Video Playlist

bierhoff23 · October 15, 2015, 1:57am

Hi,

Ive got a problem with playlists. I know you can create youtube playlists on the WD Live Hub, but is it possible to create a playlist of videos stored on the drive? I want to have a playlist of lets say 10 episodes of something. How is it possible to do this? If its not possible to be done on the drive itself, can i create one on my mac and copy it over?

I really appreciate your help.

Thanks.

Tinwarble · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

Yes, you can use Playlist Creator 3.6.2 to create the playlist, which is one of the easiest programs to create & edit playlists. Unders setting for the Playlist Creator, select “Playlist Details”, then under “Saving playlist entries” chose “Relative”.

pooksahib · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

Hi. I’ve installed Playlist Creator and made a .pls file which works fine on my PC (I have the same files there as are on my Hub). But how do I enable playlists on the Hub? I’ve copied the .pls file onto it, put it in a couple of different locations but can’t make it work. I’ve only seen this message: There is no media in the current folder. If someone could provide a ‘How To’ I’d be very grateful.

Tinwarble · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

Ok, first open Playlist Creator, then click on “Settings” then click on “File Types”, make sure that the extension of your file is in the “Active” list. If it’s not, add it from the the “Inactive” list and if you don’t see it there, then use “Create New file type” to add your extension.

Now click on “Playlist Details” and under “Saving playlist entries” in the dropdown box select “Relative (e.g. “…\MyMusic\MySong.mp3”)”, then click “Apply” then “OK”, now you can create your playlist.

At the bottom under “Name and type”, type in the name of your Playlist (ie: Tinwarbles Favorites) and chose in the dropbox whether you want the playlist to be a “.pls” or “.m3u” (I prefer .m3u, but that’s just me).

Now, on the side you wll see a + folder, +music note and +music note on a page. Click on the +folder if you want to add a whole folder or the +music note if you want to add a single file. The other is if you want to add a playlist to this playlist.

Once you have your playlist created, then chose your “Save location”, if you want to save it directly to the HUB, then chose the HUB as the save location. It shouldn’t matter were you save it, but I create a “Playlist” folder in my “Movies” folder just to be able to find them easily.

Once you have saved your playlist, go to the HUB and select “Filter/Sort” and filter by “Playlist”. If your playlist doesn’t show up, then go to Setup \ System \ Media Library, then select Clear Media Library. Once the library has recompiled you should be able to see your playlist.

zballz · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

But once you’ve managed to put you playlist on the hub, is there then anyway to add videos to that playlist from the hub? Like the way you can option->add to favorites when scrolling thru videos?

pooksahib · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

Many thanks, Tinwarble. I have a slightly odd problem though in that I don’t have 2 ethernet cables. I’ve been copying files to the Hub using an external HDD. The files originate from my PC’s L Drive and so the playlist file I create looks like this: #EXTM3U #EXTINF:323, - - L:\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\07.avi #EXTINF:185, - - L:\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\17.avi Presumably the “L:” needs to be changed. But to what? Supplementary question: If you have, say, 5 folders in Hub/Videos called A-E, can one playlist handle files from each of those 5 folders? And where’s the best place to store the playlist file - directly in Hub/Videos or within folder A maybe? Continued thanks…

Tinwarble · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

zballz wrote:

But once you’ve managed to put you playlist on the hub, is there then anyway to add videos to that playlist from the hub? Like the way you can option->add to favorites when scrolling thru videos?

No, the HUB doesn’t have any options to create or modify playlist. Therefore the only way to modify them is to use Playlist Creator from your PC.

The only way to create any type of playlist from the HUB is to add to Queque, but then you can only create one playlist that way.

Tinwarble · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

pooksahib wrote:
Many thanks, Tinwarble. I have a slightly odd problem though in that I don’t have 2 ethernet cables. I’ve been copying files to the Hub using an external HDD. The files originate from my PC’s L Drive and so the playlist file I create looks like this: #EXTM3U #EXTINF:323, - - L:\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\07.avi #EXTINF:185, - - L:\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\17.avi Presumably the “L:” needs to be changed. But to what? Supplementary question: If you have, say, 5 folders in Hub/Videos called A-E, can one playlist handle files from each of those 5 folders? And where’s the best place to store the playlist file - directly in Hub/Videos or within folder A maybe? Continued thanks…

The L:\ doesn’t need to changed to anything, but you do need to change your settings to “Relative”. As I said above, on Playlist Creator, go to Settings, then click on “Playlist Details” and in the dropbox under “Saving playlist entries” change it to “Relative”.

