\plf52C7.m3u8"

Create a desktop shortcut using a similar command as the target, and assign a keyboard shortcut.

[TheRyanGuy]

Originally Posted by ryerman

I can queue any or all Library playlists at once so I'm puzzled when you say "the program only lets me queue one at a time".

However, Winamp has command line switches.
On my system, this command will clear the Playlist Editor and start playing the new playlist:

code:
"%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Winamp\winamp.exe" /CLEAR /ADD "%APPDATA%\Winamp\Plugins\ml\playlists\plf52C7.m3u8"

Create a desktop shortcut using a similar command as the target, and assign a keyboard shortcut.

Hi. I have started using the 'jump to album' function, and have globally mapped it to ALT + `

It seems to be doing the job decently, but some 'albums' aren't appearing on the list that comes up. I have no idea how Winamp sorts these albums. Is it based on the 'album' field in the songs' metadata?

To give you a better idea, I have about 40 video game soundtrack playlists, and then I have 1 other playlist that is for all my non video game related songs. This 'jump to album' function lets me navigate to whatever video game soundtrack playlist I want, very similar to how 'jump to box' works. However, on the album list, my Songs playlist does not appear at all. And while this isn't so bad, the albums listed are also very messy and sometimes vague as to which video game playlist I'm about to load up.

Image: http://prntscr.com/46te2r

As you can see with some soundtracks it's ambiguous as to what game it actually belongs to, because it gives me the composers name and stuff like that. Is there any way I can get it to list them by playlist name, or folder name, or something like that? If I can accomplish both of these things (fixing the labeling and getting the songs playlist to appear on the jump to album menu) then this will be an effective and much easier alternative to using command line.

Thanks

EDIT: I just tried the command line code you suggested and it worked much easier than expected. However, mapping this for all of my playlists would be extremely tedious and would take up many keys on my keyboard, probably more than I have available. If I can get this 'jump to album' function to emulate this method, then it would be a much better option I think. But your answer was very helpful, thanks.

[ryerman]

I'm fairly certain that "jump to album" is not a function native to Winamp.
So I assume you're using a plug-in.
If so, I can't help much, but maybe there is documentation somewhere.

Metadata for a file is obtained from either tags or file names.
In Preferences see: Media Library > Watch Folders

Playlists use the "Advanced title display format" for display. Users can create an ATF string.
In Preferences see: General Preferences > Titles

That screenshot looks like a list of track titles.
Maybe accurate tagging and/or uniform file name formatting and/or modifying the ATF string will give you an acceptable list.

Any file can be on multiple playlists. Winamp doesn't keep a record of which playlists a file is on.
I'm fairly certain that you will never be able to load a playlist by specifying any particular file.
Don't confuse "Albums" with "Playlists".

[TheRyanGuy]

Whoops, my mistake. You're right, that function actually belongs to a plugin I installed previously, 'Album List'. I was able to familiarize myself with how this plugin works and queue every one of my folders as separate albums. Now I can use the jump to album function to freely switch between albums/folders, and then use the 'jump to box' function to search for a song from that album. In the end, this is exactly what I wanted to achieve. Turns out creating playlists was unnecessary.

It's a bit messy with multi-disc soundtracks however, so I had to tag each MP3/FLAC in this case with a track number and then merge all disc folders together. That way multi-disc soundtracks are cleanly displayed as single albums rather than multiple ones for each disc.

Just one more question though: In the playlist editor, do you know how tracks are sorted by default? I know you have 3 different custom sort options: 'title', 'filename' and 'path and filename,' but I don't know what the default is. From what I can tell it seems to be sorting by track numbers which is incredibly convenient as all of my multi-disc soundtracks have been tagged in a way that depends on this kind of sorting method.

Other than that, thanks a lot. You've been a great help. I don't think I would have realized that album list is separate from Winamp any time soon.

[ryerman]

Originally Posted by TheRyanGuy

Just one more question though: In the playlist editor, do you know how tracks are sorted by default? I know you have 3 different custom sort options: 'title', 'filename' and 'path and filename,' but I don't know what the default is. From what I can tell it seems to be sorting by track numbers which is incredibly convenient as all of my multi-disc soundtracks have been tagged in a way that depends on this kind of sorting method.

My experience is that there is no default sorting.
Maybe the plug-in sorts by track numbers, but Winamp doesn't.

[Aminifu]

I think the default is alphanumeric in accordance with the default ATF title string (which I no longer remember).

[DrO]

it depends on how things are added to the playlist. with the 3rd party plug-in being used, it'll be adding things in the order in which the plug-in passes to Winamp.

[TheRyanGuy]

Alright, that makes sense. Thanks all.

/thread