One section of the Speaker pHAT tutorial states:
“Put all of the files into a playlist on VLC (on the menu at the top, click view and then playlist and you should be able to drag music files into it).
Once you’ve finished adding files, using the menu at the top, click media and then save playlist to file. Type a name for it (we called ours mixtape out of originality…).”
I’m a rank beginner and have purchased the Speaker pHAT for a specific dedicated purpose (i.e. background sound for an electric fireplace). I’ve successfully downloaded and installed the software onto my Pi Zero’s sd card. I don’t have (nor wish to use) a monitor, so I’ve successfully set up a Virtual Desktop (via VNC) and have opened VLC from there. But this is where I’m stuck. I’ve searched for some specific documentation for the Raspian-embedded VLC, but everything seems to be for VLC installed on a PC.
I successfully opened a VLC playlist via the Virtual Desktop, where it displays a message about dragging files (i.e. in my case, a single .mp3 of the crackling sounds of burning firewood). But exactly how to do this isn’t clear to me, so if you could either: (A) answer a few specific questions, or (B) alternatively point me to some RPi-specific and detailed VLC documentation, it would be greatly appreciated.
Q1. What is the best place for the .mp3 to reside (somewhere on the sd card; on a flash drive in my PC’s usb port; on my PC’s hard drive; etc.) in order to ‘drag’ it to the playlist?
Q2. Since I have only a single .mp3 to play, is there a simpler way of making it accessible to VLC, in lieu of dragging it to a playlist?
Q3. Do I even need a playlist (since there’s only one .mp3) or is there a better method in lieu of the playlist option – i.e. something akin to ‘cvlc / filepath / filename.mp3’?
Q4. I still need the automatic play feature when power is applied. If I forego the playlist option (assuming an alternative is suggested as part of the answer to Q3), what would the “non-playlist” code be that corresponds to the “playlist Cron-code” of ‘@reboot cvlc mixtape.xspf &’ listed in your tutorial?