Problem with playlists ( M3U, M3U8's)

Dunno, all I know is I can only get it to work when it’s a flat structure on the Fuze+. Manually created, or winamp created.

And to be truthful, considering winamp essentially wrote the filespec for m3u, and it works on everything except the two Fuze+ I have is beyond me.  I will say I have tried them in MTU, MCP and Auto mode, and I haven’t seen it behave any differently in either. The paths are relative to m3u/m3u8’s in all instances , not root relative or global.  And as I said before … I did get a call back from someone at SanDisk and did have the error confirmed.

I’d love it if it was a simple fix like wrong firmware or something, but as of right now I can confirm out least 4 fuze+ that all behave the same and I’ve tried toggling every setting I can think of.

can you PM me the m3u file you created so I can take a look at it?

I’m still having this problem. I have a playlist where some of the songs are in the same directory as the m3u file (these songs are recognized) and some in folders (these are not recognized). Could it be that the songs are in nested folders? Example:

-playlist.m3u

-song1.mp3

-song2.mp3

-Artist1\Album1\song3.mp3

-Artist2\Album2\song4.mp3

There are also spaces in most of the folder names and song names if it makes a difference. Example:

Alice In Chains\Greatest Hits\02 - Them Bones (Album Version).mp3

Suggestions?

Bueller? Anyone?

Okay, to simplify things as much as possible, I created a simple playlist the contents of which are:

#EXTM3U #EXTINF:,Block Rockin Beats Chemical Brothers-Block Rockin Beats.MP3 #EXTINF:,Block Rockin Beats 1 1\Chemical Brothers-Block Rockin Beats 1.MP3 #EXTINF:,Block Rockin Beats 2 1\2\Chemical Brothers-Block Rockin Beats 2.MP3

When I go to the playlist within the player’s interface, the only song listed is the first one, which is in the same directory as the m3u file. I’ve run restore and format and re-copied all of my songs, and the problem still exists.

If I add songs to the “Music Go List”, from within the Fuze+'s interface, songs within subfolders show up just fine. Unfortunately, the Music Go List file in the Playlists folder contains nothing in it, so this playlist must be maintained somewhere else on the player, so I can’t determine how it lists songs in subfolders.

Are there any users that have been successful in creating their own playlists and have songs within subfolders show up?

If you create the m3u exactly like i did in the post linked below it works.

http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/Fuze/Problem-with-playlists-M3U-M3U8-s/m-p/221946/highlight/true#M1628

I created this one, which is similar enough to yours that it should work:

#EXTM3U

1\1234.mp3

1\2\Reaction.mp3

Neither song shows up - the playlist is listed as empty. There is obviously a bug in the m3u parser somewhere, although the fact it works for some people (well, at least drlucky) and not others seems bizarre.

The Fuze+ also seems to store a copy of the parsed m3u data somewhere else, because I noticed I edited an existing m3u file on the player (from a text editor) and the songs listed in that playlist on the Fuze+ interface did not reflect those changes. It only showed the changes if I deleted the m3u file and replaced it.

So is there anyone else besides drlucky that has been successful with this?

Forget M3U playlists, they do not work with subfolders.  drlucky must have a different O.S. to the general public.

Connect to the computer in MTP mode.

Select & right click a track to include in your list & select Create Playlist.

Rename the New Playlist.pla as Your List.pla.

Move Your List.pla to the Playlists folder.

Click Your List.pla & click Reference tab.

Left drag other tracks to add to the Reference tab.

When finished click OK.

Disconnect from the computer & Your List.pla will now play across subfolders.

As of O.S. 02.36.03 I can’t get this to work into the microSD card.

AS of the latest firmware, still does not work. I could dance around and try to make files till the cow’s come home but here’s the upshot.

At the end of the day I put three files in a subfolder, add them to a winamp list and save the file as an m3u or m3u8 to the root of the device or the SD card , and it will not play. By defination the moment this happens it doesn’t support m3u. Winamp came up with and maintains the specification at this point, so the closest that can be said is that it supports some m3u-like file spec.

I think the most damning of all is simply that I can pop the SD card into my Fuze, my friend’s clip, and the Fuze+. The only device it doesn’t work on is the Fuze+.

I’ve reset the device, used the updater to download the latest firmware, but the simple fact remains is that the Fuze+ is the only device in my somewhat large arsenal of m3u reading devices that fails to be able to decipher the playlists on my SD cards in anything other than a flat file structure.

FUZE+ “Playlist Empty” - Same problems 6 months on???

No luck here with ANY playlists except the only one that shows any entries is “Music Go List”, and I can find where it’s located so can see the contents…

I’ve tried WMP / J RIVER / WINAMP - MTP MSC USB Modes - all sort of differently formatted playlist, but none work (other than “Music Go List”)

Shame really as I have 5.5K MP3’s and need playlist of DECADE 60’s / DECADE 70’ / PART5 / 5 STAR etc. etc. else it take ages to locate a song with no SEARCH option

I live in hope!!

you say you ahve tried windows media player playlists? I ahve no problems at all with WMP playlists. here are the instructions i use and done have any problems at all. honestly i tested M3U playlists as well and didnt see the issue. see my other posts in this thread. That said WMP playlists is the easiest way to go. 

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/946/kw/creating%20playlists#sync_playlist

Certainly it’s work around but it doesn’t relly address the problem. If we already have all our media in m3u(8) lists and we have all our other infrastructure working on it, its a problem. If my computer can play it, my phone can, my PS3 can, my old Fuze can, hell even my outdated 80 dollar car radio can, the fact that the fuze+ cannot is a problem.

