Creating a playlist

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

I have lots of music videos on my MyBookLive, which I access via my WD TV Live and I am able to play them one at a time. I would like to create a playlist, but I’ve had a look at the manual, and I don’t see how to create one for media on my network. Have I missed something in the manual, or is this not an option? 

Pete

Update to my question, I’ve just put some media on a USB drive and its playing it sequentially, but the media on my MBL only plays one video at a time.

Further Update!

It’s resorted to playing the stuff on the USB drive one file at a time now.

2

Playlists are supported, and do work, as long as they’re “written” correctly.

I use playlists (both audio and video) all the time.

The manual doesn’t give instruction on how to create playlists; it assumes the user would already know how to do that.

The key is that playlist entries must be relative paths to the playlist file itself.

Any ABSOLUTE references in the playlist will not function.

3

TonyPh12345 wrote:

 

The key is that playlist entries must be relative paths to the playlist file itself.

 

Any ABSOLUTE references in the playlist will not function.

 

 

Tony, please explain you comments above in more detail w/example, etc. Thanks

4

Relative path:

…\Music\Scouting for Girls\This Ain’t A Love Song.mp3

Absolute path:

C:\Users\Public\Music\The Trammps\Disco Inferno.mp3

5

I have created a .pls file for video content on the MBL using winamp. Where do I put this file?

Here is a txt version of the .pls I created. 

[playlist]
_ File1=Z:\Shared Videos\Simply Red Enough.avi _
_ Title1=Simply Red Enough _
_ Length1=309 _
_ File2=Z:\Shared Videos\Doobie Brothers - What a fool believes - 1979.flv _
_ Title2=Doobie Brothers - What a fool believes - 1979 _
_ Length2=223 _
_ File3=Z:\Shared Videos\Michael McDonald - Sweet Freedom.flv _
_ Title3=Michael McDonald - Sweet Freedom _
_ Length3=234 _
_ File4=Z:\Shared Videos\Christopher Cross - Ride Like The Wind.flv _
_ Title4=Christopher Cross - Ride Like The Wind _
_ Length4=269 _
File5=Z:\Shared Videos\George Benson - No One Emotion (1984).flv
Title5=George Benson - No One Emotion (1984)
_ Length5=238 _
_ File6=Z:\Shared Videos\Amy Winehouse - Back To Black.flv _
_ Title6=Amy Winehouse - Back To Black _
_ Length6=247 _
_ File7=Z:\Shared Videos\Amy Winehouse - Love Is A Losing Game.flv _
_ Title7=Amy Winehouse - Love Is A Losing Game _
_ Length7=168 _
_ File8=Z:\Shared Videos\Amy Winehouse - Rehab.flv _
_ Title8=Amy Winehouse - Rehab _
_ Length8=221 _
_ File9=Z:\Shared Videos\Amy Winehouse - Our Day Will Come_ Amy Winehouse Tribute.flv _
_ Title9=Amy Winehouse - Our Day Will Come Amy Winehouse Tribute _
_ Length9=191 _
_ File10=Z:\Shared Videos\Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own.flv _
_ Title10=Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own _
_ Length10=194 _
_ File11=Z:\Shared Videos\Peg - Steely Dan - The Making Of.flv _
_ Title11=Peg - Steely Dan - The Making Of _
_ Length11=520 _
_ File12=Z:\Shared Videos\Katie Melua - The Flood.flv _
_ Title12=Katie Melua - The Flood _
_ Length12=240 _
_ File13=Z:\Shared Videos\Jon and Vangelis - I Hear You Now.flv _
_ Title13=Jon and Vangelis - I Hear You Now _
_ Length13=312 _
_ NumberOfEntries=13 _
_ Version=2 _

_   _

Anything obvious wrong?

6

peterpi wrote:

 

Anything obvious wrong?

Yes, every one of those are absolute paths.

7

TonyPh12345 wrote:

peterpi wrote:

 

Anything obvious wrong?

Yes, every one of those are absolute paths.

 

OK, thanks Tony. I 'm not sure how to put that right.

I have found a work around, as it happens. If I press the options button, when a file is playing, I can select repeat, random or random repeat, which is all I want to do, I’ll just put the files I want to play in a folder and navigate to that one.

Pete

8

peterpi wrote:> OK, thanks Tony. I 'm not sure how to put that right.

 

Use Playlist Creator, then go to Settings/Playlist Details and in the dropbox  under “Saving playlist entries” select:

Relative (e.g. “…\MyMusic\MySong.mp3”)

Then create your playlist.

This is a relative path:

…\Shared Videos\Simply Red Enough.avi      (starts with "…")

_   _

_
_This is a absolute path:

Z:\Shared Videos\Simply Red Enough.avi    (starts with a drive letter, ie “Z:”)

_   _

Then all you have to do is to add the playlist anywhere on your drive where your music is, then when browsing music, press the Green button on the remote, then select Filter/Playlist.

