SMPlayer Support Forum

Hi,
I just noticed that when a video is playing and I try to move up and down with the keyboard arrow keys in the playlist (eg to select the next file I want to play), the video skips forward or rewinds by one minute, instead.

Normally, shortcuts should respond to the active window, since they might have different functions in each.
Could you please fix this, so that when the playlist is active it would be possible to move up and down with the keyboard arrows, without interfering with video playback?
I think when the playlist window is active, all functions that could affect video playback (pause, play, stop, skip forward, rewind, speed) should be deactivated automatically (like in other media players) so that playback could not be interrupted.

By the way, using [Alt]+Up and [Alt]+Down to move in the playlist only works when an audio file is playing. When a video file is playing, those shortcuts don’t work.

Thank you in advance,
Xenophon

It seems this problem is not easy to solve. I think this happens because the playlist is actually a part of the main window (it's a dockable window). The keys only work as expected if the playlist is a real window (non dockable), but if I make it that way there'll probably be many people complaining. Maybe I can add an option in preferences so the user can select if the playlist should be dockable or not.

Thank you for your reply.
You are right, implementing this as an option would be great, because it won't affect people who are used to work a certain way.

Regards,
Xenos

I might have found out a solution for the problem. But I have to test it carefully because it involves a change for every shortcut of the application.

Seems like this has been "fixed" in the latest version, but it's a horrible, horrible change for some of us. One of the way to use SMPlayer was to have a video running in full screen on one monitor and playlist window on another. With a playlist window on a main monitor it was easy to control the movie, as all the keyboard shortcuts worked normally. Now the playlist window does nothing.

I've had SMPlayer as my main video player for almost 9 years, starting with v0.6.8 (still have it), but this update makes it completely unusable for me. Could you please at least make an option to restore the previous behavior?

Yes, I'll try to add an option to disable it in the next version.

In version r9036 it's possible to come back to the old behaviour by setting the option "use_player_shortcuts_in_playlist" in smplayer.ini to true.

By the way, you could also use the option Video -> Send video to screen, which displays the video on a 2nd screen while keeping the controls on the 1st one.

Yes!
Now it's safe to go up and down in the playlist, without interrupting playback.
Thanks,

Xenos