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In VLC media player, I can use vlc -LZ <file 1> <file 2> <file 3> for example to play various files on repeat and shuffled. Is it possible to specify a whole directory and play all the music within the folder and it's subfolders?
Say I am hosting a party and have a folder with "Party Music", how would I play all the music from that folder in a loop and repeating the whole playlist?
By commandline, with recent versions, it should work with your command options and the name of the directory(ies) instead of the files:
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vlc --LZ "Party Music"
If your path includes spaces you need to include it between "".
Only if you modified the default options you may need to add also --playlist-autostart.
The option --playlist-tree only shows the playlist as a tree. Enable if you want.
If you are not in the parent directory of "Party Music" you have to specify the whole path, complinat with your operating system (e.g. "C:\Music\Party Music" or "~/Music/All Music/Party Music" or /media/user/usb/Party Music).
Note:
VLC usually remembers the last setting you decided. If you run from commandline (or with a link built for this purpose) it will overcome the usual behaviour following the prescription specified by the options without changing it. If instead you will change some setting during its run it will remember the next time.
From vlc --help
-L, --loop, --no-loop Repeat all (default disabled) -Z, --random, --no-random Play files randomly forever (default disabled) VLC will randomly play files in the playlist until interrupted. (default disabled) --playlist-autostart, --no-playlist-autostart Auto start (default enabled) --playlist-tree, --no-playlist-tree Display playlist tree (default disabled)
Tested on VLC media player 2.1.6 Rincewind on Ubuntu, but it should work on precedent versions and for different operating systems too.
According to this blog post the --playlist-tree will play everything in the folder passed into it. For example:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --playlist-autostart --loop --playlist-tree c:\playlist\
Also note that the example is for a Windows system, you may need to modify the syntax slightly if you are using a Unix based system.
--playlist-tree and --playlist-autostart ? And is --loop the same as -L (Repeat) ?
– ComputerLocus
Jul 24 '13 at 20:43
-L and --loop are the same and are reported on the same help line. By conventions (IEEE and GNU Getopt) when one letter there is one - when longer there are 2 --. By convention... is not a dogma of course, but it's rather common.
– Hastur
Oct 2 '15 at 10:14
As I didn't get tbenz9's solution working, I wrote a little batch script doing the trick:
cd C:\your\directory\with\music
for /r %a in (*) do "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -LZ --one-instance --playlist-enqueue "%a"
The --one-instance option tells VLC media player to keep only one window, and I think --playlist-enqueue is quite explicit.
On Linux, it can be simply achieved with:
find /my/music/directory/ -type f -exec vlc -LZ '{}' +
--one-instance and --playlist-enqueue (with basic wildcard support) can be found here.
– Anaksunaman
Jul 30 at 4:19
I often need to work my way thru a lot of videos, in a particular sequence. When I stop watching one, I want my player to remember where I was, and resume from that point.
VLC cannot do either of these, not without extra work. Instead, I use "Media Player Classic - Home Cinema" http://mpc-hc.org/ for this very reason. I even created my own tiny script to launch MPC-HC and resume the most recently-played file automatically.
The VLC development team is opposed to automatically playing the next file, even as an option. They insist that you must select the files manually, and then add them to a playlist, or open the folder (which would start from the first file, which isn't what I want), or add them individually. Their dogma is NOT user-friendly!
For linux (I have no windows machines handy). All of this is from the man pages and/or --help output. I also TESTED these to work.
find /Music/Directory/ -type f -exec vlc --one-instance --playlist-enqueue --playlist-autostart --fullscreen -Z '{}' +
The "-L" shouldn't be needed because help for "-Z" says "Play files randomly forever"
Or, if you'd prefer to use mplayer (vlc video scaling is currently borked on one of my machines)
find /Music/Directory/ -type f -exec mplayer -enqueue -shuffle -fs -loop 0 '{}' +
Just figured out the easy way, you open vlc then choose media. Then open map and you choose the map with all the music. Done!
Here is a great solution if you're on Mac OS X. This will start a full screen, loop playback of all media inside a folder:
Example command:
find /Users/NRK/Movies -type f -exec /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -LZf --video-on-top --no-video-wallpaper --no-osd '{}' +
To make it work for you, do these steps:
/Users/NRK/Movies
Open VLC, go to Preferences -> Interface -> Use the native fullscren mode
(Optional step) remove "--no-osd " from the command to still show the name of each file that gets played.
Below command Plays all the music in the sorted order
vlc -Z --no-random chakri/Desktop/Folder_Name
Plays random music
vlc -Z --random chakri/Desktop/Folder_Name
add a shortcut with the above commands to play it anytime!
I had vlc 3.0.9.2 installed on Ubuntu. All you need to do is give the folder name. e.g.
/usr/bin/vlc /home/adeel/Music
FYI:Caution Please do remember that vlc can't play midi files. So if there is a folder containing midi files. Better move that folder to some other place; maybe in Documents etc.
