How to shuffle my whole music collection?

[jebus197 0]

Hi  this seems like a bit of a weird thing - and is probably my fault somehow, but when I go to my music folder there doesn't seem to be a way to shuffle my entire collection of music?

 

I can select an album and shuffle the songs in the album, but not always reliably. Sometimes only a single song will play sometimes the whole album will play. 

 

Also I am using a Windows Media Centre In Windows 8.1 with a media centre remote, and sometimes (more often than not) when I hit the skip button, nothing happens.

 

I have several MCE certified remotes (don't ask me why I have so many) - and they all give the same results.

 

I'm sure it's something dumb I'm not doing. It seems weird to listen to music this way, as I have never listened to single albums for years, probably since before iPods were invented.

 

I am using both Mediacentre server  and  Media centre classic (non beta), which are stll the current versions at the time of this posting.

Edited October 12, 2014 by jebus197

[jebus197 0]

So no verdict or advice on this? I read through the media browser classic configuration guide and it doesn't appear to say anything about 'shuffling a collection'. Maybe I missed it? Also are MCE remotes reliably supported? If so how do I fully enable this feature?

[ebr 14905]

Hit the "*" key when you are on the top level of your music collection (the EHS) and select "Shuffle Play".

[jebus197 0]

No, all that does is play the currently in focus album. I am looking at what looks live a very incomplete album artwork view, with lots of generic icons/tiles in a kind of coverflow mode and there doesn't seem to be any way to 'unfocus' the currently in focus album to get to the top directory to do as you say.

 

For example, if I hit on 'Music' to enter my music collection, the first album listed there will be highlighted and you can't move to the top of the music directory to do as you suggested.

 

Is this some kind of bug? If not in the modern days of iPods and mobile music this seems like a weird ommision.

 

Also doing as you suggested will more often than not only play a single song. On other occasions the >> skip functionality won't work on my remote at all.

Edited October 12, 2014 by jebus197

[ebr 14905]

Hit the "*" key when you are on the top level of your music collection (the EHS) and select "Shuffle Play".

[jebus197 0]

Oh I get what you are saying, if you hover above the word 'Music' in the main home screen window and then press * and then 'shuffle' it will shuffle your collection. But all in all it seems very crude. There is no coverflow, no album or artist information, no visualisation options, nothing. Just a black screen. Also once again >> doesnt work to skip to the next song. It just skips x amount of seconds ahead in this view. In album view (the main view you see when first you enter the  Music directory) sometimes >> does skip to the next song, while in other instances it skips ahead x number of seconds, while on the majority of occasions it does nothing at all.

[ebr 14905]

You are correct.  MBC has not been optimized for music playback because very few people use it that way so it simply hasn't been a priority.