Playlist for Mac on Clip Jam

I’ve owned several SanDisk Clips - (Clip, Clip+ and now Clip Jam). Before the Jam, I’ve never had any problem creating and playing playlists for mp4 podcasts.  But I cannot figure it out on the Jam.

On my old Clip+, I merely created an m3u file in Mac’s TextEdit and dragged it over, along with all the podcasts to the audiobooks folder on the Clip+.

It worked with or without the #EXTINF: prefix. It worked every time.

But my tricks don’t work on the Jam. No matter where I place the podcasts or m3U file, it doesn’t work:

  • I can get the Jam to recognize the playlist
  • Sometimes it shows/plays the first song on the list
  • Usually the playlist is empty

I don’t have regular acess to a windows machine, so the example in the owners manual is no help. 

What changed in the Jam that the old way no longer works? How can I make playlists on a Mac?

Thanks for the help

Playlists on the JAM and SPORT need to be M3U. The playlist must be in the same folder as the songs, so a playlist with songs from both card memory and internal memory won’t work. 

The Jam and Sport have three Go lists that you can create on the player. Each can hold up to 100 songs. Unlike the Clip+ though, only one song at a time can be added to a Go List. I don’t use playlists on my Clip Sport, but do use them on my Rockboxed Clip+ and Clip Zip. 

There seem to be plenty of  issues with how podcasts and audiobooks are treated on the Clip+ and Clip Zip. There might not even be support for playlists for podcasts or audiobooks on the Clip Sport and Clip Jam. I suggest that you put the podcasts in the music folder if you want to use playlists with them. Are these podcasts properly tagged? If the player is still returnable, you might want to consider returning it and getting a Clip+ or Clip Zip. There might also not be complete MP4 support, and might be issues with playing long MP4 files. The Clip sport and Clip Jam are much more geared to playing mp3 files than MP4 ones.

I am unable to get playlist to work on the Clip Jam when creating the .m3u file using TextEdit on the Mac as the original poster stated.  I don’t have a Windows PC.  

I have all the songs and the .m3u file in the Clip Jam Music folder but the Clip Jam does not show any songs in the playlist.  The .m3u file has all the songs listed (no folder structure listed).  I even tried putting everyting in the Clip Jam Playlist folder to no avail.

Did you get playlist to work on the Jam?

Here is one idea that involves the use of VLC player software for Mac.

Available at this web-link:   http://get.videolan.org/vlc/2.2.1/macosx/vlc-2.2.1.dmg

  1. On your Clip Jam, create a sub-folder of music files under the MUSIC folder.

  2. Point VLC to that new music sub-folder on your Clip Jam. Load the music files into the playlist window.

  3. Follow the instructions at this web-link and save a m3u playlist inside that music sub-folder on your Clip Jam.

          http://www.stufinnis.co.uk/vlcplaylist.html

Maybe you could report back here and a few other SanDisk Form members will provide helpful advice?

Unfortunately this doesnt work, as the clip jam says “file format not supported” when you select the m3u playlist from the FOLDER menu.

If you select the playlist from the MUSIC Menu it is just empty.

FOLDER mode does not execute playlist files.

MUSIC mode only plays playlist files saved under the Music folder in the internal memory of the player

CARD mode only plays playlist files saved under the Music folder in the micro SD card in the player.

The specific playlist file should only list music files that are saved in the corresponding memory location (internal OR external).

      I hope this helps…

Use MUSIC mode for playlists in the player internal memory.

Use CARD mode for playlists in the micro SD card.

ALSO, make sure the m3u playlist file is saved in a subfolder that contains the listed music files inside the Music folder.

Maybe take a look at my new message discussing the use of Mp3Tag software compiled by WineBottler for OSX.

   http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/SanDisk-Clip-Sport/Creating-m3u-Playlists-for-Clip-Sport-on-a-Mac/m-p/355154

Hello.  Sorry to re-open an old topic, but I only recently hit this issue.  I didn’t find anything useful on this forum, so having discovered the cause I thought I’d put it here for those that follow.

In their simplest form, M3U playlists are just text files where the first line is:

#EXTM3U

and the following lines list the names of the mp3 files.

The problem seems to be that the ClipJam expects a DOS format text file (with 2 characters that mark the end of a line), and rejects any in UNIX format text file (where there is only one character at the end of a line).

You need to look for a tool that can change the format of the playlist file.  On Cygwin and Linux (and I assume a Mac) you can use the unix2dos tool from the command line - which you would use like this:

    unix2dos PLAYLIST.M3U

Thank you for this, now I managed to do it!

I have a relatively new mac mini and clip sport. OK I only made one (1) succesful playlist so far, but it is a version I have tried to make thousand times. 

So here is how I did it:

I use the program MP3Tag that I downloaded for free to make a playlist in m3u format. The playlist is placed in the folder where the music is. I go to Finder and move it to the folder “playlist”

I open it with Textedit. I take care that it is “not rich text”, there are several places in Textedit where you command this, and you have to take care when you save.

Now here is what I did that your comment showed me: Instead of copying one and one line and move it, I copied the line from after the hashtag to the hashtag on the next line, so that the coding of lineshift that the MP3Tag-program made will still be there. 

Example:

The playlist looks like this, with the files directly from MP3Tag, but I want to play the Jordan song twice.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:177,Kristin Asbjornsen - Some day I ll carry you home
Music\kristin asbjornsen\carry you home.mp3
#EXTINF:238,Kristin Asbjornsen - Im gonna cross the river of Jordan
Music\kristin asbjornsen\river of Jordan.mp3
#EXTINF:152,Kristin Asbjornsen - In the kitchen
Music\kristin asbjornsen\In The Kitchen.mp3

I copy these lines:

EXTINF:238,Kristin Asbjornsen - Im gonna cross the river of Jordan
Music\kristin asbjornsen\river of Jordan.mp3

Then I put them after the hashtag for the kitchen-song, so the whole playlist is like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:177,Kristin Asbjornsen - Some day I ll carry you home
Music\kristin asbjornsen\carry you home.mp3
#EXTINF:238,Kristin Asbjornsen - Im gonna cross the river of Jordan
Music\kristin asbjornsen\river of Jordan.mp3
#EXTINF:238,Kristin Asbjornsen - Im gonna cross the river of Jordan
Music\kristin asbjornsen\river of Jordan.mp3
#EXTINF:152,Kristin Asbjornsen - In the kitchen
Music\kristin asbjornsen\In The Kitchen.mp3

Now I will start a subscription to iTunes to figure out which songs to buy. Finally!