I was thrilled when Plexamp on Android got repeat functionality and I felt like it worked well for a while. Now I notice the following … A playlist (smart or manual) containing one or two songs will not repeat no matter what but playlists with three or more songs repeat as expected. This seems like a bug or is it just me? I have only tested this on Plexamp for Android.
This is somewhat of a big deal for me as I have smart playlists that contain the songs I’ve added to my library within the past week/month/year and sometimes they have just one or two songs. In this circumstance Plexamp won’t repeat … and if I can’t repeat listen I can’t get the ear worm out of my ear and that adds insult to injury!
So a bit of an update on this … After I posted I tried to repro on a fresh Plex install and couldn’t repro the two song playlist oddity. I had some time over the holidays and I played with it some more. I believe there are two separate oddities - one oddity is causing problems for single song playlists and another for playlists with two songs. (I don’t believe either oddity is prevalent on playlists with more than two songs.) My focus has been on two song playlists, primarily because I have a workaround for single song playlists (repeat one versus repeat all). One thing I’ll say about the single song playlist problem - it seems like it’s a very easy problem to repro, just create a single song playlist and try to ‘repeat all’ it in Plexamp - it won’t repeat in repeat all mode (it just stops playing) - though it will repeat in repeat one mode.
So for the two song playlist oddity I think this is what’s happening. Basically if you modify any MP3 file in your library (the metadata in the MP3 file itself (not within Plex - in File Explorer)) - that will (eventually) cause the problem. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the MP3 file is in the playlist or not - in fact in my tests - it’s not in the playlist. There’s something else though that has to happen. Merely changing the MP3 won’t immediately yield the result nor will following that up with a scan, metadata refresh, analyze, restart, etc. I believe the “something else” happens as part of Plex’s scheduled tasks and once they run the problem shows up. Usually the first two songs play but after that it gets wonky. The third song may play with the other song’s info on screen and then by the fourth play - well it doesn’t play what should be the fourth time - instead on screen it looks like it’s playing - and repeating but it’s not. In this state you can’t pause it either - it just keeps wigging out until you Force Stop Plexamp in settings. I’ve reproduced this using Plexamp for Android and Windows. I can’t figure out how to run Plex’s scheduled tasks at will, which makes troubleshooting this a bit harder, but at this point I’m pretty sure these are the steps to reproduce this problem : modify an MP3 file in your library, allow scheduled tasks to run, play a two song playlist on repeat all mode in Plexamp.
I can tell there is the potential for a coding thing here because I was looking in the media_parts table and there’s a hash column. The hash column does not change after the MP3 is edited and I believe this is part of the root of the problem. A scan doesn’t update the hash, neither does the metadata download, analyze, etc. The only way to update the hash column is to go through the motions of “moving” your library to a new location (stop Plex, move your data somewhere else (or make Plex think it’s moved) and then start Plex, add a new folder to the library, rescan). After that there’s a new instance of this file in media_parts with a new hash and a new corresponding record in media_items which spawns a new metadata_items row but since that row gets the same GUID there is no new row added to metadata_item_settings so most of Plex’s metadata on the file is preserved - it’s mostly the original added_at that is lost. Going through this library move process does seem to fix the Plexamp problem - at the expense of losing your added_at data. (Gulp I then fix the added_at problem by manually editing the database.)
For me - I can’t stand the added_at column being updated as my smart playlists key off these fields and it messes them all up. Perhaps this wouldn’t be considered a significant issue - maybe some of it is even by design. However I doubt that editing an MP3 file manually should result in two song playlists wigging out (if you’re lucky enough to repro this behavior it’s kind of funny to watch, especially if you use five second test MP3 files - Plexamp is rather hilarious to watch in such a scenario).
(All of the stuff about the cargo cutting would almost certainly be unnecessary with an open source solution like Jelly or Emby as I would have just cloned it, fixed it and maybe done a PR. )
I have a loT of music and I want…WANT SO DESPERATELY to be able to say ‘PLEX is the best music compiler and program out there!’ But I can’t. And why is that? Two simple things holding back those accolades…THE REPEAT BUTTON and AUTO SHUFFLE PLAY!!! When someone wants to play a complete discography without having to make a playlist for it, there should be an option before playing where it says ‘you want to start as a shuffle, or start at the first song of the first album’ SIMPLE!!! and the biggest problem, the grandaddy of them all, which should NOT BE AN ISSUE to begin with…is that dang blasted repeat button…THAT DOESN’T EVEN WORK! I get the music playing and I run a test, I go to the last song and fast forward to the end with repeat on to see what happens when it reaches the end of the song and once it does…it just stops…nothing else, doesn’t go back to the first track of the playlist. CAN THIS BE FIXED??? On the web browser this is NOT an issue!!! Make that so with PLEXAMP PLEASE!!!