This will give you an out put of …\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\07.avi which tells it ignore the drive letter and just look for the folder structure and file. rather than L:\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\07.avi which tells it to look for it on a certain drive.

Also, if you copy it from a external drive to the HUBs internal drive, but you are using files on the external or your PC to create your Playlist, then you have to make sure that the file structure of the external drive and the HUB’s internal drive are exactly the same.

And, yes, you can create a playlist that will play files in different folders. It really doesn’t matter what folder your files are in, as long as you point the playlist to the correct folders that you files are in it will play any file you add to the playlist.

zballz · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

Tinwarble wrote:

No, the HUB doesn’t have any options to create or modify playlist. Therefore the only way to modify them is to use Playlist Creator from your PC.

The only way to create any type of playlist from the HUB is to add to Queque, but then you can only create one playlist that way.

Too bad. I guess that would be something for the ‘idea’-forum. The ability to create playlists - and add videos to them…

pooksahib · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

Thanks again, Tinwarble. I’ve always been using the ‘Relative’ setting. My latest (failed) Playlist attempt looks like this:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:18, - -

L:\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\02 cavewoman cigarette.avi

#EXTINF:148, - -

L:\TV Clips\The Sketch Show\04 sexchat line.avi

Folder structure is same on PC and Hub. As an experiment, I re-did the Playlist adding WDTVLiveHub prior to ‘TV Clips’ but to no avail – still getting the warning that this folder contains no media. (The only successful playlist I’ve had is with the Playlist and ALL my files within the same folder but that sort of defeats the purpose.)

As another experiment, I created an ‘Absolute’ Playlist. The text is identical to Relative. Can that be right? My PC is 64bit so maybe Playlist Creator isn’t working properly…

Have you any further thoughts?

zballz · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

So - I’ve added a “create video playlist” in the idea section. Please vote, if you’d like to see this addition to the HUB in future FW…

Tinwarble · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

No, your playlist should look like this:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:18, - -

…\The Sketch Show\02 cavewoman cigarette.avi

#EXTINF:148, - -

…\The Sketch Show\04 sexchat line.avi

With Relative you should not see the drive letter. Mine OS is Windows 7 64, so that shouldn’t matter. When you open the settings on Playlist Creator, do you have to change it to Relative everytime, or does it show as “Relative” when you open the settings. If it’s not outputting the playlist as shown above, then there may be a problem with P.C., and you may need to uninstall it then reinstall.

Here’s an example of one of my playlists:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:6847, - -
…\Comedy\DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS.mkv
#EXTINF:7053, - -
…\Action\EAGLE EYE.mkv
#EXTINF:7056, - -
…\Action\THE BOOK OF ELI.mkv
#EXTINF:5871, - -
…\Dreamworks\HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON.mkv
#EXTINF:7608, - -
…\Star Treks\STAR TREK XI.mkv
#EXTINF:7561, - -
…\Super Hero\IRON MAN 1.mkv
#EXTINF:7478, - -
…\Super Hero\IRON MAN 2.mkv
#EXTINF:5809, - -
…\Animation\LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS.mkv
#EXTINF:4763, - -
…\Animation\9.mkv
#EXTINF:6953, - -
…\Adventure Movies\PRINCE OF PERSIA.mkv

This files are on the HUBs drive in a folder named “Movies”, then in the folders as they are shown above. This is similar to how yours should be. And it should not show the drive letter if you have it selected to output as “Relative”.

pooksahib · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

Hello again, Tinwarble. Firstly, I really appreciate your patience and your invaluable assistance. It’s good to know there are people like yourself out there willing to help others with what can often be (and has been here) truly infuriating tasks.

Now then, I have good news and strange news. The good news is that I deleted ‘L:’ from each affected line and replaced it with ‘…’. I then put the m3u file into a folder called ‘This Folder Contains An M3U File’ (!), copied that folder into the first available option on the Hub i.e. WDLiveHub and - ta-da - my experimental Playlist works a treat.

The strange news: no matter what I do, Playlist Creator includes the Drive Letter. The Relative setting appears on start-up. I changed it to Absolute and back again (ensuring to click Apply), did a fresh install but to no avail. Most odd. Doing Playlists for real will be a pain if I have to manually remove the drive letters. Do you know of a good alternative Creator I could try?

Cheers and continued thanks.

pooksahib · October 15, 2015, 3:48am

I sent an email to the chap behind Playlist Creator who provided the solution as to why my ‘Relative’ playlists weren’t written properly:

“Usually this is because the playlist and the music files are located on
different drives. For example playlist on drive C: and music files on
drive D:. In this case it’s not possible to create a relative playlist.
Ensure that playlist and music files are located on the same drive.”

Matter sorted!