Line termination in m3u playlists

[pwabrahams]

What is the line termination convention for playlists?  Are they expected to use the DOS LF/CR termination or the Unix LF termination?  Or is either acceptable?

I'm having a problem with playlist entries not being recognized even though they look correct, and I'm wondering if a line termination issue might be the cause.

[bluebrother]

As far as I know there is no requirement for line terminators to be Unix or DOS. How exactly do those unrecognized entries look like? Do they possibly include non-ASCII characters?

[pwabrahams]

Here are the first few tracks in the playlist in question:

Code: [Select]

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:208000,01. Sinfonia
MUSIC/Cantata 021/01 - BWV 21 - Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - 01. Sinfonia.ogg
#EXTINF:263000,02. Coro: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
MUSIC/Cantata 021/02 - BWV 21 - Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - 02. Coro- Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis.ogg
#EXTINF:289000,03. Aria (S): Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not
../MUSIC/Cantata 021/03 - BWV 21 - Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - 03. Aria (S)- Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not.ogg
#EXTINF:98000,04. Recitativo (T): Wie hast du dich, mein Gott

And here's the directory listing:

Code: [Select]

pwa@pwa-K60IJ:/media/0123-4567/MUSIC$ ls Cantata\ 021 | head -n 3
01 - BWV 21 - Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - 01. Sinfonia.ogg
02 - BWV 21 - Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - 02. Coro- Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis.ogg
03 - BWV 21 - Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - 03. Aria (S)- Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not.ogg

I only have this problem on a few albums, not on all of them.  And some of the ones that work have German track titles like these.

[bluebrother]

Is the playlist m3u or m3u8? The latter is a m3u file with utf-8 encoding, while the former uses the codepage setting. So depending on the encoding of the working playlists and their file extension the umlauts are your problem

The best way is to save the playlists with utf-8 encoding and use m3u8 as file extension.

[pwabrahams]

Is it sufficient to rename the playlist from Play1.m3u to Play1.m3u8, or do I need to do more than that?  I'm generating my playlists in Amarok, and it doesn't seem to have a way to specify UTF8 encoding.  I don't know about other playlist-generating programs.

[Lear]

A rename isn't enough. Non-ASCII characters are encoded differently in an m3u8 file.

Using a plain m3u file should work, if you choose the right codepage setting in Rockbox (it must match what you have on your PC - or rather, what Amarok writes).

[pwabrahams]

Where is the codepage setting in Rockbox?  The only relevant thing I can find is that both m3u and m3u8 are acceptable playlist formats.  Amarok doesn't seem to have a codepage setting either.  Does Windows Media Player?

Or is there something else I can do to get Amarok and Rockbox onto the same page?

[bluebrother]

Since Linux distributions default to utf-8 encoding these days (at least as far as I know) I suspect the file to be utf-8. I'd try renaming it from m3u to m3u8 and see if it works -- I wouldn't be surprised for Amarok to use the default encoding, so an m3u could very well be utf-8.

Apart from that, try file to figure the encoding.

In Rockbox, see General Settings / Display / Default Codepage.

[pwabrahams]

I tried renaming one of my playlists from m3u to m3u8, and now it works as it should.  The renaming might conceivably introduce other problems, but so far I haven't seen any.

Thanks for the pointer!!