### Jukebox Shuffle Main Window

Song Selections and Repetition Frequencies to create Shuffled Playlist

This section is for what songs to include in the shuffle and how often. The button at the top, "Add a song group..." opens the Add Songs to Shuffle window, where you actually choose the song groups (all songs, genres and/or playlists, with option to filter for only new songs) and specify how often they repeat. The selected songs and repetition rates are then shown in the list in the middle of this section. You can repeat this step to include multiple song groups in the selection.

If you change your mind and want to remove a set of songs from the shuffle, there's a Remove button below the list for that. To change the group and/or repetition rate for a song selection, click on the selection in the list and then the "Edit selected item" button under the list. That opens the same Add Songs to Shuffle window but with your choices already filled in, which you can change as you like.

The bottom of this section has a checkbox to Limit maximum frequency of any song. If you have several song groups in the shuffle, with the same song included in multiple groups, the sum of that song's frequency from each of those groups could be way too high. For such cases, you could check the "Limit maximum frequency" box, so any song with a frequency above the limit you set would have it reduced to the limit.

Distribution of repetitions of the same song

The first shuffle option, Most even distribution, (recommended) checks how many times each song occurs in the playlist, and distributes it somewhat evenly across the playlist. If a song occurs say 10 times, one copy of the song will be placed in each tenth of the playlist, and within each tenth of the playlist there's a separate random assignment where to put the song. If a song appears near the end of one segment, the random placement in the next segment is restricted to not put it near the start, so you won't hear the same song repeated too soon. Under this option there's a spin control where you can set the minimum number of songs that must play before the same song is repeated again.

The second option, More truly random, just does an ordinary shuffle, except that it prevents repetitions of the same song closer than the number of songs you set in its spin control.

If you shuffled a song selection that did not have any songs repeated (Frequency of play = 1), both shuffle options would work the same as an ordinary shuffle in Windows Media Player or the shuffle on your MP3 player, because there would be no repetitions to separate.

Output Playlist File

The first two checkboxes are different ways to limit the size of the shuffled playlist that's saved to file, and it's almost always a good idea to have at least one of them checked.
If you have some songs set to play much more often than others, a playlist of several thousand songs (including repetitions) may be generated to achieve the desired random distribution, longer than you would ever play. Before you finished playing such a long playlist, you'd probably lose your place in the list and/or add new songs to your collection that you want to include in a shuffled playlist. Generally there's no point generating a shuffled playlist longer than a few hundred songs at most. You may find it better to save two shuffles each trunctated to 150 songs from the same song selection, rather than one shuffle 300 songs long.

The first checkbox limits the shuffled playlist that's saved to file as a fixed number of songs. You can set the maximum length of the saved playlist with the spin control or typing the number. The truncated playlist will contain a random selection from the entire shuffled playlist, and songs that are set to repeat more often (songs you assigned higher star ratings) are more likely to be included in the truncated playlist.

The second checkbox (recommended) truncates the playlist to a size where no songs play twice. How long that is depends on how often the most frequenly played songs (i.e. your highest rated) are repeated. All your most highly rated songs are included exactly once, and a random selection of other songs are included with more highly rated songs more likely to be included. This is a good choice if you leave your MP3 player in shuffle mode, because the generated playlist doesn't include any repetitions that might end up next to each other if your player reshuffles the list.
This second option for limiting the output playlist is only available if the "Most even distribution" shuffle method is selected in the previous section. It truncates the playlist at the segment size that contains one occurrence of each of the most frequently repeated songs.

The last checkbox to warn if the file name you chose would overwrite an existing file is typical for most programs, and should be left checked as a safety measure unless you have a specific reason not to. One such reason could be if you have several existing shuffled playlists that you intend to overwrite with new shuffled playlists, and don't want to be asked for overwrite confirmation each time.

"Save as Shuffled Playlist" button

You click this button at the bottom of the window after you have specified what and how to shuffle above. A standard Save As dialog will then open where you specify the name of the playlist, and also choose the playlist format in the "Save as type" list at the bottom of the dialog.

If you use Windows Media Player to sync your MP3 player or phone, or sync an Android phone with its own sync app, the default Windows Media Playlist format is the best choice. If you use a different program to sync your player, try Windows Media Playlist first, and if that doesn't work try M3U (Unicode UTF-8) next. For syncing an iPod or iPhone, M3U (Unicode UTF-8) looks right from what I've read, but not tested. More details are in the Jukebox Shuffle options' Default format topic.

After you click OK in the Save dialog, the shuffle will begin and may take several seconds depending on how many songs are being shuffled.

If you want more than one shuffled playlist from the same song selection, just click the button again after the shuffle finishes, and it will generate a new shuffle.

After you save the shuffled playlist ...

You should load it onto your phone or MP3 player the same way as any other playlist, e.g. include the playlist in your Windows Media Player or phone's sync settings.

If you chose the Output Playlist File option above to limit the playlist size to "no songs repeated", it won't matter if your player reshuffles the playlists. If you did not truncate the playlist to that size or smaller, be sure your player does not reshuffle the playlist. If the player reshuffles, the distribution of repeated songs will be undone and you may hear the same song played consecutively. In some players there is a setting to automatically shuffle playlists, which you would need to turn off; see your player's documentation.