Some Configurations of the Playlist in Winamp3 Are not Working

 

Summary

In this example we are going to perform Combination Testing with four options in Winamp3 media player. To reduce the number of possible test cases we are going to use an All Pairs combination table. Winamp3's Repeat song option is not working and in some cases the application is playing songs disabled by the user. (Source bugzilla.nullsoft.com)

Application Description

Winamp3 is a mp3 player for Windows. It also has support for some video formats. A number of skins and plug-ins are available to allow complete customization. (Source: www.winamp.com).

For our tests we will focus on the following four options:

1) Crossfading Between Tracks (CBT)

If this option is turned on, the end of one song interweaves with the beginning of the next one. It can be either on or off.

 

2) Playlist Shuffling (PS)

If this option is turned on, the songs that are played are selected at random from the playlist. It can be either on or off.

 

3) Disable Playback (DP)

This option can be activated by right-clicking on a song and selecting it from the context menu. It prevents songs from being played. It can be either on or off.

 

Playlist Repeating (PR)

The action performed by Toggle Playlist Repeating can be changed in Options -> Preferences -> Playlist. There are four possibilities (opt1, opt2, opt3, opt4).

Test Design

This example demonstrates the use of Combination Testing.

If we want to test all possible combinations of the four variables we will have to do 4x2x2x2= 32 test cases. This is not that bad, but we can also use a faster approach called All Pairs Combination Table.

This approach guarantees that the interactions between every two variables are tested. In our case, instead of doing the all possible 32 test cases we will be able to test all possible interactions between each two variables in only 8 test cases.

In Table 1, the four acronyms in the first row are the four different function described above. The rest of the rows represent test cases, where the value of each of the four variables is specified.

Performing the Test

To perform the tests we have to start the player and set the specific values from Table 1 for each of the four options. We have to repeat that for each of the eight tests.

Results/Relevance

  1. Test #2 from Table 1 showed problems. If we start song 1 with test configuration #2, even though, playback on song 2 was disabled, it was played after song 1 had finished.
    First, it was supposed to repeat song 1 (the purpose of repeat song), and second it is not supposed to play a disabled song.

  2. Test #6 from Table 1 also showed problems. Even though, the player was set to repeat one song it continued with the rest.

  3. Test #8 from Table 1 also showed problems. Even though, song 2 was disabled, Winamp still played it.

    4. The final result is that repeat song option didn't work in any of the cases and some additional tests show that it is broken and does not depend on anything else. The other problem is that Winamp plays songs that are disabled by the user, if the Playlist Repeat setting is set to Repeat single file or Manual Playlist Advance Only.

    Finding that Repeat song option is not working would be revealed by a simple Function test, but the bug that causes Winamp3 to play disabled songs is dependent on specific values for Playlist Repeat, which are unlikely to be found without Combination Testing.

Configuration

Testing NullSoft's Winamp3 build #488 on:

Created 02 June 2004 for the CSTER

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