How to play a folders worth of music/video in VLC media player

audiocommand linevideovlc-media-player

In VLC media player, I can use vlc -LZ <file 1> <file 2> <file 3> for example to play various files on repeat and shuffled. Is it possible to specify a whole directory and play all the music within the folder and it's subfolders?

Say I am hosting a party and have a folder with "Party Music", how would I play all the music from that folder in a loop and repeating the whole playlist?

Best Answer

By commandline, with recent versions, it should work with your command options and the name of the directory(ies) instead of the files:

vlc --LZ  "Party Music"

If your path includes spaces you need to include it between "".
Only if you modified the default options you may need to add also --playlist-autostart.
The option --playlist-tree only shows the playlist as a tree. Enable if you want.
If you are not in the parent directory of "Party Music" you have to specify the whole path, complinat with your operating system (e.g. "C:\Music\Party Music" or "~/Music/All Music/Party Music" or /media/user/usb/Party Music).

Note:
VLC usually remembers the last setting you decided. If you run from commandline (or with a link built for this purpose) it will overcome the usual behaviour following the prescription specified by the options without changing it. If instead you will change some setting during its run it will remember the next time.

From vlc --help

-L, --loop, --no-loop        Repeat all                      (default disabled)
-Z, --random, --no-random    Play files randomly forever     (default disabled)
                             VLC will randomly play files in the playlist 
                             until  interrupted.             (default disabled)
--playlist-autostart, --no-playlist-autostart
                             Auto start                      (default enabled)
--playlist-tree, --no-playlist-tree
                             Display playlist tree           (default disabled)

Tested on VLC media player 2.1.6 Rincewind on Ubuntu, but it should work on precedent versions and for different operating systems too.

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