robots are taking over

June 21, 2006 8:15 AM

media players (on winxp) play automatically when you populate the playlist window - help me stop them from doing so! I dont want them to play until I hit the play button. Am I the only one who wants this?

I'm experiencing a very frustrating problem. WHen I select mp3 songs from my 'library' (in ANY media player, take windows media player for instance), and drag them to the playlist window, the player pounces on it and starts playing the darned song immediately.
I dont want it to.
Some media players (like Zinf) have an option that explicitly says "dont play automatically". I tried setting it, and it made NO difference.
Most media players dont even have the option.

How can I stop the gosh-darned media player(s) from automatically playing the playlist while I'm still god-darned populating it?

Does anyone know of a media player that is polite and well behaved enough to allow the user to finish the process of populating the play list before pouncing on it to play it?

and - Am I the only one on earth who finds this annoying?

posted by jak68 to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Winamp has a queue by default setting... I just tested it, and it didn't play my MP3s when I dropped them on the playlist window.
posted by Malor at 8:20 AM on June 21, 2006

Foobar2000 definitely doesn't exhibit this behavior. If you put things in the playlist, they sit there until you hit play.
posted by fake at 8:37 AM on June 21, 2006

I think every reasonably configurable media player has an option to select the OnClick default behaviour for files in your library in relation to your playlist and/or Playing Now. You just have to dig a little in the preferences. Just off the top of my head, in Media Center I can choose:

DoubleClick:
Replace Playing Now (Single)
Replace Playing Now (All)
Add To Playing Now (to End)
Add To Playing Now (Pay Now) **my default**
Add To Playing Now (Play Next)
File Properties

A good media player will also have a range of selectable behaviours for such things as:
Jump On Play (change screens, show playlist, etc)
Play Button (play one, play all, act as double-click, single-click, etc)
Single-Click (etc etc)
Option-Click (etc etc)
posted by meehawl at 9:25 AM on June 21, 2006

Thanks all; I've solved the problem by installing winamp. (i've gone thru nearly every media player out there, for some reason I've been avoiding winamp). I havent tried fubar2000 yet either.
I dont have Media center, but in WMP 9, I tried setting the doubleclick behaviour (setting it to "add to playing now") but it just ignored me. Clearly I was missing something, but it really wasnt obvious and I was frustrated as heck by then... ;)
thanks all.
posted by jak68 at 9:38 AM on June 21, 2006

incidentally, winamp seems to be NEARLY perfect - it does have on annoyance (the kind that you just dont understand why they left out this feature that everyone else in the universe has) - and that is the ability to automatically clear the playlist when you first launch the application.
Maybe the pro version has it, but the 'full' free version does not! Go figure.
posted by jak68 at 9:40 AM on June 21, 2006

If you open the application by selecting a file and using the context menu to pick "Play in winamp" then it clears the playlist and adds the 1 file.
posted by Four Flavors at 11:09 AM on June 21, 2006