Discussion on Media File Management in iOS
I've been using VLC for iOS for a while now and have some itches with file management I'd like to scratch. The issues are all inter-related, so I thought I would create this 'meta' issue first to discuss exactly what the landscape looks like, and will raise other issues as needed for specific changes.
I just noticed that @caro has raised a few issues that probably relate directly to this, so there may be no need to raise each of them myself.
I'm also interested in contributing the solutions myself, but I don't have enough familiarity with the codebase or iOS development to know exactly where to start. Happy to learn though!
Summary of Workflow
Managing media files in VLC for iOS is frustrating.
I enjoy downloading youtube playlists and watching them offline on my device. To do this I download the playlist making sure to number each file so I know the order they are meant to play in.
I then transfer the files onto my device using 'iFunbox'. I assume this is equivalent to using the iTunes 'File Sharing' interface.
As these playlists often have over 100 individual files in them, I will organise the files into folders inside the iOS file sharing interface (not yet in the in-app interface).
Each file I upload then appears in the main media library interface, apparently ordered by filename.
I create a new 'folder' in the in-app interface, and move the media files into it.
If I select more than one file to move to the folder, those files will be added to the folder in reverse order. So selecting [video-1, video-2, video-3] and then moving the files into a folder results in the videos being displayed as [video-3, video-2, video-1].
Moving files 1 by 1 does not have this issue; adding a single file to a folder adds it to the end of the file list.
I have gotten quite fast at the 4 taps needed to move a single file into a folder by itself, but doing this over 100 times is a little annoying :)
Ideas
-
Make the in-app folders reflect the file system folders, and vice-versa. If I create a new folder in the app there should be a new folder in the filesystem, and media files placed into a folder in-app should be placed in the corresponding folder in the file system, and vice-versa.
-
Allow ordering of media files in-app based on name/date added/etc.
-
Preserve order of media files when moving into folders.
-
Have a separate 'playlist' object to allow arbitrary ordering of media files, independent of which folder they are in. May cause issues if a file is moved on the file system, but should stay in the playlist if moved around in-app. Adding multiple files to a playlist should preserve the order they were in when selected.
Again, I'm not super familiar with the codebase (though I have got it compiling). There may be good reasons why some of the above is hard to do, or is a limitation of an implementation detail.
That is why I thought I would create this issue, so we can discuss what can be done about it.
If the only idea that was implemented was that file order was preserved when moving into folders in-app, I would be very happy. I think the others would be great too, but that is the one which causes me the most pain on a weekly basis.