instead of just ranting, open a new forum thread with details on the issues you’re running into. there’s aren’t any known issues with repeat now, so you’re going to have to be specific and post a log so we can see what’s going on.
auto play moves through an artist’s main discography to avoid repetition associated with including singles, EPs, live albums etc. we may make it a setting in the future to just travel through every single album.
That’s basically what I am trying to do. Example I have 9 albums with over 50 songs on each All by the same artist. I go to their section, and click play. Then it pops up with automatic shuffle instead of track 1 from the 1st album. I then set repeat and click on track one and it will start playing through, one at a time. That is good, it’s chugging along. I then went all the way down to the last track to see what happens and instead of going back to album 1 track 1, it just stops. I also tried this with just 1 album, played track 1, put on repeat, end of last track, doesn’t go back to the beginning. Confused! Why is repeat not well…repeating??
In the time since my last post the Plexamp repeat problems have only gotten worse.
The single song repeat problem seems a little better and I’m grateful they paid enough attention to even mention it as being fixed in the change log and Play store; but problems remain. It seems like Plexamp remembers your last repeat status across playlists and so if you come into a single song playlist it’s possible it looks like repeat is turned on but then it doesn’t repeat. This literally just happened to me. To fix it I togged repeat off then back on and it did repeat. So is it fixed? Maybe - I’ve seen Plexamp incorrectly reflect the repeat mode status before and consider it to be part of the larger problem with repeat just not working.
The two song repeat problem still seems to exist but the fix I describe above doesn’t work anymore.
Provide details on the issues? I did and got chastised for it. So there’s that.
Do … Loops are kind of like the easiest thing you can do in computers - actually the very first computer program I ever wrote was essentially a Do … Loop - I’m not sure why it’s so hard. Maybe it’s the random option I like to select, I know random numbers are a surprisingly difficult problem for computers to solve.
Oh well. I do still love Plex and Plexamp and consider my lifetime Plex pass to be money very well spent. I can live with the bugs and do appreciate the efforts made to address repeat issues.
As I mentioned, please post debug logs along with a description. Without them it’s much harder for us to try to figure out what’s going on. For example, go to the end of the play queue and then hit next, and if it doesn’t repeat, get logs right then and upload. Thanks!
You didn’t get chastised, and I’m sorry you feel that way. I just pointed out (with a smile) that the issues were unrelated to the database. You’ve also not provided logs, which would be very helpful for us to diagnose any remaining issues.
Logs are next to gold, especially when provided with context - “i just had this weird thing happen, and captured logs right away. here’s what i did, and here are logs”
So, I was tinkering around with is and I just spammed add to queue. Seems to be repeating everything as I want I guess until the queue runs out. Was kind of hoping just hitting the repeat would do the trick, but this will work. the whole playlist is a 46 hour playlist anyways, lol.
Thank you! Like any software product - Plex isn’t bug free - but I have found support to be better than some of the biggest tech companies. I will get to testing as soon as I can.
Incidentally I don’t mind sharing why this odd request matters. I have smart playlists that include songs I’ve added in the past X days. These songs are like ear worms just stuck in my head and I’ve found the only way to get them out is to play them relentlessly, over and over again. So in my case the playlists I listen to most frequently are the playlists that just have the one or two songs I’ve added recently. It’s nice to just have Bluetooth automatically start playing Plexamp in the car and have Plexamp play whatever I’ve been listening to on repeat. It’s not so nice when Plexamp stops and let’s the ear worm make itself at home.
Incidentally, to test this I have static playlists with the shortest tracks in my library - they are Vanilla Ice’s Yo Vanilla track off the To The Extreme album and Ladies & Gentleman off the Private Parts soundtrack. Feel free to chastize me over those song choices.
Well, I don’t know about your childhood but I remember my fingers being pretty sore after touching the rewind and fast forward buttons so many times on my cassette players just to hear a song again and then being upset that I rewound or fast forwarded too much that I’d skip my favorite song entirely.
The solution to all of that was create an entire cassette with the same song or the same few songs over and over. Repeat for dayyyyyyys.
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