Overview

How to play music in MediaPortal, queue songs, create playlists and control playback,

Introduction

You can play your music using high quality Bass effects, or your own player if you prefer. (See Configuration > Music Player Settings)

Display cycling album art and artist images or watch your favorite visualizations on the Now Playing Window while music is playing.

You can even rate a track playing in the Now Playing window by using your number keys or remote buttons.

Use Party Shuffle mode or 'scrobble' similar tracks from your music database to auto create or add similar tracks to playlists, by enabling the Auto DJ feature in LastFMScrobbler plugin configuration in MediaPortal 1.6.0 or later. It is enabled by default.

Playing Music

Since v1.2.0, you have much more control over how music is played.  When you browse your collection you can select items to play right now or queue them up in the current playlist to play later.   How you interact with your collection is determined by the playlist settings you select in Configuration > Music.

There are three ways to play items in your collection:

1. Play button on remote ('p' on keyboard)
2. OK on remote (enter on keyboard)
3. Various options on the context menu (accessed via Info/More on remote or F9 on keyboard)

Play Button

Pressing play (or 'p' on keyboard) on any item when browsing your collection will: 

1. Stop whatever is currently playing (music or not)
2. Clear the current playlist
3. Add all tracks under the selected item to the current playlist
4. Start playback

Note: The key here is point 3; if you use the default Album Artist (Indexed) view then you will be greeted with an A-Z index page of all album artists.  Pressing play when B is highlighted will queue up every single track that has been imported to your database where the album artist starts with B.  If you press ok/enter when B is highlighted you will be taken to a list of album artists starting with B.  If you highlight Beck from the list and press play then all tracks in your collection by Beck will be added to the playlist.  If however you press enter/ok on Beck you will be taken to a list of his albums in your collection.   Highlighting Mellow Gold and pressing play will play the tracks from that album.  If you press enter/ok on Mellow Gold you will be taken to the track listing for that album.  What happens when you highlight a track and press play depends on the "Add all tracks to playlist" option; if enabled (default setting) then pressing play on a track will add all tracks for that album to the playlist and start playback at the highlighted track.  If disabled then only that single track will be played.

Enter / OK

Enter / OK will generally be used to browse your collection (eg. clicking ok on an album will take you to a list of tracks for that album etc).

Where Enter / OK can be used to playback music is when browsing a list of tracks.  The behavior of this button depends on the playlist mode set in Configuration > Music on the Playlist Settings tab.   By default when browsing a list of tracks Enter / OK will work exactly the same as the play button (ie. it will stop what is playing and clear the playlist. Then, based on the "Add all to playlist" option in Setup,  it will either play the highlighted or track or play all tracks and start playback with the highlighted one.

In playlist mode, Enter / OK will queue up the highlighted track at the end of the current playlist (or all tracks if the "Add all to playlist" option is enabled in Setup)

If there is nothing playing when you press enter, or what is playing is not music, then MediaPortal will check if there are already tracks in the current playlist.  If tracks are found you will prompted as to whether you want to clear the current playlist or whether you want to keep it and add the track you want to play to the end of the existing playlist (playback will start with your selected track)

Context Menu

Brining up the context menu whilst an item is highlighted gives you several options

• Play now - This is the same as pressing play - stops any currently playing track, clears the current playlist,  and plays the selected item  
• Queue item - adds the item to the playlist queue - plays the selected item after the current track has finished (if the selected item is an artist or album, all tracks will be queued
• Queue all items - displays when a track or song is selected - adds all the tracks in the current list to the playlist

Note: When you 'queue' an item(s), it inserts the selection into the playlist after the current track, if one is playing.

Play a Track, Album or all Songs by an Artist

To play a track, navigate to the track and press enter.  

If you select an album or artist, pressing Play or 'p' on your keyboard will play all tracks in under the album or artist.

Note:  tracks will automatically be added to your current playlist and start playing according to the preferences you have chosen in Music > Configuration  Misc Settings tab Play now behavior.

Play CD

Just insert the CD. I you have autoplay enbaled, then it will play. See[ Music > Configuration  Misc Settings|3 Music#Misc settings] tab  Auo Play CD.

Or you can use the Music Menu > Play  CD but to play the disk inserted in the CD/DVD drive.

Playback controls

You can pause, rewind, or fast forward playback using Keyboard Shortcuts or keys on your remote.  Mouse or touch screen users can perform the same functions by using the Top Bar. Just hover your mouse at the top of the screen and it will display.

If you press the fast forward or rewind key repeatedly it will increase or decrease the speed incrementatly, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x. If you wish to reverse the process, for example reduce a fast forward of 32x to 16x, then press the rewind key and vice versa. If you want the music to continue playing at normal speed, simply hit the Play button on the topbar.

Music Overlay Window

While music is playing, you may navigate to other windows in MediaPortal. The album cover, along with the main details of the track playing, will display in a small window, usually the bottom left in the Default skin. The format, style and size of the Music Overlay window can vary between skins. 

Related

Other

• Now Playing
• Music Playlists
• Visualizations