As all the different formatting tricks. Great for troubleshooting and work arounds, but bottom line is if you can’t just save a few mp3’s onto the device or a card and make and save a playlist in winamp, it does not support m3u(8) files. End of story. The define e format and if it does not work each and everytime it simply isn’t compliant.

By the way, that’s still not technically using a windows playlist.  That’s creating a playlist in windows media and syncing it to wherever using the MTP api’s that are blackboxed within the device.

In the end, on the player it still results in the same storage as if you used drag and drop and created playlist, readable only by the device.  Bottom line is, the device is being treated and seems to have been designed to fuction in a vacuum, not an ecosystem of mutliple music avenues.

 If that’s the case, simple do this. do away entirely with MSC mode. In the current state it’s barely useful. Secondly, don’t support microSD cards other than radio cards. The way it works now, and the kind of support that is being listed here indicates that the port is very much designed to be a radiocard slot, and supporting other memory is much of an after thought. I’d say do away with the slot entirely but I know Sandisk is trying to get what it can out of radio slot in terms of revenue, and I have nothing against them for that.

I’ll be honest, at this point the Fuze+ seems like flop to me. IT’s a neat litte video player but I got other devices for that .  Both the support and design seems to be very much geared to an MTP usage leaving MSC users with relatively lousy support. This is probably on the basis that Windows environments are a large percentage of the user base. But there are also windows users who do NOT want to run in MTP mode, who do not want to use blackboxed API’s (or use them as little as possible), and who do want the system to be compaitble devices that aren’t running Windows XP, Vista, or 7. 

SanDisk made a very nice little player here. However, simply put, it’s advertized as something it’s not. It doesn’t have the openness that we’ve come to expect from the Sansa lines and it’s not being advertised as it’s primary focus is on a very narrow ecosystem. My problem is that I am an advanced user, with all kinds of passive syncing and adding being done from multiple sources, with multpile playblack routes and it requires a certain level of standards being adhered to. This is sadly, a device designed for the “tell me how to do it and don’t explain” crowd and so far has not done a great job scaling up to a more advanced crowd.

Thanks Dr. Lucky - I won’t give up - yet! - I’ll give it a go - thanks for your response :smiley:

This is very informational, this threads are very interisting. Thanks for sharing it guys.

@bryan88 wrote:

This is very informational, this threads are very interisting. Thanks for sharing it guys.

You must be very bored. You’ve been on a posting spree lately saying virtually nothing in any of them. _ Please find something else to do if you have nothing to contribute here. _

@tapeworm wrote:


@bryan88 wrote:

This is very informational, this threads are very interisting. Thanks for sharing it guys.


You must be very bored. You’ve been on a posting spree lately saying virtually nothing in any of them. _ Please find something else to do if you have nothing to contribute here. _

 

 

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one doing this lately.

Obviously the latest firmware did not fix paths in M3U playlists. Failing this I would be happy if there was just some way to build working playlists under linux, and not have to touch Micro$#!+ in any way, including vmware. And I do not mean, copying the music to a common folder. That winds up creating 2 copies of the music in the artist and album browsers. If someone knows of a way, please let me know.

The only playlists that work correctly on the fuze+ are .pla playlists.  These may be made with Windows Media Player (Ugh) or they may be constrcted directly with Windows Explorer or WinAmp.

After doing much research and testing it seems clear that the fuze+ (firmware 2.38.6) still is unable to read useful m3u playlists in MSC mode (such playlists only work if the listed songs are in the same directory as the playlist, i.e., any path component is not parsed/handled correctly by the fuze+).

However, I found that I can import m3u playlists into the gMTP program (native app under linux; I’m currently on ubuntu-10.11) and write them to the fuze+. That’s at least something, isn’t it?

gMTP issues a bunch of warnings (that the playlist cannot be updated - this happens when *reading* lists from the device). However, I just ignore the warnings and it seems to work fine. When I connect the fuze+ then it shows up in nautilus (MSC mode)

which is how I normally use it. When I issue ‘connect’ from gMTP then it automatically ejects the usb-storage device and connects in MTP mode - nice. Be patient, though: some operations (connecting, writing playlist) take a while…

FWIW: The first lines of an .m3u playlist (I found that when exporting an existing playlist from the fuze+ to gMTP and storing as ‘m3u’) show (<title> is the title of the playlist as it appears on the fuze+; regardless of the file name):

#GMTPPLA: <title>

Music/<Artist>/<Album>/<song>.mp3

Relative to Fuze Plus firmware release 02.38.06A:

Play lists only work for music files stored in the Music Folder at the very next level down, e.g.,

\music

.playlist.mu3

.song.mp3

\photo

\video

(etc.)

However, during testing of many different approaches, I found that one can store .mp3 files anywhere on the Fuze Plus (tested to 4 folder levels deep) and the Fuze software will find each song; only the playlist(s) will be listed not as desired.  

Also, significantly, I realized that the filename of the .mp3 file is not displayed on the Fuze (except if looking in FOLDERS under the MUSIC folder types) but rather the embedded file title in the .mp3 file itself.  This means that one can generate playlists using only the filename (as seen in Finder) under the Music folder, and yet still be able to select to play music by artist, album, etc.

So, the only problem is going to arise if two .mp3 files have the same filename (as seen by Finder) but have different contents.  In the rare case (I presume), one can just change the filename of one of the songs before coping into the Music folder on the Fuze.  Fuze somehow is content to display the correct number of songs with the same embedded file title.

Many thanks to all you have gone into this Fuze Plus wilderness before me.  Your efforts have been very helpful to me.

If anyone needs additional explanation, I’ll be following this thread with declining frequency, but will be glad to help if I can.  Play on!