Streamline playlist handling

[jim234567]

I have to say I absolutely love Rockbox , but like anything, there's always some room for improvement.

It's a multi-step process to get playlists you've created (say, in Winamp) to show up under the Playlist directory on the main menu or wps context menu after transferring them onto the player.

Right now first step is to transfer a list together with my music. But then I have to use the file browser to find the list (not always easy if you have a lot of files), load the list, then navigate the menu to re-save the list (using the virtual keyboard to retype the original name of the list). To top that off, it doesn't default to the /playlist folder, so I have to retype that part of the filepath as well to have it end up there (I'm assuming that last bit is a bug in the system, as it does pre-enter the directory name when saving themes or station presets, etc.).

If Rockbox could automatically index any playlist files it finds while scanning your music files folder during database initialization/updating, this would save a lot of steps for the user.

I have a little Sansa Clip+ and the OF already has this function. I think RB would be that much better if it could do it too.

 

[nls]

I would agree that not defaulting to the playlist catalogue dir is an oversight that should be fixed.
I would also like to point out that nothing prevents you from transferring playlists into the playlist dir directly, provided they have absolute paths.

[Yotto]

Maybe I'm lazy but I skip the playlist directory entirely. I turn bookmarking on and just play the bookmarks. Menu, top option, all my bookmarks right there.

[jim234567]

I would also like to point out that nothing prevents you from transferring playlists into the playlist dir directly, provided they have absolute paths.

That's just it... anything I use to modify and save lists on my computer doesn't create the proper path of "/<microSD1>/MUSIC/file.mp3", Winamp saves them as "MUSIC\file.mp3" and of course that ain't gonna work. To get the "/<microSD1>/" thing I have to re-save it on the player itself.

If RB could do this automatically like the OF does, it'd make it so much easier.

Maybe I'm lazy but I skip the playlist directory entirely. I turn bookmarking on and just play the bookmarks. Menu, top option, all my bookmarks right there.

Can you create bookmarks on your computer (or better, convert a playlist file to a bookmarks file?) and then transfer it like you would a .m3u file? (not familiar with bookmarks, I always thought that was an audiobook thing to mark a resume point in the middle of a file).
My playlists are fairly big, so there'd be no way to create & manage it on the player itself.

[[Saint]]

I feel I should point out that the playlist catalogue can be defined as any path you want it to be...

Just add:

Code: [Select]

playlist catalog directory: /path/to/your/desired/playlist/catalogue

To your config.cfg file.

If you want the playlist catalogue to be the root of the device (where playlists are saved to) then just use "/" as the path, done.  



[St.]

[jim234567]

I feel I should point out that the playlist catalogue can be defined as any path you want it to be...

Just add:

Code: [Select]

playlist catalog directory: /path/to/your/desired/playlist/catalogue

To your config.cfg file.

If you want the playlist catalogue to be the root of the device (where playlists are saved to) then just use "/" as the path, done.  



[St.]

That's a pretty good workaround for the filepath during save part (thanks for the suggestion), though it still leaves this whole issue of having to manually resave again a list that already resides on the player with your music files.

[[Saint]]

...though it still leaves this whole issue of having to manually resave again a list that already resides on the player with your music files.

I'm not sure what you're saying there...

With that addition in your config, you should not have to move anything at all after creating a playlist.

Here's how it should work:

- Add the line "playlist catalog directory: /" to your config.cfg file.
- Create and save a playlist to the root of the player.
- Open the Playlist Catalogue and enjoy your playlists actually being in there
- Done.

The config file option changes the playlist catalogue to the root of the disk, so as long as you save playlists to the root of the disk (they go there automatically without intervention on saving  right?) it will automagically show up in the playlist catalogue.

Hope this helps.


[St.]

[Chronon]

I would also like to point out that nothing prevents you from transferring playlists into the playlist dir directly, provided they have absolute paths.

That's just it... anything I use to modify and save lists on my computer doesn't create the proper path of "/<microSD1>/MUSIC/file.mp3", Winamp saves them as "MUSIC\file.mp3" and of course that ain't gonna work. To get the "/<microSD1>/" thing I have to re-save it on the player itself.

If RB could do this automatically like the OF does, it'd make it so much easier.

Can you explain a bit more what you're describing here?  What operations in Rockbox are you using to re-save the playlists?

[jim234567]

I thought I had explained it pretty well in my OP. Though I'll try it again here...

I have about a dozen large playlists that I've created and maintained over the years using Winamp (each containing between 100-2000 songs).
Winamp saves these lists as a .m3u file with a path structure based on the files being within the same folder they are saved in.
When I download these .m3u files into the folder on my player, they are not detected in any way when the database is initialized.
So I have to manually navigate on the player itself (using the tiny buttons & screen) to the folder where they are (which has thousands of files & folders in it), find the first .m3u list, then load ("play") the list so that it is now loaded into the dynamic playlist memory. Finally I have to then re-save it through RB's playlist menu so that the playlist is stored in a correct format that RB recognizes from it's /Playlist folder (then do this all over again for each remaining list).

I'm a little bit baffled that this is so perplexing to everyone and that all I seem to be getting any help on is the least-significant part of it all about dealing with the saved filepath being wrong.

Does no one here use playlists? How do you keep your player playing music for many hours on end without having to fiddle with reloading new albums or songs as they finish playing? (please don't say turn on Shuffle and Repeat, I don't want to hear the same thing over & over, I want to hear it all in the same order that I had created these playlists for).

 

[saratoga]

I guess hes loading the playlists from the microsd card (using relative paths), and then saving them back out to the main disk (using the absolute path as seen from rockbox).

[Chronon]

Plenty of people do use playlists but don't necessarily follow your usage pattern.  I create most of my playlists on the fly using Rockbox.  

With this information I now understand what you are describing.  Your playlists contain relative paths to the media contained in the same directory.  Apparently, Rockbox can find the locations of the media on both internal storage and on your microSD card using these relative paths.  Unfortunately, moving the playlists (which contain relative paths) breaks this ability since the relative paths no longer point to the correct locations.  To work around this, you load the playlist from its expected location.  Finally, you save this dynamic playlist using the option in the Playlists menu (i.e. Main Menu > Playlists > Save Current Playlist).  Rockbox then writes a new playlist containing absolute paths with a default path of /default.m3u8.

I agree that some ability to do this sort of conversion as a batch process and to default to the playlist catalog would be nice.  Do you think a plugin would be suitable for this sort of thing?

[jim234567]

Well my lists are much too huge to create or manage within Rockbox itself lol, so I think you can see my dilemma.

(and yes, the SD card is where I'm putting them, keeping them together with their respective song files).

[Chronon]

Now that I understand your situation I will agree that a plugin (or some method) allowing easy conversion of playlists with relative paths to ones with absolute paths would be a nice addition. 

[nls]

if you have plalylists with absolute paths rockbox strips levels off in the left end to try and find the files so if your playlists had paths like c:/music it would match /music on your player. I do not know if it works with the microsd though, but maybe you can get winamp to save them with absolute paths and try it?

[Chronon]

The usual problem there is that no amount of pruning will prepend the necessary string "/<microSD1>/" that will allow Rockbox to look at locations on the SD card.