The file "MediaPlayer Current Playlist" can result in an error of MediaPlayer

[Giova84]

When i open MediaPlayer, it try to open the last played file (for example on a not mounted disk) and appears this error message:

~ The file " could not be opened. Error: General system error ~

I have noticed that if i delete the file "MediaPlayer Current Playlist" located inside /boot/home/config/settings, this error no longer appears. I think that this file could be permanently removed.

This ticket is related to: https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/8178

[Giova84]

Note: if the file "MediaPlayer Current Playlist" is deleted, MediaPlayer still play automatically media files, and this is ok without the annoying "play previous file".

[axeld]

You mean it manages to restore the complete playlist without this file?

[Giova84]

Hi Axel,

This file should be related by a new option like "restore previous playlist" and not by "automatically start playing". By default any Multimedia Player start automatically playing, and is ok. And if a user want to restore the previous played file or an entire playlist, this should be an option, a feature, not the default. And i've said, if we play mp3 files from an USB key, and than is no longer present, MediaPlayer will try to open it again at the next startup, with an error message. If i deselect "automatically start playing", the "MediaPlayer Current Playlist" file (which contains all previous played files) is still created but mediaplayer stops to play previous files at every startup, there will no longer possible errors, but i lost a default behaviour (autoplay).

Do you understand my arguments?

[axeld]

Yes, but I disagree :-)

You can already start MediaPlayer with a single file or even an album, and it will forget about the last playlist. Haiku applications should generally store their current state on close, and restore it on startup, and it makes sense for MediaPlayer to behave the way it does now.

But it certainly could silently ignore missing files in the playlist.

[Giova84]

Replying to axeld:

But it certainly could silently ignore missing files in the playlist.

Ok, we have reached an agreement! :-) Let's see if the owner of this ticket can do something about!

Best regards.

[Freeman]

System: Haiku R1Alpha4-44702 on Virtualbox v4.2.4r81684 Windows Ultimate x64. CPU: i5 3570k 3.4 ghz ( 1 Cpu allocated to Haiku) Ram: 4gb ddr3 (2gb allocated to Haiku) Video memory: 8mb allocated to Haiku . Acceleration not enabled in Virtualbox

Bug still present. I played a file, closed the player, then deleted the file. Mediaplayer does not start, and deleting current playlist had no effect. Trying to access Mediaplayer without an argument did not start the application. The only way for me to get mediaplayer to start again was to open a file.

[diver]

(In #11380) Indeed.

[dsuden]

Since the default playlist throws an error when you open MediaPlayer, why not just eliminate the mediaplayer playlist file from settings in the default distribution of Haiku? Makes more sense to me to just have MediaPlayer open clean for a first-time user rather than introducing people to their Haiku OS experience with an odd error in the MediaPlayer?

[pulkomandy]

Uh? There is no default playlist in Haiku. The playlist is saved when you quit the application, which I think is great: I often reboot my computer for whatever reason, and when I restart MediaPlayer after that it just resumes from where it started.

We should just improve the error message to tell the user which file is missing instead of "general system error". Then it would be clear that "oh right, I was playing files from that drive last time I used the app and it's trying to resume that", instead of a confusing error which seems to come for no reason.

When you start MediaPlayer for the first time, it just opens its UI and does nothing, and waits for you to load a file.

[vidrep]

Maybe add an option to resume playback of current playlist. The autoplay feature can get really annoying when the last played file crashes MP, or has been moved or deleted. Sometimes the last file played was a stream, which in some cases causes other issues.

[leavengood]

What do we feel is the correct behavior here? I mean certainly we should not crash if a file is missing in the playlist, but then should we keep trying for each file in the playlist, or just dump the whole playlist? I feel like this latter behavior is better because what if the playlist is big and full of all files which are not present, and MediaPlayer spends 30 seconds finding out they are all bad?

[humdinger]

Does checking the existence of files - even in a huge playlist - really take that long?

IMO it'd be best to check all files in a playlist (in a separate thread if sensible) and start playing the first found. Missing files should be marked in the playlist by being greyed out (like missing downloads in Web+) and are ignored in the normal playing business.
The "Edit" menu in the playlist window should get another item "Remove missing files". Then the user can decide, if he'd like to adjust the playlist, or keep as is, in case the missing files make a comeback (by mounting some USB stick, for example).

[pulkomandy]

I would just stop MediaPlayer without an error message and let the user investigate. Removing items from the playlist is destructive, maybe one had spent hours finetuning that playlist and does not want it to be destroyed.

Let the user investigate and decide if they want to fix the playlist (replace the missing file, mount the missing drive, whatever) or start playing something else.

[diver]

IIRC Winamp did exactly what humdinger suggested -- it started playing first found file in the playlist while walking through the list marking missing files.