Playlists on Linux...

… are the PITA that I expected them to be but they can be done. I have both Rhythmbox and Audacity installed. I could not get Rhythmbox to create or export playlists that the Fuze would recognise.

The native Audacity playlist is also not recognised by the Fuze either. To create playlists in Linux that the Fuze will recognise:

  1. Load the songs you want in the Audacity playlist
  2. Save the playlist adding .m3u to the end of the playlist name
  3. It does not matter if you tick the “Relative path” when saving the playlist, it doesn’t.
  4. Edit the m3u file with a text editor
  5. Replace from the root folder up to your music folder with nothing
  6. Replace all the forward slashes (/) with backslashes ()
  7. Add a blank line to the end or the Fuze won’t recognise the last song.

The file should end up looking like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:212,Show Me Love
Ministry_Of_Sound\Anthems_CD1\01_Show_Me_Love.ogg
#EXTINF:235,Passion
Ministry_Of_Sound\Anthems_CD1\02_Passion.ogg
#EXTINF:255,Make The World Go Round
Ministry_Of_Sound\Anthems_CD1\03_Make_The_World_Go_Round.ogg

If anyone knows an better easier way then PLEASE let me know.

Ok I tried again last night and found out that Rhythmbox can export the playlist as an m3u. It is REALLY obvious and can’t believe I missed it, brain fart I guess.

You still have to edit the m3u file with a text editor to remove the file listing from the root folder and replace the forward slashes with back slashes but Rhythmbox keeps the list of playlists on the left hand side so they are alot easier to update than using Audacity.

Conclusion: Playlists ■■■■ period, they sucked when I used Windows and they still ■■■■, it doesn’t matter what OS you use. The concept ■■■■■, the implementation ■■■■■.

The only way playlists would not ■■■■ is make it so that you can point the playlist at a directory (or multiple directory’s), the playlist automagically would scan and add/delete songs.

There’s a program called EasyTag that can generate playlists automatically for you, so you don’t have to edit existing m3u files that are in the wrong format or write them yourself.  The program will also allow you to edit the ID3 tags of your songs, and also change the version from 2.4 to 2.3, which was what I originally downloaded the program for to begin with (since Banshee rips cds with ID3v2.4, but the fuze reads ID3v2.3).

Hope that helps.

EDIT: fixed a spelling error.

Message Edited by muzicman on 01-22-2009 09:44 PM

@muzicman wrote:

There’s a program called EasyTag that can generate playlists automatically for you,

I was aware of the program EasyTag, I was not aware that it could create playlists. It is fantastic at doing it, the relative path works, and it has the option to tick “Use DOS directory seperator”.

Still the playlist concept ■■■■■ and I will never (almost) use it.

Hi,

This chap link has written a perl program with gui that creates playlists for the e280 range of players that I hacked to produce playlists for the Fuze it should work ok but then again I am not a coder, I have put it here for now:

playlist maker

Have fun,

Doug.

Message Edited by doug1212 on 01-24-2009 02:49 PM

I do use this but the playlist won’t play.  I get to the playlist, press <right> to see the list of songs and when I press <right> again it does nothing.  I’ve verified the .m3u is fine. 

Ideas?

–GPenguin

Instead of pressing the right button, have you tried pressing the center <Select> button?

just use EasyTag, put the playlist in your music folder and at the save playlist prompt, make sure the following is on> use reflective path and use dos directory

you mite wanna change this setting also

settings>prefrences>ID3TAG>Character set for writing id3tags>other>western iso 8559>//translit

make sure your workin on the files already in the player.

this works for me but i dunno if all that is necessary hah, i just know it works

I’ve tried using both windows media player and most of the linux varieties as well to try and create playlists on my Sansa Fuze. Finally got so irritated with the problem that I looked into how to do playlists with your every day text editor. I use “vi” and  the “unix2dos” utility. Simplistic but it works. On my SD card I found a directory labeled “MUSIC” and under it a second tier of directories including “Music” and “Playlists”. In the “Playlists” directory for each playlist I wanted I had to put two files: playlist_name.pla and playlist_name.pla.refs

The first is an empty file. On linux make it using the standard utility “touch”, i.e. cd to the Playlists subdir and “touch playlist_name.pla”.

for example “touch eurythmics.pla” to make a playlist of eurythmics songs. Then on my host computer I made the file “eurythmics.pla.refs”, ran the utility “unix2dos” on it and then copied it to the “Playlists” directory.

My current “eurythmics.pla.refs” file is:

/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/Eurythmics-babys_coming_back.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-here_comes_the_rain_again.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-love_is_a_stranger.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-the_king_and_queen_of_america.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-who_s_that_girl.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-dreams_are_made_of_this.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-i_need_a_man.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-missionary_man.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-when_tomorrow_comes.mp3
/mmc:1:/MUSIC/Music/Eurythmics/eurythmics-would_i_lie_to_you.mp3

NOTE that “mmc:1” refers to the sd card. “/mmc:0:” would refer to the fuze’s main memory.
And that this is a hard coded path. And that was pretty much it. Very simple. I believe but

haven’t tested the theory that the path names can handle embedded blanks. Don’t much

like blanks in general because they screw up a lot of file search and sorting. YMMV.

best regards