Problem with playlists ( M3U, M3U8's)

Yes, If a music file linked in a m3u/m3u8 playlist happens to exist in the same exact directory as that list-file, it will show up in the list.

Kalidor I noticed you are using m3u8 playlists. Would you mind telling me which application you are using to create these, so that music with foreign characters show up in my Fuze. I have been looking for a linux application that would do that and have not found anything.

Hi Whitepine,

 Unfortunatly, I don’t think I will be of much help. For testing purposes I’ve been using winamp. To actually populate my SD cards / player I have a custom program I’ve been working on that takes the lists I made and saved on my NAS, transfers the linked files, then creates a new m3u8 on the sd card, by creating an empty file with the BOM up front and linking all the copied files.  Haven’t actually done much of the management on my *nix boxen.

That said, I believe both VLC and XMMS will save m3u8’s. VLC saves the wrong file extension (at least on windows) but the BOM is still present so you just need to redo the extension for devices/apps that require the m3u8 file to use the m3u8 extinsion.  Sorry for not being as much of a help.

-Kal

I just created an M3U playlist as follows for a test and it is working no problem. I created 3 folders in the music folder  for this test i used  folders 1, 2, and 3  each containing one song that is in the playlist along with other songs that are not and the m3u playlist is in the root of the music folder. 

can you give this a try and let us know if it works for you. 

the m3u playlist looks exactly like this

#EXTM3U

1\25 to life.mp3

2\almost famous.mp3

3\cold wind blows.mp3

to me that’s not much better than the existing solutions which is to use MTP transfer with WMP. I want to be able to go into the Fuze + in usb mode and create playlists from music I already have on my player.

Hi drlucky.

Thanks for checking. Let me make sure I actually did what you told me to. Here’s the file system as I manually created on my SD Card:

  • TEST SDCard

 |- [Music]

        |–  drlucky.m3u

        |—- [1]

        |         |— 25 to life.mp3

        |

        |—- [2]

        |         |— almost famous.mp3

        |

        |—- [3]

                 |—- cold wind blows.mp3

I created the M3U by copy pasting your message :

<================>

#EXTM3U

1\25 to life.mp3

2\almost famous.mp3

3\cold wind blows.mp3

<================>

Results:

   VLC - Works OK

   Winamp - Works OK

   Car Stereo - Works OK

   My Fuze  - Works OK

   My Fuze+ - playlist <<Empty>>

   Wife’s Fuze+ - playlist <<Empty>>

So I guess no joy.

I also checked my firmware version to be on the safe side: 01.32.00 A  

My Apologies Markymays, I think I gave more weight to m3u/m3u8 part of the question then thinking of the procedure.

For myself,  I would normally (say for my fuze in which the m3u/m3u8 parser works perfectly) would just drag the audio files I want (or the folders within which they are) into my winamp playlist. Which I would then simply save as an m3u or m3u8 on the files system of which ever flash memory module you are using. (in MSC mode each would load as a seperate drive, and of course I am assuming by USB mode you mean MSC not MTP). Winamp is pretty smart and will save the file relationally instead of globally if its in the same file system (in other words won’t reference a drive letter if you are saving it in the same tree).

Of course the problem here is that in order for this to be of any use the parser has to work, which as of right now, I’ve seen no joy.

As far as MTP mode, your options are limited because MTP mode essentially accesses a bunch of blackboxed api’s within the device and those do your playlist for you. You have to rely on whichever program you are using to able to make proper use of those blackboxed interfaces, rather than dealing directly with the file system. (This of course has another nasty side effect in cases of the SD card. An SD card which has an MTP made playlist that I create on my Fuze+ simply won’t work one my Fuze without me redoing them on the latter device.)

I rambled a little with that last one and went techy. Let me know if I need to decode anything in there.

@kalidor wrote:

 

my SD Card:

 

  • TEST SDCard

 |- [Music]

        |–  drlucky.m3u

        |—- [1]

        |         |— 25 to life.mp3

        |

        |—- [2]

        |         |— almost famous.mp3

        |

        |—- [3]

                 |—- cold wind blows.mp3

 

 

 

can you try it on the internal memory? i am not using an SD card but that could be the issue here as well. 

Found my cable, copied drlucky.m3u and the three directories over to the internal memory.

I tried it against VLC and winamp and it worked fine.

Ejected the device, turned it off, pulled the sdcard (so there would be no uncertainties about which playlist it is).

Turned it on. Playlist still empty.


SANSA FUZEP

 |- [Music]

        |–  drlucky.m3u

        |—- [1]

        |         |— 25 to life.mp3

        |

        |—- [2]

        |         |— almost famous.mp3

        |

        |—- [3]

                 |—- cold wind blows.mp3

stick with it, mate, I’ve about given up :frowning:

Well, I did end up reporting this over the phone about a week after opening this thread, and referred the thread. I was told it would be sent off and did get someone who called back confirming some questions and replicating my findings.  The rewrite for the parser should be fairly straightforward and I am expecting it in the next firmware release. At this point I have trouble seeing it as a technical issue and being more of a ‘not important’ to the team lead issue, if it doesn’t show up.

If that’s what happens then I’m afraid the product’s sunk for me.

As it is, I am mostly sticking with my old V1 Fuze 'till I can get the SD cards from that working seemlessly in the Fuze+. Ironically, one of the main reasons I wanted to upgrade to the Fuze+ was to be able to use more of my music on my portable (wider format support), instead I get to use less of it.

@kalidor wrote:

The rewrite for the parser should be fairly straightforward and _ I am expecting it in the next firmware release. _

 

I wouldn’t. Once a bug/glitch/problem/issue is reported it takes time to confirm it, fix it and test it to make sure the ‘fix’ takes and doesn’t ‘break’ anything else. I doubt very seriously at this point in time that it would make the next update.; it’s probably already in the (QA) testing phase. No additional recoding is likely to be added.

Realistically, you’re probably looking at a few months to see any action on it.

not sure why it is not working on your. Like i said before m3u playlists work fine on my fuze+ if created like I described earlier in this post. if they cannot recreate your issues it is unlikely they can fix it. 

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?