Playing random videos on one's system; minor improvement to include DVDs

Question

In my .bashrc I have a function which I use to play random videos (not written below, just fyi), and another one for all media files, e.g.:

createmediafiles() {
find ~+ -type f -iregex '.*\.\(mp3\|wav\|ogg\|flac\|mp4\|mov\|avi\)' > ~/mediafiles.txt
find ~+ -type d -name VIDEO_TS >> ~+/mediafiles.txt
}
playmediafiles() {
    while true; do
        while read -r line; do
            shuf -n 1 |
            tee -a ~/played-log.txt |
            xargs -d "\n" mpv
        done < ~/mediafiles.txt
    done
}

I want to add the VIDEO_TS line to createmediafiles, but in the playmediafiles function I want to add an IF statement, such that if the line shuffled to in mediafiles.txt is a VIDEO_TS then rather than using mpv to play a file, it will do:

tee -a ~/played-log.txt | xargs -d "\n" vlc --fullscreen

Piping in mediafiles.txt read the same way as it does with mpv.

How do I throw that in an IF statement with the condition being that the line ends in VIDEO_TS?

Answer 1

I think you might be trying to do something like this:

playmediafiles() {
    local line cmd
while true; do
    line=$(shuf -n 1 ~/mediafiles.txt)
    case $line in
        *VIDEO_TS* ) cmd=( 'echo' 'vlc' '--fullscreen' ) ;;
        * )          cmd=( 'echo' 'mpv' ) ;;
    esac
    cmd+=( "$line" )
    printf '%s\n' "$line" >> ~/played-log.txt
    "${cmd[@]}"
done

}

or:

playmediafiles() {
    local line cmd
while true; do
    while IFS= read -r line; do
        case $line in
            *VIDEO_TS* ) cmd=( 'echo' 'vlc' '--fullscreen' ) ;;
            * )          cmd=( 'echo' 'mpv' ) ;;
        esac
        cmd+=( "$line" )
        printf '%s\n' "$line" >> ~/played-log.txt
        "${cmd[@]}"
    done < <(shuf ~/mediafiles.txt)
done

}

The first script loops forever calling shuf to select 1 line at a time at random from mediafiles.txt and store that line in the variable line.

The second script loops forever calling shuf to print the entire contents of mediafiles.txt in a random order, then has a second loop to read 1 line at a time from the shuf output and store that line in the variable line.

Both then test $line to see if it contains VIDEO_TS or not and populate the cmd array with the appropriate command plus arguments using cmd=( 'echo' 'vlc' '--fullscreen' ) or cmd=( 'echo' 'mpv' ). They then add the contents of line to the end of the array using cmd+=( "$line" ) and then print the contents of the array to played-log.txt and then execute the command stored in the array with "${cmd[@]}".

The only difference between the 2 is the first spawns a subshell to call shuf once per file to be played while the 2nd spawns a subshell to call shuf once for the whole of the input file and then read once per line to be played. The second one will probably run a bit faster but I doubt if you'll notice it or care since you're playing media between each line of input.

Remove the 'echo's when done testing to make sure it does what you want.