1 Like
9

Thanks for the info. I shall try that in the morning (its 2.40 am now).

Pete

10

Tinwarble wrote:

Relative path:

 

…\Music\Scouting for Girls\This Ain’t A Love Song.mp3

 

Absolute path:

 

C:\Users\Public\Music\The Trammps\Disco Inferno.mp3

Thanks, that’s what I thought he meant.  So, guess what?  All my playlists have an absolute path and the WD media player plays 'em all.  No problemo.  Here’s the details of my situation/conditions that makes it all work for me:

I create my playlists using iTunes, then I copy them to the drive connected to the media player and put them in a folder called Playlists.  Bingo, the media player will play any playlist I select from the listing.

Here are the first few lines of a 100-song m3u playlist generated by iTunes.

:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:180,The Last Mile of the Way - Soul Stirrers - Various Artists - Hyena Records / Kufala Recordings
F:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Various Artists - Hyena Records _ Kufala\Gospel Music\05 The Last Mile of the Way - Soul S.mp3
#EXTINF:299,One Love - Playing for Change
F:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Playing for Change\Songs Around the World\02 One Love.mp3
#EXTINF:386,Tenors, Anyone? - Bob Florence Limited Edition
F:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Bob Florence Limited Edition\With All the Bells and Whistles\05 Tenors, Anyone_.mp3
#EXTINF:184,Sweet And Lovely - Greta Matassa
F:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Greta Matassa\Favorites From A Long Walk\03 Sweet And Lovely.mp3
#EXTINF:171,Baby Please Don’t Go - Tom Rush
F:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Tom Rush\Blues, Songs & Ballads\1-23 Baby Please Don’t Go.m4a
#EXTINF:317,Far From The Arms of Hunger - Jackson Browne
F:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Jackson Browne\Time The Conqueror\10 Far From The Arms of Hunger.mp3

. . . etc, etc, for the rest of the playlist of 100 songs. 

Notice that the files are all designated to be on drive F – that is the drive they are on, on my PC where iTunes is located.  Well, the exact same folders/songs are on a drive connected to the media player, and it is not called drive F – the media player thinks of it as USB2.  The songs are in the same-name folders path as on my PC, because the fiies on the media player drive are a copy of what is on drive F, and the folders are in sync with one another.  This structure likely helps the situation.  Obviously, “Drive F”  Is ignored by the media player when it plays through the playlist and that’s GOOD!

I can burn through playlists rather quickly, so I make 5 at a time that lasts me a week or so.  This is so easy to do with iTunes.  I have a large collection of music, so I like to listen to totally random playlists, and by using iTunes DJ, they get listened to that way.

ITunes DJ allows playlists up to 100 tracks in size, and that is what I make.and copy to my drive in a mattter of a few minutes.  To further refine my playlists I select them from an iTunes Smart playlist, where I can include my entire library exept thngs as podcasts, certaun albums, artists, genres, etc. I do not want in my DJ playlists.

BTW, I had first tried making playlists using Windows Media Player, but it really is poor for this sort of stuff; especially annoying is it cannot handle any song with foreign characters in the title.  It eliminated over 200 songs it skipped over.  iTunes and iTunes DJ do exactly what I want them to do.  They are perfect for the task.

Creating playlists using this method is a piece of cake.  Try it and let me know how it works for you.

11

mike27oct wrote:> [snip]> Obviously, “Drive F”  Is ignored by the media player when it plays through the playlist and that’s GOOD!

Interesting.  I didn’t know it’d do that.

However, that trick will only work if the playlist files are on the ROOT of the specific volume or share.  Otherwise, it’s back to doing relative playlists.

1 Like
12

TonyPh12345 wrote:

mike27oct wrote:> [snip]> Obviously, “Drive F”  Is ignored by the media player when it plays through the playlist and that’s GOOD!

Interesting.  I didn’t know it’d do that.

 

However, that trick will only work if the playlist files are on the ROOT of the specific volume or share.  Otherwise, it’s back to doing relative playlists.

 

This is where the Playlists folder is located, along with other folders off the root with names like Music, Videos, Photos, etc.

An added benefit:  if I double-click on one of these playlists on the media player drive from the PC that created it, WMP will play the playlist tracks that are also on the PC’s drive F.

In the past, I have created relative playlists from the iTunes-generated playlists.  It was easy using MS Word to find and replace the drive designation with “nothing” as a global find and replace.  These playlists also played fine on the media player drive.  So, if anyone really needs relative playlists they could still use iTunes to initially generate them.

1 Like
13

Followed your suggestions and cracked it.

Thanks to all of you who contributed.

Pete