What? No enqueue feature?

[Slofe]

I really am baffled as to why this feature isn't in MM. It's the most simplest of things and it should've been included from day 1.

So I have a playlist going with a few thousand songs in it, my friend comes along and finds a song he likes, he double clicks it and the monkey lines it up to play next, all well and good. Before my friend's song gets to play my other friend comes along and finds a song he likes, he double clicks it, but now what Media Monkey does is queue his song up next to play and pushes my first friend's song further down the list. On and on it goes.

Now I could just drag and drop a song into the playlist but because there's a few thousand songs in it, it's a pain in the ass to scroll up and down the list to find the exact location to drop the song in, it's even worse when you're drunk.

I could also just click play last but because there's a few thousand tracks in the play list my friends and I would have to stay awake until next tuesday to hear the chosen songs.

Do you see what i'm getting at? Any chance of this enqueue feature being added? Media Monkey's got tons of useful bells and whistles, I dropped winamp after years of use to try this programe out. I've been really happy with it until I discovered this one, painfully obvious feature has been dropped. Please include it, thanks.

[Dreadlau]

Wow.
I couldn't have said it better. I've been so many times in this situation.

But: What is your solution exactly? I'm not sure I understand. Would the "enqueue feature" be a 4th option (In addition to play now, play next, play last)?
And if so how would that work? Would it have to remember the last track(s) that have been added to the now playing list. So that it can place the new one(s) right after them?

[Mizery_Made]

Perhaps instead of queueing up thousands of tracks to begin with, you could use the Auto-DJ feature, and then have it queue up say... three tracks. Then, set the double click option to Play Last. Then, it'll be dropped to the sixth position in the now playing list. Another friend adds something? It becomes seventh, etc. and MM will work it's way there in a more timely fashion (given Auto-DJ queuing up the tracks instead of you working from a thousand song playlist to begin with) and one friend doesn't push anothers' song down (unless intentionally, by dragging their song in front of the other).

[trixmoto]

I have always wondered the same as Dreadlau, as a software developer by trade my thoughts always go to how I would implement a feature. Presumably you'd want a pointer on the current track, then when you enqueue you add the track after that and move the pointer to the new track. But when the next track starts playing, if you've added say 3 tracks, does the pointer remain in place or move to the currently playing track?

I think this feature could be scripted with a toolbar button to "enqueue", but I'd need more details about the expected behaviour before I attempted it.

[Cruiser]

You could have a "play as number___"
But I wonder, is it really necessary?
What I do, is adding the songs via "play last". When I am done, I go to the No playing node in the Music Explorer three, and move the songs added to the wanted position in the No Playing list. Or I can use play lists for the same purpose.

[MusicBringer]

I see where you are coming from but it has never been an issue with me.
I use a feature called Draggon Drop
I use my mouse to drag the track over to a certain place in the Now Playing.

[Cruiser]

Feeling like the king of the hill now, are you?
The best way chosen for this will depend on how your windows are organized, in daily use, which is different for each of us.
Also how much you need to reorganize the Now Playing list for different audiences will also vary between us.

[HlfOrange]

Why not copy Winamps implementation of Enqueue?
Right click any music file and have it there as an option - "Enqueue in Mediamonkey".
I believe it means adding the option to Explorer using the registry for
the appropriate key under the shellex\ContextMenuHandlers key in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for file type "*"

[Slofe]

Perhaps instead of queueing up thousands of tracks to begin with, you could use the Auto-DJ feature, and then have it queue up say... three tracks. Then, set the double click option to Play Last. Then, it'll be dropped to the sixth position in the now playing list. Another friend adds something? It becomes seventh, etc. and MM will work it's way there in a more timely fashion (given Auto-DJ queuing up the tracks instead of you working from a thousand song playlist to begin with) and one friend doesn't push anothers' song down (unless intentionally, by dragging their song in front of the other).

Ah this is a much better idea. I hadn't really used auto DJ before but this definitely solves the problem, thanks

[Peke]

@HlfOrange
I already have Playnext and Play last on Right click.

@trixmoto
See http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=4578

[trixmoto]

Haha, thanks Peke - no one's managed to back to me with a more detailed description of the behaviour that they want to see though!

[Peke]

As soon as someone explain what exactly is missing and can't be done I'll be more than willing to see what can be done.

[MaxPowerDK]

@Peke
Sounds great if you want to give it a go. I just switched to MM from Winamp and I really like it so far, but I do miss the enqueue feature.

As for a feature description I think the easiest would be to just see it in action in Winamp, but I will try to describe it any ways.
General:
- Enqueue works like a prioritized part of the "Now playing" list determining what to play next.
- Shuffle can be on or off, it doesn't matter as the queue always have priority.
- Consider it a First-In-First-Out queue compared to the "Play next" feature which is kind of a Last-In-First-Out queue without really being a queue, because it just moves the tracks around in the list.

The use case (the way it works in winamp):
- Select a track in "Now playing" and enqueue it (using hotkey (Q), a button or maybe right-click menu)
- The track is now marked with [1] and will be the next track to play when the current track ends or Next is selected.
- The next tracks enqueued will then be marked [2], [3] and so on.
- Regardless of what track is playing and where it is in the playlist.
- When a track from the queue is played it is taken off the queue the rest of the queue moves forward ([1] is removed, [2]->[1], [3]->[2] and so on)
- A track can be removed manually from the queue the same way it is added

Like others have already mentioned the effect of the queueing if somewhat possible by moving around the tracks in the "Now playing", but enqueue is definitely much more effective and should be very intuitive to use - It is in Winamp.

The way I personally used it most of the time in Winamp was this:
- I select a few albums from the library to my playlist ("Now playing").
- I just what to listen to them in random order but I want to hear a few "special" tracks first.
- So I enqueue them by selecting and pressing Q in the order I like.
- Set shuffle to on, press play and I'm done, the player will play my enqueued tracks first and then proceed to play the rest in shuffle mode.

[Peke]

@MaxPowerDK
Finally Something that I understand what it means In MediaMonkey something similar can be made with grouping, but as you do not want to Use Tags for "enqueue" you wish to set list of tracks which will be forced to play next no matter of Shuffle as a separate "Forced Enqueue Temporal Now Playing list".

Based on that I see two approaches:
1. Using Player Events and force next track playback by correcting Current track index on TrackEnd Event, While Using Temp playlist Object where you store "enqueue" list
2. Temporally disable Shuffle, and force playback of certain tracks until "enqueue" list runs out.

@trixmoto
I think this could be made what do you think?

[MaxPowerDK]

@Peke
Cool

Approach 1 sounds like the "right way" to do it.
The enqueue list should always have priority over what track plays next regardless of shuffle, so I would hope you don't need to disable/enable that, and you certainly don't want the tracks to move around because of the queing