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drumlin
Channel Surfer

Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

I am using Roku Media Player to access music I have on a Linux (Fedora) desktop running Serviio media server software.

I don't have problems playing the music, but I have an issue with the playlists I create.

I can play the music on the playlists, however the order accessed by the Roku Media Player seems random.

It is not the order I have in the playlist.

I have cover art embedded in all the files, and what I see in the Roku Media Player display is this art work.

But like I said, there seems to be some other random order.

How can I play this in the order in the playlist.

I am not sure if this is a general issue with Roku Media Player since I label my song titles by order on the album.

All music we currently have are ripped from CD's we own.

So for playing an album, we bypass this issue since the names begin with a numeric character followed by the song title.

But I am guessing the order on the album would still be an issue had I named the songs only by title.

Can this problem be fixed?

Thanks!

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19 REPLIES 19
jmcdlc
Newbie

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

I have the same problem and was searching for an answer when I came upon your question.  I see no responses posted.  Did you ever find a solution?

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jmcdlc
Newbie

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

While in media player choose the options (*) button

choose sort

options are A-Z, Z-A, and DEFAULT

choose DEFAULT

This solved my problem and may solve yours.  Good Luck.

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drumlin
Channel Surfer

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

Thank you for the suggestion, but I have tried this (I saw this suggestion somewhere else), but it did not work. A-Z or Z-A is an alphabetic sort, and default is random. I will post a little more to my original entry.

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drumlin
Channel Surfer

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

I am a little surprised that not only is this not seen by other people, but I have not seen a response other than an obvious options setting.

I will provide a little more detail as to what I am seeing.

First, we have a Roku Streaming Stick purchased about four years ago.

The directory structure on the Fedora server I have is the following:

MultiMedia
├── Music
│   ├── Albums
│   │   ├── <Genre>
│   │   │   ├── <Artist>
│   │   │   │   └── <Album Title>
│   │   │   │   ├── <Song Title>.flac

I used whipper to rip the CD's and this creates not only the music files (flac format) but also an album playlist in the <Album Title> subdirectory. What is interesting is that the order of the songs that appear in the Roku Media Player from these playlists that sit in the same directory as these music files is correct. What is random is when I create my own playlist.

What I am showing below are three different simple playlist examples, and the order that the songs appear in the Media Player:

Playlist 1:

#EXTM3U
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Pop/The Motels/Little Robbers/Where Do We Go From Here.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/Electric Light Orchestra/All Over the World - The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra/Strange Magic.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/The Doobie Brothers/The Very Best of The Doobie Brothers (Disc 1 of 2)/Listen to the Music.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/The Doobie Brothers/The Very Best of The Doobie Brothers (Disc 2 of 2)/Dangerous.flac

Order the songs appear:

 

Listen to the Music, Where Do We Go From Here, Dangerous., Strange Magic

 

Playlist # 2:

 

#EXTM3U
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/The Doobie Brothers/The Very Best of The Doobie Brothers (Disc 1 of 2)/Listen to the Music.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Pop/The Motels/Little Robbers/Where Do We Go From Here.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/Electric Light Orchestra/All Over the World - The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra/Strange Magic.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/The Doobie Brothers/The Very Best of The Doobie Brothers (Disc 2 of 2)/Dangerous.flac

 

Order of songs on Media Player:

Where Do We Go From Here, Listen to the Music, Dangerous, Strange Magic

 

Playlist # 3:

 

#EXTM3U
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/The Doobie Brothers/The Very Best of The Doobie Brothers (Disc 2 of 2)/Minute by Minute.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Pop/The Motels/Little Robbers/Footsteps.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/The Doobie Brothers/The Very Best of The Doobie Brothers (Disc 1 of 2)/China Grove.flac
/MultiMedia/Music/Albums/Rock/Electric Light Orchestra/All Over the World - The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra/Confusion.flac

 

Order of songs on Media Player:

 

Minute by Minute, China Grove., Confusion., Footsteps

 

I don't see any rhyme or reason with respect to the order of songs as related to the playlist. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Thanks!

 

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Ollio2
Streaming Star

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

The DEFAULT setting in the Roku menu displays the files in the order they're written in the list and A-Z alphabetizes the list. I'm looking for a way to force DEFAULT or A-Z with a command in the m3u file.

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drumlin
Channel Surfer

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

I think that this problem I am seeing is not an issue with Roku Media Player.

I am using serviio (on linux) as a DLNA server.

When using Emby, I don't have this problem - the songs appear as in the Playlist.

With Serviio - I get the random-like order.

I can't say I know why Serviio is doing this, but I am guessing the problem is with that piece of software.

Thanks!

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Ollio2
Streaming Star

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

Do a test like you posted, but this time, show the results with the Roku set for DEFAULT, and the results from A-Z.

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drumlin
Channel Surfer

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

Thank you for the suggestion - however, in scanning the web, this was suggested in a number of places, so it is one of the first things I tried.

Unfortunately, changing from default to A-Z did not matter - the songs were out of order.

I think the results I should were for a default setting.

As I mentioned, I am thinking now that the problem is not with Roku Media Player but on the server end.

Thanks!

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CKlemow
Newbie

Re: Roku Media Player Playlist Songs out of order

The problem is indeed with how the Roku Media Player interprets the playlist. So far as I can tell, the Roku sorts the songs in a playlist based on the TRACK NUMBER in each song file's metadata. So if a song is track 1 on the album it's from, it's among those played first (along with all the other track 1s in the playlist). Then it moves on to the track 2s, and so forth. (If there's any rhyme or reason to the subsorting after that when there are multiple songs with the same track number, I can't figure it out, but the track number is definitely the primary sort variable.)

The Roku Media Player's "default" sort is all about metadata (with a few other rules like ignoring "The" at the beginnings of names and titles), and it needs to be smarter about playlists.

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