Support for EXTM3U playlist format

[mikeage]

Are extm3u playlists supported in rockbox?

I found an old forum message (from google) saying they're not, but it was quite a while back, and before I file a bug report, I'm curious what the actual status is

Thanks

[Llorean]

If by EXTM3U you're referring to "Extended M3U" then lack of support very definitely would be a feature request rather than a bug report.

You can hardly qualify lack of support for a feature that Rockbox doesn't claim to support as a bug.

[mikeage]

I know that, and that's why I was asking if it was supposed to be supported.

I think I can conclude from your message that Rockbox currently does not claim to support EXTM3U. Thus, I'm obviously _not_ going to file a bug on the fact that it is broken!

Rest assured, I know the difference between a bug and a feature request..

[Llorean]

Ah. Well, then file a "Feature Request" instead.

Rockbox only claims to support the basic M3U, and now "M3U8" which are UTF8 M3Us, I believe. Anything else, in terms of playlist formats,  is unsupported.

[Lear]

As far as I know, EXTM3U adds one thing to the normal M3U format:

Before each file, there is a specially formatted line containing file length (in seconds) and a track name (usually generated from tag data in some way).

As I remember it, this extra data was primarily used to allow quick display of a nicely formatted playlist without having to open each file in the playlist.

EXTM3U was designed in a backwards compatible way; the extra data is just specially formatted comments. Rockbox ignores comments, so such files can be loaded. The playlist viewer could use that extra information though (or the tag cache, at least if loaded into ram?).

[mikeage]

Correct.

Actually, it first adds a header line (I'm doing this from memory, but I'm 99% sure it's correct) that says:
#EXTM3U

Then, before each file, you have the following
#EXTINF:Length,Free Text to display

where Length is in seconds and then a nice name.

Note that Rockbox seems to successfully ignore these lines, which is good.

I was hoping that it would know to use them for a nice display in the playlist (I use an iPod with tagcache, and so my file names are things like F03/TRMI.mp3).

I looked into added support myself... it doesn't seem to bad, but when I arrived at work today, I found that I have a bunch more work than I realized!