Playing Now is both simple and a bit hard to describe.
The simple part: Playing Now is just a list of files you want to play. Add files to it and they get played, in order. If you are on #39, #40 gets played next. Drag stuff up and down. Add to it. Subtract files from it. It just plays in order. Press pause and it pauses. Play and it plays. Restart playback from any track by double clicking that track. Now it plays from that track on down, in order. Simple.
Shuffling: MC has a shuffle mode. It adds files to Playing Now in a random order. They are played in order. In the list from the top to the bottom. But they are put into the list in random order. I find this a little confusing because I can't always tell what will happen when I *add* files to this list.
There's another way that I really like: Add whatever you want to Playing Now. A song or two. An album or two or three or more. They all appear in Playing Now in a linear order. But I want them shuffled! So I press control-R. Or select Player > Shuffle > Reshuffle. That takes everything in Playing Now and puts it into random order. Exactly what I want. I can then rearrange selectively if I want to. Delete files selectively if I chose. ...and it plays in this one time randomized order.
You can also reshuffle only the remaining songs. So that the ones you already listened to (up above in Playing Now) don't get mixed back in . Player > Shuffle > reshuffle remaining
Now your idea of "listening to a folder", shuffling, unshufflling, and then back to the original shuffled order... I don't think this is easily possible. If you can describe what you are trying to do, we might have a way for you to do it. The way this is described, I'm not sure why you would do this, or what it would do for you.
I hope this helps some. Playing Now is really awesome. If you spend a little time with it, I think you'll get comfortable with it and the neat things it lets you do.
Ok, one neat thing just to show you...
Say you added all files in a folder to Playing Now and you did reshuffle (control-R) to randomize them. You listen for a while, and a Metallica song comes on. You're REALLY not in the mood for Metallica so you press "next". Then you realize there are 20 Metallica songs in this folder and now they are all mixed in randomly. What to do??
Leave everything as it is. Keep the current song playing. Now go to the search box at the upper right and start typing: Metallica . This will search only Playing Now and show you all the Metallica songs. Now you go down to this filtered list, highlight all, and press delete. *Poof* they disappear from Playing Now. Erase your search and your Playing Now is still going, in the exact same shuffled order. Except that now all the Metallica songs are not in Playing Now any more. You smile and admire the design of MC and Playing Now.
Take care,
Brian.
