Cannot get playlist to work

[redrick]

Hi,

(Please accept that for complicated reasons I need to be able to create playlists manually on my computer.)

This is an example of a playlist Rockbox made (dynamic.m3u)

/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/01 1. Streichquartett op 3 1910.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/02 2. Streichquartett op 3 1910.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/03 Lyric Suite- 1. Allegretto giovale.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/04 Lyric Suite- 2. Andante amoroso.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/05 Lyric Suite- 3. Allegro misterioso.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/06 Lyric Suite- 4. Adagio appassionata.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/07 Lyric Suite- 5. Presto delirando.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet/Berg String Quartet, Lyric Suite/08 Lyric Suite- 6. Largo desolato.mp3

This is one I made:

/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet et al/Carter Quintets and Voices/02 Quintet for Piano and Strings.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet et al/Carter Quintets and Voices/04 Tempo e Tempi - Tempo e Tempi.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet et al/Carter Quintets and Voices/05 Tempo e Tempi - Ed e Subito Sera.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet et al/Carter Quintets and Voices/06 Tempo e Tempi - Oboe Sommerso.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet et al/Carter Quintets and Voices/07 Tempo e Tempi - Una Colomba.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet et al/Carter Quintets and Voices/08 Tempo e Tempi - Godimeto.mp3
/MUSIC/Arditti Quartet et al/Carter Quintets and Voices/09 Tempo e Tempi - L'Arno a Rovezzano.mp3

The one I made doesn't work.  I put it in playlists and also tried a copy in root.  When I try to view it on my sansa/rockbox I just get:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
I have very carefully checked that the folders and filenames are correct.  What could I be doing wrong?

(BTW, odd there are 9 numbers and only 7 selections on my playlist.)

[Llorean]

Are you sure the characters are right? For example, is it definitely "e" or perhaps "é" for example?

Have you tried using a program like winamp (or similar for whatever your native OS is) or a terminal command to generate a playlist from the real files, or how was this playlist created?

Also you need to let us know what revision of Rockbox you're using.

[redrick]

Yes, characters are right.  I especially picked a playlist that had no "odd" characters that might confuse the matter.

Rockbox v. is 3.5.

Actually playlist was originally made on WMP.  I used it to load the files onto the player when in original mode.  I noticed that the .pl files that sansa made were similar to the .m3u files Rockbox makes so I simply modified them a bit to be, what appears to me to be, exactly what Rockbox uses, & changed the suffix to .m3u. 

Well, as you can see, it appears just the same but for some reason won't work.

[Llorean]

Why don't you try using your method to create a playlist for the exact same files that Rockbox creates a playlist for, then do a comparison of the two files using a file comparison tool to see if there are any non-visible differences?

[redrick]

EDITED

Yes, I'll give that a shot, and also try having rockbox make a pl of mine.  Hope I can get this to work somehow or other but I've tried this with a number of different files so far and nothing, no matter how simple, seems to work.

Regards, -Rick

This is really weird.  It just doesnt seem to recognize the files on playlists unless those playlists are made on Rockbox, even if the files I've made on my computer are precisely the same.

[littlenick]

I've also had my problems with playlists I wanted to create (sigh!).
At last it seemed to me like the playlist has to incorporate also the information where to find the track on hdd/memory of the player.
Just creating a playlist anywhere didn't work for me so far.
Does rockbox look for identically named .mp3/.wma/.ogg and so on -files and actually create its own pathway to find them on the player's memory  - in other words, will rockbox beat its own way through the jungle of files when it is told the filename (even if the memory is reshuffled by new downloads onto it)?

I apologize for interfering in a probably more seriuos discussion than I probably have right to participate.

Tom

[Domonoky]

Rockbox will search the files under the path you specify in the m3u file. If it doesnt find the file, it will strip folders from the beginning until it finds the file, or has to give up.

So if you specify "C:/music/test/test.mp3" in the playlist, it will still find the file if it is located in "/test/test.mp3"

Regarding the playlist issues, if you are sure that the filenames are correct, take a look a the encoding of the playlist file. Maybe its written in utf8 (then it should be a .m3u8 playlist) or another encoding where rockbox has problems with. If you cant findout anything, you could post a working and a non-working playlist here, so we can compare ourself.

[gulak]

It looks like the selfmade playlist is encoded in utf-16, which rockbox doesn't support. Convert it to utf-8 may solve the problem.

(BTW, odd there are 9 numbers and only 7 selections on my playlist.)

8 and 9 are blank lines in the playlist.

Maybe its written in utf8 (then it should be a .m3u8 playlist) ...

The extension doesn't matter in this case. There's no character above 128 in the playlist.