Alternate podcasts considering channel queue lengths
I often use Alternate podcasts option with sorting by decreasing priority and increasing release date.
It works well with channels with similar length of their queued episodes. But with big difference of lengths, it has a side effect of prioritizing the short queues. Much newer episodes from shirt queues are played before older ones from longer queues. By other words, shorter the channel queue is, higher us the average item position in the playlist.
As a work around, I periodically "reshake" the playlist by turning "Alternate podcasts" OFF/ON and moving current episode to the top again.
The playlist ends by alternation of 2 longest channel queue, until the shorter one is used and only items from longest one remains.
IMHO, shorter queues may be wanted to be better spread along the whole playlist length.
I suggest to consider this (optional?) feature:
As the next playlist item would be the first item from sorted non alternating list, but not from the same channel as the previous item.
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Mike Blazanin commented
I agree with this idea and have long wanted this or a similar feature. In fact, there's quite a bit of support for this and other similar ideas, but it seems that many posts wanting to achieve similar outcomes are phrased in different ways and so end up categorized as separate requests. I'm posting here in the hopes that we can start to unify these requests in order to gain more attention for them.
I would characterize these requests as involving some sort of accounting for the number of podcast episodes or time of a given podcast in the current playlist, as opposed to the default current behavior to simply alternate between all podcasts. This would enable podcasts with more episodes/more time in the playlist to be played more frequently, and prevent the problem of the accumulation of excess episodes at the end of the playlist.
For the oldest suggestion along these lines, see: https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/8105223--smart-sorting-option
For other similar requests, see:
https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/36456832-alternate-podcasts-considering-channel-queue-lengt
https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/38974180-smart-alternation-option-in-playlist
https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/36793843-alternate-podcast-feeds
https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/33506839-add-additional-customize-ability-to-alternate-podc
https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/35113660-sort-playlist-by-number-of-unplayed-episodes-in-po -
Poutnik commented
Another option could be to internally implement a top sorting criteria
as ratio of
The number of channel episodes already placed in the playlist
Versus
Total number of queed channel episodes.( Placed+to be placed)So channels 25/50 and 2/4 will be treated equally, and other sorting criteria will be evaluated.
OTOH, for numbers below, the big channel would be preferred for the first case and small one for the second case.
25/50 and 3/4
25/50 and 1/4