this little script will use file random to get a video file and will use your player of choice to launch it. mediainfo.exe was used to get sleep count.

if you see anyway i can improve it please make a comment. i am trying to figure out how to push the filename to an array and do a check if it has played it in the last 100 videos/loops(that would help keep it from repeating if it does i think). i would also like to specify how many times to loop before exiting, that way it doesnt just loop forever and ever and the user can specify how many shows they want to watch.

i wasnt please with the way i had to get duration, but it worked and i was astounded, so if you have of a better was to get duration time, please let me know. the problem i was dealing with while getting duration with any tool was spaces in the path/filenames. Here is the code:

use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;

use File::Random qw(random_file);

my $dir = $ARGV[0];

if ( not defined $dir ) {
    print "\nUsage: random.pl [folder];
    exit(0);
    }else{
random($dir);
}

sub random{

    my ($dir) = @_;
    

        while (1){

            my $mpc = "C:/Program Files (x86)/K-Lite Codec Pack/Media 
+Player Classic/mpc-hc.exe";
                
            my $rndm_file = random_file(
             -dir         => $dir, 
                 #-check       => qr/./, 
                 -recursive   => 1
            );
            
            if ($rndm_file =~ /\.(ini|nfo|db)$/i){
            print "$rndm_file\n";
            random($dir);
            }
            
            print $rndm_file;
            
            #get duration
            my $t = ("MediaInfo.exe --Output=Video;%Duration% \"F:/TV/
+$rndm_file\"");
            system(1, $mpc, "F:/TV/$rndm_file");
            
            my $time = qx($t);
            
            my $sleep_time = $time/1000;         #in seconds because m
+ediainfo.exe outputs milliseconds i think.
            print "\nDuration in seconds: $sleep_time\n";     
            
            sleep($sleep_time);
            
            random($dir);
        }
}
[download]

this works great if you have a ton of media in a folder and want to randomly watch any given inside in that directory, and you do not have to worry about spaces in path/filenames. and this is also for windows but i think it could be used on any other platform as well with small changes

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.