Playlist problem

Sometimes the playlists work fine, sometimes behave very strange.
Example:
I make playlist seen below, the last song on repeat three times(for sleep). I edit the playlist in textedit.
Only song six shows up on playlist on the mp3 player, and that song is repeated twice.

Some of the playlists were successfully edited, some are shown as "empty" on the mp3 player. I just can´t find out what is the difference between the two.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:177,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen - Someday I ll carry you home.mp3
#EXTINF:226,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen - Slow Day.mp3
#EXTINF:238,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen I m gonna cross the river of Jordan.mp3
#EXTINF:257,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen Moment.mp3
#EXTINF:152,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 13 In The Kitchen.mp3
#EXTINF:90,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 9 Quirky Waltz.mp3
#EXTINF:123,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 12 My Garden.mp3
#EXTINF:171,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3
#EXTINF:171,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3
#EXTINF:171,Kristin Asbjornsen -
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3

Could you check the tag versions of the files and which tag versions are understood by your player?
Some only understand V1, some do not like V2.4 tags ... some expect a particular encoding.
So it could be that the player simply skips files it does not understand.

But all the songs are downloaded at the same time. Some of them works and some not, and when I made a playlist were I didn´t change anything, it worked fine.
I had the same problem when I made a playlist of classes in Korean, one playlist worked fine, the other playlist only showed two classes instead of three, and no repeat. These were downloaded from the same source.

One of the underlying principles in electronic data processing is that if something is the same then it is treated in the same way as all the other identical objects.
You observed that this is not the case.
So now you (and only you) have to look for the differences.
I tried to give you a list of properties that might cause problems if they are not the same.
It is up to you to check these properties.
Also, if these files come from an external source, it might be worthwhile to check their integrity with tools like foobar, mp3diags and mp3val.

Thank you, I will try, but you know, not everybody are computerwizards. I will search and try to find out what is foobar mprdiags and p3valm although I would rather spend my time doing something else.

By the way, do you realize that everything written seems a little bit more unfriendly than the same sentence said out loud?

Anyway: If the same song works fine in one playlist and then not after I edit, it seems illogical that it is the tag that is the problem

Hello Toove,

I had a look at your playlist and one idea that comes to mind is that it uses the same extended information for the repeated tracks. This could be a problem with the Sansa player you're using so that it's treated as duplicate and filtered out.

Can you try replacing the last three entries by

#EXTINF:171,Kristin Asbjornsen - Copy 1
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3
#EXTINF:171,Kristin Asbjornsen - Copy 2
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3
#EXTINF:171,Kristin Asbjornsen - Copy 3
Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3

Not sure whether this helps, but it's worth giving a try :slight_smile:

Kind regards
– Florian

Thank you, but it didn´t work. Now that playlist is completely empty when I open it through Sansa :stuck_out_tongue:

But now I discovered that I can see the old filename in MP3 tag, only for that song that was repeated twice (not the song I wanted to repeat twice). However, now the playlist is completely empty.

So the previous name of the file is there in MP3tag, only of the song that repeated. The other songs previous filenames where not visible. And the previous filename is not visible in Finder or when I look through the mp3player.

That old file has no tags. All the other files have tags. But like I said, it doesn´t seem to make any difference now after I added the "copy" text.

I also have another playlist that is successful, with three classes in Korean that all are repeated twice. That playlist works fine.

I am having guests, so I will experiment more tomorrow.

I am editing in textedit – should I use another program where I might see hidden codes? Suggestion?

  1. The problem looks like as if it has nothing to do with Mp3tag.

  2. When you edit the playlist file with the "textedit" application, do make sure to store the playlist file as plain text file.
    The format resp. filetype of the playlist should be M3U or M3U8. It is better to save and use M3U8 format, because it uses Unicode character encoding required to store filenames in different foreign languages.

  3. Which types of playlist formats does the player understand?

  4. How does the player behave, when you does not apply the given m3u playlist, but let the player fetch each unique mp3 file directly from the directory, where the mp3 file is stored?

  5. Have a look at the list of given files, ... do they really exist on the storage medium having exact these relative path names?
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen - Someday I ll carry you home.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen - Slow Day.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen I m gonna cross the river of Jordan.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Kristin Asbjornsen Moment.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 13 In The Kitchen.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 9 Quirky Waltz.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 12 My Garden.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3
    Music\kristin asbjornsen\Factotum OST Kristin Asbjornsen - 2 Reunion.mp3

  6. If nothing has helped, then give these tools a chance ...
    http://m3uexporttool.sourceforge.net/
    https://sourceforge.net/projects/scpc/

  7. Come back and give us a report.

DD.20171003.1257.CEST

[quote name='DetlevD' post='99068']

  1. The problem looks like as if it has nothing to do with Mp3tag.

I am still messing around with this, I asked in a forum for the player, but that didn´t help, except that I see a lot of other people with Mac have the same problem.

Isn´t the program you suggested dowloading for making copies of the songs and keeping them? And for making super simple playlists? I can do that, it is the editing that messes things up. Maybe a textediting program other than Textedit is what I need? I tried to download the m3udropper, but no, it says it doesn´t work on a Mac, and although MP3 Tag works, I didn´t download Wine separately to make Mp3 Tag work. So maybe that is what I have to do, download Wine and then M3 Dropper, and see if that works?

So the problem is: I make a playlist and it works fine. I edit it and it works fine. I edit it a little bit more and suddenly it stops working. And one song randomly plays three times on a playlist it was supposed to play only once, and it doesn´t even play three times in order, but just pops up here and there. Very strange the whole thing. Other playlists works fine, like I said. And it is all in plain text. I tried several ways of changing the settings in Textedit and several ways of copying the text, using other programs to edit and glue it into Textedit and so on.

I have become intrigued now, although I would never have started this or even bought the player if I had known I would spend so much time on it. Maybe I will actually pay for someone who is a real wizard on mac, although it will cost as much as the player in the first place. My friend used to be responsible for the computers at the university and at the primeminister´s office, but she also doesn´t know, but she worked mostly with PC.

So I don´t know, still.

This observation let me think that there is something different going on.
Check out whether the player has a special setup for playing files (randomly repeating and such).

So take them as a template. Good luck anyway.

DD.20171027.0942.CEST

I did it! Hurrah!
I spent so much time on this!

OK I only made one (1) succesful playlist so far, but it is a version I have tried to make thousand times. The problem is that the coding of lineshift is not the same in the Mac as in the mp3-player.

So here is how I did it:

I use MP3Tag 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: 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!