youtube playlist doesnt shuffle.

[itsdarklikehell]

1st of all I would like to say that I love this idea!

but for some reason the youtube playlist doesnt shuffle.
i.e: it always starts with the first video in the playlist.

an example:

- number: 115
  name: VHS Logos
  description: A wide collection of VHS intro logos
  abbr: VHSL
  youtube-playlist:
    src: PLqvBTeVQ4uAW8HdgFdGTdivpBPiyqT1vU
    shuffle: true

[zshall]

Thanks for the report, and thanks for providing an example! Looking into this now.

Part of the problem is how YouTube defines shuffling a playlist; even with shuffle turned on it starts on the same video in their embedded player. We can't get the number of videos in a YouTube playlist via the IFrame API; you need a YouTube API key to do that. There is an ability in TVS to set your own YouTube API key on the /setup page, but:

• It hasn't been documented that that's why it's there.
• I need to update the documentation to explain this.
• It can't be stored in the configuration file, only under /setup.
• I need to allow it to be stored in the config file but warn that if it's a publicly hosted instance it's probably not the best to do unless you add website restrictions locking to your site because your API key is now available for anyone to copy.

It would be nice to not require a YouTube API key though since that's a burden on users.

I've been looking into projects like https://github.com/RblSb/SyncTube/ and a few others to see whether it would be possible to get synchronized video playback through some sort of server application that keeps track of video timecodes and sends those, not actual video frames. SyncTube uses a YouTube API key too though.

In the interim what could partially mitigate this problem without requiring all users to have YouTube API keys is to allow you to define the number of videos in the playlist yourself to determine the starting video.

• Test to find out if the starting video is a number greater than the size of the playlist if that'll cause errors.

  • No, but it's not advisable to do since if a number greater than the length of the playlist is the starting video we start from the beginning.

• Add a new setting to youtube-playlist engine called length. If specified we can just bypass the YouTube API and pick a random number from the length if shuffle is turned on.

• Another bug found recently is that the shuffled and non-shuffled playlists seem to start at the same video in the example. I need to figure out why the non-shuffled video doesn't play from the first video in the playlist.

  • This is related to the problem I commented below and it seems to be random. More testing is required with a longer playlist.

[itsdarklikehell]

awesome, no biggie. I was just wondering. ill try with an api key in the setup for now and see if it then shuffles. otherwise I support the option of setting a max playlist lenght.

[zshall]

I've been working on it tonight and have been running into some strange behavior; it seems like no matter what video I tell the player to start on it goes with the last one that was being watched. I'll tell it to start on video 2 of a 13 video playlist and it'll play it, then when I refresh it plays the same video but says it's starting on video 6. Continuing to investigate.

I did find and fix a bug tonight where if the starting video is private, the entire player crashes. The new behavior is to restart the playlist from the next sequential video in the playlist. I'll try to put that change and the length one into the next build but I'm going to keep this issue open as there's more work necessary to get a truly random video to play whenever the channel loads.

[zshall]

I've enabled the length property as an experimental feature in the new build as I continue to troubleshoot the bug. Let me know if this works any better for you!

[chriskewl]

For me it really doesn't. If you look at my config (see your DMs) you'll see channel 10 is not supposed to shuffle and channel 11 is supposed to. Channel 10 loads whatever channel 11 does.

[itsdarklikehell]

setting the length: 153 doesnt do anything fome either... it allways starts with episode 47 (project raven), which is the 1st in the playlist on yt. but then when I reload it will restart the video and not shuffle i.e give me another video from the 153 in the playlist on yt.

for an example I now have this in my config:

  - number: 8
    name: Darknet-Diaries With Jack Rhysider
    abbr: DARKNETDIARIES
    youtube-playlist:
      src: PLtN43kak3fFEEDNo0ks9QVKYfQpT2yUEo
      shuffle: true
      length: 153

p.s.
I too like to hack through the night sometimes while listening to DarknetDiaries, dont look at me that way..

