Suggestion: Play / Add To for Music Folders

Hi,

I am still switching back to Windows Explorer to do just one job that seems very simple.

In Windows Explorer, I can right click a folder that contains music and use either "Play with Windows Media Player" or "Add to Windows Media Player List". The former plays the music in the folder, overwriting the current playlist. The latter adds the music in the folder to the current playlist. It's perfect.

In Directory Opus, you can't do either. You can to a file or selection of files, but not to a folder.

Am I missing something or could this be added to the development plans?

Thanks.

You can create a menu item which is always there for folders (whether they contain music or not) and sends them to Windows Media Player.

The item created by WMP for folders doesn't seem to work from Opus (although it is also broken, differently, in Explorer*), I suspect because it's using undocumented features of Explorer to do something special.

(*For me, if I right-click a folder full of music in Explorer, the menu item is not present. I have to go into the folder, then back out again, for it to appear in the menu. Apparently only by going inside the folder does Explorer realise it contains music and start showing the extra menu item. At least in folders which are not indexed by Windows Search.)

You have to tell Explorer that the folder contains music and then it will show up on your right click context menu. I can tell Opus that the folder contains music, but it still doesn't allow me to cue up music by right clicking folders.

I'd rather not have to go through menus to do this. I'd use Windows Explorer instead if that is the only option.

I meant you could create a context menu item which is there when you right-click all folders. They can be added via Settings - File Types - All Folders.

(Please link your account if you need us to work out the exact command for Windows Media Player. I don't know it off the top of my head so it'll take some digging to work it out.)

I'm still using the evaluation version, but I'm most likely going to buy once that runs out in about a week. Should I try to link my account before or after I've purchased?

Thanks leo :slight_smile:

Missing this feature since WMP 9 (?) after MS changed the way to add folder to playlist (it was possible to create a context menu entry doing the job). So if anyone knows a solution, I am "linked" :smiley:.

Ah, fair enough! You can't link your account yet in that case, but don't worry about that.

I've looked into this a bit and it's more complicated than I thought, since Windows Media Player's command-line is really limited and has no way to enqueue a folder. I think it can be done via WMP's scripting interface, but that seems rather complicated for such a simple, every-day task.

I found how the context-menu item is added in Explorer, and it's done via a mechanism which Opus can call internally but which you can't put in a button or run from a command-line, unfortunately. (Although we've been thinking of making a way to run that type of command via buttons, so that might appear one day. It's not that often that it is needed/useful, though.)

I've also looked at what would be needed to make Opus show the menus, and after some research that looks easy enough for folders where you have explicitly set that folder to be of music type... but so far I cannot work out a reliable way to make it work when only the parent folder has been set to music type, with the option turned on to have child folders inherit the type. (The way it's stored seems to be very complex and is not documented anywhere.) So I am guessing that would not be very useful since you would not want to individually mark every album as a music folder vs just marking the common parent folder.

There are some other ways we could tackle this, but they'd potentially slow-down the right-click menus for all folders, and the mechanism seems to only be used by Windows Media Player (not surprising as I don't think Microsoft documented it anywhere for others to use) so it doesn't seem worth the trade-off trade-off.

Though not what you asked for, I note that winamp can do this out of the box (play or enqueue relevant music files, whilst ignoring things such as jpgs & txt files) without any mucking about. :slight_smile:

Obviously it is a pain to switch to another program from the one you are used to, but on the plus side winamp is a far better music player with a better media library and more functionality than WMP IMO.

Almost every music player except WMP will do it. :slight_smile:

Ah, so it's a typical Microsoft "lets over complicate this thing so much that nobody can interface with it" problem.

Simplicity is irrelevant... we are Microsoft. WinAMP will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Thanks very much leo, I appreciate your efforts. I tried for 3 hours yesterday to make the damned thing work with the context thingy for all folders and yup, that got me looking at command line options for WMP, which I found to completely suck.

I'll go looking for another music player today and see if I can get that to work.

Thanks again. I'll let you know how I get on as I doubt I am the only one who has run into this problem.

Pff. Downloaded the free WinAMP.

Installed it and ran it.

I now have exactly what I wanted. Easy peasy.

Microsoft really need their heads read!!

I do the same in JRiver Media Center (awesome, by the way).

May I suggest the winamp Drone skin & evillyrics plugin to help with your winamp experience. :slight_smile: