loopSingleFiles / loopAtEndOfPlaylist don't work with VLC

[stavlocker]

Describe the bug
Using the loopSingleFiles / loopAtEndOfPlaylist options does not work on my setup which is relatively simple: two VLC players controlled by syncplay and a custom syncplay-server.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. On both machines, configure the options on ~/.syncplay:
2. Start a syncplay server on machine A: syncplay-server --salt AAAAAAAA

[client_settings]
loopAtEndOfPlaylist = True
loopSingleFiles = True

3. Run syncplay with VLC on both machines:

syncplay --no-gui --host "10.0.0.150:8999" --name "main" --room "myroom" --player-path /usr/bin/cvlc -- --fullscreen --loop "/path/to/main.mov"  

syncplay --no-gui --host "10.0.0.150:8999" --name "fans" --room "myroom" --player-path /usr/bin/cvlc -- --fullscreen --loop "/path/to/fans.mov"  

I can also see that syncplay actually modifies the .syncplay file after I run it, so I assume it's read properly:

[client_settings]
loopatendofplaylist = True
loopsinglefiles = True
name = main
room = myroom
...

Expected behavior
After reaching the end of the video, instead of pausing, playback should return to the beginning.

Output

[22:20:38] Attempting to connect to 10.0.0.150:8999
[22:20:38] Attempting secure connection
[22:20:38] Successfully reached 10.0.0.150 (10.0.0.150)
ERROR:  This server does not support TLS
[22:20:38] Successfully connected to server
...
In room 'myroom':
*<main>* is not playing a file
[22:20:38] main is playing 'main.mov' (05:45) in room: 'myroom'
In room 'myroom':
*<main>* is playing:
    File: 'main.mov' (05:45)
[22:20:38] main is playing 'main.mov' (05:45) in room: 'myroom'
In room 'myroom':
*<main>* is playing:
    File: 'main.mov' (05:45)
[22:21:18] fans has joined the room: 'myroom'
[22:21:19] fans is playing 'fans.mov' (05:45)
[22:21:19] Your file differs in the following way(s): name, size
[22:22:10] You are now set as ready - unpause again to unpause
[22:22:20] main unpaused
...
[22:22:36] main jumped from 05:38 to 05:34
[22:22:41] main jumped from 05:39 to 05:35
[22:22:51] main paused at 05:45  <--- END OF VIDEO

Version and platform:

• Hardware: Raspberry Pi 4/5
• OS: Raspberry Pi OS (Based on Debian 13) (Pi 5: Raspberry Pi reference 2025-11-24, Pi 4: Raspberry Pi reference 2025-12-04)
• Syncplay version: 1.7.4 (Yoitsu)
• Media player and version: 3.0.21 Vetinari (revision 3.0.21-0-gdd8bfdbabe8)

Additional context

• I'm using two different videos.
• I'm getting this message which I took to be unrelated: You loaded a file in '...' which is not a known media directory
• I would use mpv but I can't run it on Raspberry Pis for some reason (it seems to be a widespread problem), I even went as far as to try to re-compile it and ffmpeg and it still didn't work so I'm trying to stick to VLC.

[Et0h]

Hi @stavlocker thanks for all the context - it was very helpful. I don't personally use VLC but I'll try to answer your questions.

The media directory error might not be unrelated. If you want playlists to work you need to specify a media directory. People normally do this via the GUI configuration or from the main Syncplay window, but if that isn't available you can manually modify it in the Syncplay config file.

If you want two files to be treated as the same they need to have the same filename and duration, even if the contents are different. It might pause at the end of a file if there is a filename mismatch.

VLC can be a bit unreliable with Syncplay, so it may work better with mpv. It's a shame that isn't working on your system, but unfortunately I can't really help with Raspberry Pi specific issues as I don't use one.

Syncplay isn't intended for public display / signage setups. Its sync tolerance is designed around the normal latency of voice chat between users, so it is not aiming to be frame-accurate. However if you can get it to work then that's great. You might want to disable the readiness feature on your server as per https://syncplay.pl/guide/server/