Sansa Playlists

[bascule]

mdouet, it has been pointed out that Winamp supports m3u playlists.  I don't understand why you can't save your playlists in the proper format.

Confirmed from the Winamp site, .m3u8 format is suported since ver 5.3

http://www.winamp.com/player/version-history

So at least a one-off conversion should be possible by re-saving.

And if Winamp has any sort of scripting ability (doesn't everything now?), it should be really easy to batch convert all your playlists at once.

[cpchan]

How can you say you support Sansa if you don't support their playlist format?

Rockbox support the hardware, like I said Rockbox is a REPLACEMENT FIRMWARE. Also, have you tried loading a large pla file in the OF? I was floored by how slow it was.

The only solution you offered me isn't acceptable.  I already created playlists in Winamp, I'm not going to recreate them again just so I can play them in RockBox.  A more elegant solution would be to have a program that converts between pla and m3u, you have not supplied that solution.

 

Huh, I also offered you a canned solution:

You can either use an unoffical build that contains the Sansa Playlist convertor plugin, such as mine:

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12583

And I am not the only one experiencing this problem, read the boards, there are several other users having this same issue.  I'm a software developer, so if II'm having these types of issues using this firmware, just image what issues a normal user is having.

Ha ha, the Sansa Rockbox forum that I moderate is a hundred times more busy than the one here and like I said you are the only one that are having problems.

Charles

[gratt]

As has been pointed out there is a patch available FS#6884
To convert .pla to m3u/8 and m3u/8 to .pla. I started this before
sound on the sansa and have kept it up to date.
IIRC there is support for iriver playlist conversion in RB.
I very rairly use the sansa OF any longer but when i do
this converter is very helpful to have my RB playlists in the OF.

There are also several 3rd party applications including my perl
Sansa sync and playlist tool available at ABI and the lodist forum.
GRaTT

[bluebrother]

just to quote two lines from the top of each source file:

* This software is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.

And to keep my usual statement: Rockbox is not a product. Period.

If you don't agree with that you should leave now.

IIRC there is support for iriver playlist conversion in RB.

Iriver uses the same playlist format (m3u) as Rockbox but with different path delimiters. So they do not really use a different format ...

[mdouet]

Ok, problem solved!

I wrote a VBSCript that allows me to browse to my PLA files and convert them to M3U files on the fly.  All I have to do now is connect my Sansa to my PC and run my program to convert all my playlists and then they will work in RockBox, works like a charm.

I have a few tweaks to make to it, but after it's done I'll post it here in case any other Sansa/RB users are interested.

Once again I think it's pretty sad that I had to write a program to be able to use RB, good thing I'm a Software Engineer or I wouldn't be able to use this firmware at all.  

As has been pointed out there is a patch available FS#6884
To convert .pla to m3u/8 and m3u/8 to .pla. I started this before
sound on the sansa and have kept it up to date.
IIRC there is support for iriver playlist conversion in RB.
I very rairly use the sansa OF any longer but when i do
this converter is very helpful to have my RB playlists in the OF.

There are also several 3rd party applications including my perl
Sansa sync and playlist tool available at ABI and the lodist forum.
GRaTT

From what I read that only converts from m3u -> pla which does me no good, I need to go from pla -> m3u.  I searched all over and haven't been able to find any program that does this, which is why I had to write my own program.

[Llorean]

You needed to use a program to use Rockbox because you were unwilling to accept the fact that it's designed as a stand-alone application that runs on the hardware.

If you put a different game disc in your XBox, you don't complain that your complete savegame from Halo doesn't mean you can load up at the final fight in Half Life. They're two separate pieces of software that run on the same hardware. Though in this case, not even the underlying operating system is the same.

For quite some time we didn't even offer WMA, a format supported by the original firmware of several of the devices we run on.

[evilnick]

I don't see that you had to write this VBScript in order to *use* Rockbox. You felt that you needed to write it in order to use Rockbox *the way you wanted to*. That is a big difference. And also, once you've done it (and shared it) then anyone else who wants to use Rockbox in the same way as you will be able to.

[frause]

As has been pointed out there is a patch available FS#6884
To convert .pla to m3u/8 and m3u/8 to .pla.

From what I read that only converts from m3u -> pla which does me no good, I need to go from pla -> m3u.

Read it again...

[mdouet]

If any other Sansa users are having problems importing their Sansa playlists into RockBox, here is a program I wrote that will allow you to convert the playlists on your player (\PLAYLISTS\*.pla) to a format that can be read by the RockBox firmware.  Feel free to read the VBScript code (open in your favorite text editor) if you're concerned that this is a milacious script:

http://home.houston.rr.com/douet/PlaylistConverter.zip

Enjoy!

[cpchan]

Once again I think it's pretty sad that I had to write a program to be able to use RB, good thing I'm a Software Engineer or I wouldn't be able to use this firmware at all.  

You are the only one who needs to do that.

From what I read that only converts from m3u -> pla which does me no good, I need to go from pla -> m3u.

 

What part of:

This new version converts from (m3u8->pla) or (m3u->pla)
Rockbox playlist to Sansa Original Firmware playlist
and from (pla->m3u8)

you don't understand?

Charles

[mdouet]

What plugin/patch are you referring to?   The patch that was linked to earlier had this for a description:

This is a viewer plugin (m3u2pla) to allow a user to convert
a rockbox created playlist either (name.m3u or name.m3u8) to a
(name.pla) playlist file that will play on the Sansa E200
in the Original firmware.

Regardless of whether it does pla->m3u or not, the program I wrote probably works just as good or better.    

[cpchan]

What plugin/patch are you referring to?

Same patch. You didn't scroll down to see the updates.

Charles

[gratt]

As pointed out there are several 3rd part options already for
pla to m3u format over at ABI. They were also the first
programs to support the sansa .pla format on a user level.
The sansa OF can not really boast about playlist support at all
in comparison to RockBox. And Sandisk did not offer any application
to create playlists at all and still went for a proprietary format.
RB with the pla converter patch makes the best of both worlds.
GRaTT

[mdouet]

cp, I installed that patch last night, how do I access the converter, does it automatically convert any .pla files it finds in my playlist folder?

[frause]

This is a viewer plugin (m3u2pla) to allow a user to convert
a rockbox created playlist either (name.m3u or name.m3u8) to a
(name.pla) playlist file that will play on the Sansa E200
in the Original firmware.

With it being a viewer and all, I would assume "open with..." in the context menu in the file browser.