Reding playlist m3u

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Hi,

I’m having a problem with m3u playlist files.Any playlists that were on my harddrive when I first hooked it up to the WDTVLive work fine.But any new ones that I make and send over to it don’t work.I get an error that says that folder does not contain any files.I tried putting the m3u in different directories but no luck with it.The WDTVLive sees the playlist but can’t use it.Also tried making the playlist in Winamp,and Windows media player.Hope some one can point me in the right direction.

Thanks

2

Two things to remember for playlists:

  1. External URLs (such as radio streams) do not work – and in my case makes it impossible to play anything afterward until I unplug and plug back the WDTV Live to force a hard reboot.
  2. Paths to files inside playlist must be relative to the playlist (and not absolute paths) if you access them through network shares. Access through shares makes the absolute path invalid (e.g. your WDTV Live has no idea where is C:\Path\To\MyMusic, it only sees fileserver://MyMusicShare)

Good luck…

3

hello neutro

can you expand on your explanation? I opened my m3u list with Notepad and try to edit the paths…i tried everything but can seem to find the right one. 

this is the paste from original playlist:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:290,DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm -  Promise land

D:\music\DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm\DJ Flex live\4 - DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm -  Promise land.mp3

#EXTINF:148,David Vendetta - No sex

D:\music\David Vendetta\DJ Flex live\5 - David Vendetta - No sex.mp3

#EXTINF:201,VA-Disco Latino - Coraçao -missMp3-

D:\music\VA-Disco Latino- www.Bajandoalbums.com\DISCO LATINO\14 - VA-Disco Latino - Coraçao -missMp3- (2).mp3

#EXTINF:287,Eros Ramazotti & Tina Turner - Cosas de la Vida (Can’t Stop Thinking of You)

D:\music\Eros Ramazotti & Tina Turner\Todo Historias\1 - Eros Ramazotti & Tina Turner - Cosas de la Vida (Can’t Stop Thinking of You).mp3

#EXTINF:248,Paul Van Dyk - For An Angel

D:\music\Paul van Dyk\Unknown\00 - Paul Van Dyk - For An Angel.mp3

#EXTINF:220,Katy Perry - Hot N Cold [Bimbo Jones Remix]

D:\music\Katy Perry\One of the Boys Ep\7 - Katy Perry - Hot N Cold [Bimbo Jones Remix].mp3

#EXTINF:241,Lady GaGa - Poker Face (Aleko’s Radio Edit)

D:\music\Lady GaGa\Poker Face (Remixes) (Promo CDS)\05 - Lady GaGa - Poker Face (Aleko’s Radio Edit).mp3

#EXTINF:183,Axwell, Ingrosso, Steve Angello, Laidback Luke, Deborah Cox - Leave The World Behind (Radio Edit)

D:\music\Axwell, Ingrosso, Steve Angello, Laidback Luke, Deborah Cox\Dancefloor FG Summer 2009\7 - Axwell, Ingrosso, Steve Angello, Laidback Luke, Deborah Cox - Leave The World Behind (Radio Edit).mp3

how should wd-live-friendly text/paths look like? My PC name is called “uzbek2” 

thanks

Simon

4

Let’s take for example the first item in the list. I’ll assume that you shared your D:\music folder and called this share “mymusic” (just so the name of the share is not the same as the name of the folder for the sake of this example). What the WDTV Live sees is a computer (uzbek2) with an available share called “mymusic” and all directories under it; it doesn’t see any D: drive.

If you make a playlist referring to \uzbek2\mymusic\DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm\DJ Flex live\4 - DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm -  Promise land.mp3,  I *guess* (not sure) the WDTV Live would be able to see it. Not sure again if your local PC will be able to play that file since it does uses network notation.

What would work though is put your playlist in the D:\music\playlists folder, which the WDTV Live will see as mymusic/playlists. Now the trick is using relative paths (relative to the location of the playlist). So the first item would then be:

…/DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm\DJ Flex live\4 - DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm -  Promise land.mp3

The first directory is “…” which means to go up one level in the hierarchy (since we were in mymusic/playlists, that means mymusic/).

This playlist would work both on your PC and the WDTV Live, but only if you leave it at this location (that’s the caveat with relative paths instead of absolute ones). If you don’t want to screw up your existing playlists, maybe you can just make a D:\music\wdtvplaylists folder and copy your playlists there, and then just find & replace D:\music whith “…” everywhere.

There may also be easier solutions provided by one or other media server software, since those are responsible to expose lists of media to the WDTV Live.

Hope this helps.

5

thanks for your promt answer. ok i spent last 2hrs trying to figure this out.

1st method with “\uzbek2\mymusic\DJ Flex & Sandy…” did not work.

2nd method made sense so i did everything what you told:  

  • made a folder D:\music\playlists with a share name “playlists3” which WD recognized (when entering UZBEK2 under network share next to mymusic and movies folders)

  • i made a playlist called test.m3u in the folder above with relative paths (i.e. …/DJ Flex & Sandy Wilhelm\DJ Flex live\4 - DJ Flex …). I recommend using FREE software Playlist Creator 3.6 where you can make relative lists by choice)

  • However when i pressed on test3.m3u entering from playlists3 share folder the message was still “this folder is empty” nothing was playing!!!

HOWEVER - I FOUND A WAY TO PLAY IT!

out of curiosity i went into “mymusic” under network share and scrolled down (through hundreds of folders!) to the folder “playlists” where my test.m3u was (physically) located. and guess what! playlist plays (both on PC and WD)

any advise on why?

thanks

Simon

ps this is how my m3u list looks:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:237,Let It Be… Naked - 1 - let it be

…\music\11\Let It Be… Naked\1 - 11 - let it be.mp3

#EXTM3U#EXTINF:237,Let It Be… Naked - 1 - let it be

…\music\11\Let It Be… Naked\1 - 11 - let it be.mp3

note forward slashes - IMPORTANT!

6

Well if you share D:\mymusic\playlists, the top level directory of that share is the “playlists” folder. Since you specify “…” in the paths, and that means going up one level, it just can’t access anything and says the folder is empty.

Whereas when you go through “mymusic”  and then “playlists”,  the “…” makes sense as you are able to go up to the “mymusic” directory.

One ugly workaround for your “hundreds of directories” problem is to name the directory “AAA playlists” or something like that. Call that the phone directory method :slight_smile: The better way would be to use a media server software which would display your files more intelligently than just listing all your directories.

Sorry for the confusion with forward- and backward-slashes; it depends if your PC is Windows-based or Linux (or Mac)-based.

And good find for Playlist Creator, the ability to create relative playlists automatically is great.