Open Source Media Player for Customized playlists using Thousands of Short Audio Snippets?

June 14, 2007 6:45 PM

I'm looking for an open source MP3 (or OGG) player for creation of educational listening drills. Must be portable, and flexible for creation, editing, burning of playlists and queues -- details on its use in here...

The MP3 (or OGG) player must have/be:
-Portable, can be distributed and run from CD without installation
-Simple, user-friendly interface
-Very flexible playlist/queue creation
-Preferably, have the ability to burn playlists to CD or sync to portable device

I'm creating a listening drill CD for a music class. The CD will have literally thousands of audio snippets, most only 3-5 seconds long. These will be divided into several folders, subfolders, and sub-subfolders, based on category.

-I would like students to be able to quickly select any combination of folders/categories and create a custom queue for shuffling
-I would like students to be able to save these queues as custom playlists.
-IDEALLY I'd like them to easily burn their custom playlists to CD (or sync to their mp3 player) so that they can practice their listening "on the road"

I would like this to be user friendly for students with little computer experience.

Any recommendations on an open source media player that will fit these requirements?

Thanks

posted by Alabaster to education (3 comments total)

Original Poster Here with an update (is there an "edit post" function?)

It just occurred to me, I would prefer a media player that functions in multiple platforms so it is accessible to all students. That said, my school system uses WinXP, so I will favor this if I have to choose.
posted by Alabaster at 6:49 PM on June 14, 2007

"-Portable, can be distributed and run from CD without installation
-Simple, user-friendly interface
-Very flexible playlist/queue creation"

These you're going to find fairly easily in a cross-platform product such as VLC

"-Preferably, have the ability to burn playlists to CD or sync to portable device"

This is rather unlikely in a cross-platform product, simply because the means to do so varies massively between portable devices, platforms, burners, and low level IDE interfaces.

Having said that, if your students are going to have access to a burner to use the software you're distributing on the CDROM, there's a fair chance the computer with a burner will have some kind of software to run it.
posted by majick at 10:09 PM on June 14, 2007

(And likely if they have access to a portable audio device, they're already using something to sync it.)
posted by majick at 10:10 PM on June 14, 2007