"Keep Tracks in Sequence When Shuffling" for a Shuffled Playlist

[lamensterms]

Hey,

I've done a bit of searching and found a few questions similar to what I'm asking... but not quite the same purpose.

I make playlists to burn CDs (yep... still burning CDs to listen to in the car  )

I usually build the playlist manually, and then shuffle the list once or twice before burning the CD.  Right click list > List > Suffle List, then Update Play Order to cement the shuffled order, then burn.

After having shuffled the list, I would like the 'linked tracks' to stay in their linked sequence.  But after shuffling the playlist, I can see that the linked tracks have been shuffled in with the rest of the playlist.

Does anyone know how to do what I'm attempting?  Or any better workflow?

Thanks for any help

[psychoadept]

If you use an auto playlist, you can choose to shuffle by various fields. You can manually add tracks to an auto playlist host like your would a static one, it just doesn't necessarily keep them in the order you added. Or you can point the auto playlist at your static playlist as a source.

I use an auto playlist shuffled by work for syncing, for instance.

[lamensterms]

Hi psychoadept,

Thanks a lot for the reply and suggestion.  I like the idea of using the auto playlist, and shuffling that..but could you please explain how to get the auto playlist to shuffle and also keep the linked tracks together?

I've generated the auto playlist, with my 'Burn' playlist as a source, which worked fine.  But I can't figure out how to shuffle the list and keep linked tracks together.

Thanks again.

---EDIT---

I should add... I have selected "Shuffle: Random" in the playlist settings.. but still doesn't quite work.

---EDIT---

Ummm... doofus move, I had picked 'Artist' column to sort by, rather than the playlist order.  Working now! Thanks a lot for the help psychoadept!

---EDIT---

I've reliased that I am able to link tracks by using the 'Grouping' tag.. but not the "Keep Tracks in Sequence When Shuffling" check box.

[frankz]

I've reliased that I am able to link tracks by using the 'Grouping' tag.. but not the "Keep Tracks in Sequence When Shuffling" check box.

Keep tracks in sequence when shuffling does exactly what you want.  You have to set it to "Yes."  The check box just indicates that the setting should be updated, but if you're not changing it from No to Yes it's just being "updated" from No to No again.  

In other words, checking the box without changing the drop-down doesn't do anything.

[lamensterms]

Hey frankz,

Thanks for the reply.

I do understand what you're saying, and I should have been clearer in my post.  In my very brief testing.. setting "Keep tracks in sequence when shuffling" to yes (and checking the box) doesn't seem to work when shuffling an auto playlist.  It didn't work during my testing because I had contradicting settings in my auto playlist.

I haven't confirmed my theory... by my initial assumption was:
Keep tracks in sequence when shuffling - keeps tracks in sequence when using shuffle playback
Grouping tag - allows tracks to be linked when force shuffling

Happy to be corrected on the above, just my uneducated understanding of the features

[psychoadept]

If it helps, here's my auto-playlist settings:




The "keep tracks in sequence while shuffling" setting should be respected at the same time, but I would strongly recommend using something like work or grouping instead, for ease of maintenance. The keep tracks in sequence setting provides no way of checking on which tracks are grouped or not.

Grouping tag - allows tracks to be linked when force shuffling

The grouping tag is just a tag, but yes, in this context it can be used to keep tracks together. Work, in this context, is a little more sensitive because it's actually more like "select by Album and Work". So if you have 3 different albums with Beethoven's 5th Symphony, you don't get all three at once just because they all have the same Work tag. (Album may be applied with grouping, too, I'm not sure.) BTW, to access the work tag you have to click the arrows next to a track title in the tag editor. That activates a sort of classical mode.

[lamensterms]

Thanks guys.

It looks like I have confused myself more than I needed to.

The reason my grouping tags work for this exercise is because I had set 'Select by: Grouping' in auto playlist settings.  As frankz pointed out... "Keep tracks in sequence when shuffling" will do exactly what I need, if I set auto playlist setting to 'Select by: Track'.  Skinning a cat of course.

I'm struggling a little to wrap my head around the 'work' concept and how that differs from assigning a 'Grouping' tag.  Could you please give examples of how 'work' and 'grouping'  serve different purposes?  I think I understand how they could serve the same purpose, but can't see what sets them apart.

Thanks again guys

[psychoadept]

I'm struggling a little to wrap my head around the 'work' concept and how that differs from assigning a 'Grouping' tag.  Could you please give examples of how 'work' and 'grouping'  serve different purposes?  I think I understand how they could serve the same purpose, but can't see what sets them apart.

Grouping is a tag that in practice isn't well-defined and gets put to lots of different uses. I use it for disc names or otherwise defined sections within an album (bonus tracks on a re-issued album, for instance), but you could do something completely different with it and no one would find that out of the ordinary.

Work means the piece of music being performed. Most music has a work associated with it, but in terms of tagging it mainly matters for classical music, where you're more likely to get one work spread out over multiple tracks. But work is often what someone is concerned with when they want to play tracks together, because the idea is "these are all part of a larger whole."

[lamensterms]

Thanks psychoadept.

Looks like a 'work' is exactly what I am thinking about when referring to linking tracks!

Thanks again for your help