[zshall]

I wonder if it'd be possible to take manual control of the playlist order. Perhaps turning shuffle on in the iframe API is conflicting with the instructions to start at a random video. I'll try turning shuffle off, detecting the end of a video and cueing a new one when the old one ends and see if that works any better.

[itsdarklikehell]

I found a weird discrepency between using TVS on my phone (Google Pixel 8 PRO, Chrome browser) vs on my linux desktop (Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS (Noble Numbat), Chrome browser).
As an example if one would watch this channel:

  - number: 39
    name: Young Scrolls
    description: Young Scrolls
    abbr: YNGSCRLS
    youtube-playlist:
      src: PL2u0AJczpCVSNt4gi09HL0jHb0935QDgr
      shuffle: true

The following behavior should be expected:
Playlists play media items shuffled, after a video is done playback should continue to the next media item in the playlist.
(Preferably NOT displaying the end title-cards at the videos for a second at the end).

However:
On my desktop playlists dont seem to shuffle and after a video is done playback stops.
(displaying the end title-cards at the videos end screen until the end of time).

On my phone however playlists do seem to shuffle. (i.e work as explected)
Secondly it does NOT display the end title-cards as videos ends. (i.e works as expected, rather nice too.)

I wonder, if it is just a 'doesnt work on my machine problem' and if it works for others machines.
Ill check and remove my cookies and left over temp-stuff later on an try to see this behaviour persists.
(Ill get back on if this fixes anthing on my end this later after I actually done that, but it never hurts to try tbh.)

[itsdarklikehell]

I found a weird discrepency between using TVS on my phone (Google Pixel 8 PRO, Chrome browser) vs on my linux desktop (Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS (Noble Numbat), Chrome browser). As an example if one would watch this channel:

  - number: 39
    name: Young Scrolls
    description: Young Scrolls
    abbr: YNGSCRLS
    youtube-playlist:
      src: PL2u0AJczpCVSNt4gi09HL0jHb0935QDgr
      shuffle: true

The following behavior should be expected: Playlists play media items shuffled, after a video is done playback should continue to the next media item in the playlist. (Preferably NOT displaying the end title-cards at the videos for a second at the end).

However: On my desktop playlists dont seem to shuffle and after a video is done playback stops. (displaying the end title-cards at the videos end screen until the end of time).

On my phone however playlists do seem to shuffle. (i.e work as explected) Secondly it does NOT display the end title-cards as videos ends. (i.e works as expected, rather nice too.)

I wonder, if it is just a 'doesnt work on my machine problem' and if it works for others machines. Ill check and remove my cookies and left over temp-stuff later on an try to see this behaviour persists. (Ill get back on if this fixes anthing on my end this later after I actually done that, but it never hurts to try tbh.)

Tested after removing junk and this behaviour has not changed.

[zshall]

I'm getting somewhere with debugging; here's a comparison between the embedded playlist and the order I put the playlist in originally. Letting YouTube itself handle shuffle changes the playlist's order but doesn't change the queue position. Also, switching from one YouTube playlist channel to another with the same playlist ID where shuffle is off seems to preserve the current queue position but not the current video.

[zshall]

I found a bug in how shuffling options work in the YouTube playlist engine today. Reinvestigating this, hopefully we can put it to bed for good this time!

[zshall]

I think I've fixed this in https://github.com/zshall/program-guide/releases/tag/v5.2.1-beta ; it's been a bit difficult to test due to the fix not being something that's documented in YouTube's player API.

For best results, you'll want to include the length of the playlist as a property:

- number: 19
  name: Youtube Playlist Shuffled
  abbr: YTSFL
  youtube-playlist:
    src: PLU1WjbywtZxEGdTPm-qB0KzPGkRPw6npl
    continueFromLast: false # By default the TV will remember where you left off in a playlist. If you want to start from the beginning every time set this to false.
    length: 15 # To start on a random video, you need to specify manually how many videos are in the playlist due to limitations in YouTube's embedded player.
    shuffle: true # shuffle order of video playback

[zshall]

Closing for now; if it reoccurs we should reopen the issue.