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[Robbie 54]

I am giving JRiver a try after many years with Foobar. I have imported some playlists successfully but am having trouble altering the order in which the songs play. I have:
1 - opened the playlist in the action window.
2 - moved the songs on the list in the order I want to play them.
3 - pressed the update order button.

The songs will not play as per my list. What am I missing here?

Thank you

Rob

[blgentry]

You've probably got the playlist order set correctly.  Do the sequence numbers on the left correspond to the order of your playlist?  If so, you've done that part right.

I'm guessing that you're trying to play straight from the playlist and you haven't looked at Playing Now.  Go to Playing Now and see what's in the play queue.  That's what's going to play.  In the order shown.  It might be smart to start by clearing Playing Now.  Then right click on the playlist and select "play".  That should add all of the list to Playing Now and play it in order.

Finally, you might want to check your Shuffle settings.  Player > Shuffle > (select option) .  Shuffle Off is probably what you want.  You can always shuffle Playing Now whenever you want to.  Leaving Shuffle Off, adds everything in the order shown.  Then you can move things around manually, or shuffle playing now with <control>R (Player > Shuffle > Reshuffle).

Playing Now is your new best friend.  Get to know it and you'll have a great experience with MC.

Brian.

[Robbie 54]

Brian,

Thank you for your prompt response. I will give it a try later today.

[Neco]

I'm failing to see what the point of the "update order" button is,  if it just feeds into playing now,  which relies on the sequence order,  but doesn't update said sequence order......

[blgentry]

Update order doesn't do anything useful except in one circumstance:  When you have a playlist sorted by columns.  For example, sorted by Album.  When you do that, the sequence numbers will still correspond to the unsorted list, the way it was before you sorted by a column.  THEN when you press Update Order, it will renumber the list so that it corresponds to the current sorting order.

At least that's what I've been able to figure out.  There might be more to it.

Brian.

[glynor]

Yes. Update Order renumbers the Playlist itself.

All manual-style Playlists in MC have a special [Seq] field, which contains the sequential order of the playlist. When you drag-drop files around in the Playlist, this number automatically updates to match the new order.  However, when you do other sortings on the list, it does not automatically update the [Seq] order, such as:
* Using the column headers
* Shuffle command (in the header or right-click menu)
* Adding search commands to the search box (we'll come back to this last one in a bit).

These changes are "temporary". If you refresh the view, the tracks go back to their original order (and all of the originals are still included, in the case of a search. This lets you filter lists to find things without impacting the [Seq] order. So you can quickly find the particular track you want by searching or sorting a column, for example, so you can do something with it, without impacting the order of the list.

So, what the Update Order button does is extremely simple: It re-writes the [Seq] column sequentially starting at 1 for the first file currently visible in the view, and on up from there. It makes the visible order, at that moment, the "saved playlist" order.

As Brian mentioned, a simple example is to sort the view of the Playlist using the column headers, and then click Update Order to refill the [Seq]. But there are more things you can do. When you click Update Order, it makes the current iteration of the list as shown right there in that panel become the new list. This includes additions and removals of files. So, with the search box, if you add an ~expand modifier and some other cleverness, you can expand and contract "seed lists" on the fly (without having to build a permanent Smartlist) and then "save the changes" with the Update Order button, when you get it how you want.

It's handy here and there.

[glynor]

if it just feeds into playing now,  which relies on the sequence order,  but doesn't update said sequence order......

Playing Now is only refreshed when you do something to refresh it, typically by playing something new.

Playing Now is the Playlist that will play. Always. When you "play" one of your stored playlists, MC (by default):

* Clears the current Playing Now list (and saves it to Recent Playing Now's)
* Fills the Playing Now list with a snapshot of the set of files "played" (order is preserved, including files above and below the current selection)
* Begins playback with the selected track

This same logic applies to any view of files that you "play" from within MC (whether a Playlist, Smartlist, or Media View). As I said, it is a snapshot in time of what was visible on screen at the moment you "played" it. You can change the order by moving, filtering, sorting, and altering the Playing Now List. But the original source view that "sent" the files to Playing Now no longer has any bearing on the playback order.

As I said above, this is the default behavior of MC. You can alter the behavior of Playback under Tools > Options > General > Behavior > Double Click in a number of ways, but the core point remains that Playing Now is the list that will play, however it gets built.

That's good though! It frees you in a number of ways. You can still alter playback order "on the fly" (and use a number of different source lists to do it) but you do not have to change any source list to do it. You can, of course, at any time take all or a portion of the current Playing Now and Send To > Playlist to save it as permanent list. In fact, it automatically saves all iterations of Playing Now for you whenever you clear the list by playing something new (in the Recent Playing Now's group under Playlists). If you want to save one of these, you can just drag it out of the Recent Playing Now's folder and drop it somewhere else in Playlists.

You may find it handy to split the Media Center interface (View > Split View > Show 2 Views). You can keep the Playing Now list open (in a narrower pane on the right, for example) and work to edit it by drag-dropping to it from the larger "full Library" view of Media Center on the left.

[Robbie 54]

Thanks to everyone for their insight. I think I have it sorted (pun intended).

Rob