playlists don't work on my sansa e270

[filups21]

I recently installed rockbox on my Sansa e270, but I haven't been able to get playlists working.  I've tried "sending" a playlist to the Sansa through Media Monkey, saving the playlist as a .m3u file and copying and pasting it to the "Playlists" folder on the Sansa, adding a playlists folder in the "Music" folder (since that's where Media Monkey seems to store its playlists on my computer), and remaking the playlists using Sanse playlister.  NOTHING WORKS!  When I copy and paste the playlists to the "Playlists" folder, they do show up in rockbox in the playlist catalog, but when I try to select one, I am instantly sent back to the Playlists menu (create, view, save, view).  I'm already sick of Sansa's lack of usability, now Rockbox too?!

[yapper]

The manual is worth reading:
http://download.rockbox.org/manual/rockbox-sansae200/rockbox-buildch4.html#x7-650004.4

[filups21]

It is indeed worth reading, and I have read the playlists section many times.  However, I'm not interested in reforming every single playlist on my sansa - that would take days.  I want to load saved playlists from my computer.  I forgot to mention in the original post that I've also tried to access the playlist files through the rockbox's file browser, which results in a "loading" (or "reading" or something to that effect) message for several hours until I turn off the player.

[Chronon]

Do the paths in the .m3u (or .m3u8) playlists correspond to files on your Sansa?  I assure you that playlists work seamlessly provided the path in the playlist can be trimmed (from the left) to produce a valid, corresponding path on the player.  I'm not too sure about the hanging for hours bit, though.  I have not seen this before.  Usually, Rockbox should find that there are no valid paths and exit the playlist (as you seem to have described in the first post).

The result when using the file browser shouldn't be any different than when viewing the catalog, since you're just viewing /Playlists/.

[Bruiser13]

I have a similar problem. I created a playlist using sanse playlister for a 250r; saved the playlist as a .m3u file. The file appears in my playlist catalogue, however, when I try and play the playlist it just throws me back to the menu. As has been stated, perhaps it's not finding the related files due to a path error? I don't understand why there is an error?
Thanks! burt

[Lear]

Yes, path error is one likely reason for the problem. Rockbox tries to be generous in what it accepts (like removing drive letters and leading directories, accepting both Unix and Windows style paths). In some cases, selecting the proper code page in Rockbox can help too (or using m3u8 instead).

By looking at the playlist, it should be easy to find the problem.

It should be noted that playlists created on the computer for files on a MicroSD card using absolute paths will not work; Rockbox uses a special folder name for volumes rather than a drive letter.