m3u-8 playlist convertable to other formats?

[Kloppstock]

Hello, i have such a poor search filter management that i must ask here instead

can i convert m3u-8 playlist files into something else, meaning that i will not need Poweramp as an app on that unit..if you dont mind i would plan to buy a top-modern mp3 player that can handle Poweramp playlists???

 

[flyingdutchman]

M3u and m3u8 are interchangeable formats. They are text based and can be read by most (if not all) music players. You will not be able to use Poweramp playlists themselves but will have to export them. The same goes for android playlists. You may run into trouble trying to play them on a mp3 player though as file structures are likely to be different. You can look at the content of an m3u playlist by opening it with a text editor. 

 

[andrewilley]

As Theo has said, .M3U (and its basically identical but allowing for extended character sets, .M3U8) are pretty much universal and should work on any decent player. As its most simple, it is just a list of music filenames, including their directory paths, in lines of plain text. You can export Poweramp's internal playlists in that format for use with other players. If the other player does not properly detect .M3U8 files, rename them to .M3U.

Andre

[Kloppstock]

4 hours ago, andrewilley said:

As Theo has said, .M3U (and its basically identical but allowing for extended character sets, .M3U8) are pretty much universal and should work on any decent player. As its most simple, it is just a list of music filenames, including their directory paths, in lines of plain text. You can export Poweramp's internal playlists in that format for use with other players. If the other player does not properly detect .M3U8 files, rename them to .M3U.

Andre

Okay thanks, i might bump the thread when i get the new player..so you can tell me how to import the list ;-) 

[flyingdutchman]

I cannot imagine you would find a better player than Poweramp. As i said before, unless your new device is also android based, you will most likely have trouble uding the exported m3u playlists

[andrewilley]

Just to clarify, a Poweramp exported playlist looks something like this (the paths will vary a bit depending on your device's specific directory naming format):

/storage/extSdCard/MusicFolders/Singles/Here With Me - Dido.mp3
/storage/extSdCard/MusicFolders/Singles/Layla - Derek & The Dominos.mp3
/storage/extSdCard/MusicFolders/Singles/Nothing on but the Radio - The Alice Band.mp3
/storage/extSdCard/MusicFolders/Singles/Skinny Genes - Eliza Doolittle.mp3

M3U or M3U8 format makes no difference in most cases, they are interchangeable apart from one having a wider range of international characters available.

However if you copied the above playlist file to (for example) a PC, where music is stored in the local user's 'Music' folder, it would need to look more like this:

C:\Users\yourname\Music\Singles\Here With Me - Dido.mp3
C:\Users\yourname\Music\Singles\Layla - Derek & The Dominos.mp3
C:\Users\yourname\Music\Singles\Nothing on but the Radio - The Alice Band.mp3
C:\Users\yourname\Music\Singles\Skinny Genes - Eliza Doolittle.mp3

Mostly the "/" vs "\" separator formatting will be ignored, most programs will allow for either method.

One way to make playlists more portable is to use relative paths. The above absolute formats will find those specific music files no matter where on the device you happen to save the playlist.m3u file. But of course it won't find your songs if the music files get moved to a different directory (for example when you upgrade some Lollipop devices to Marshmallow, Android can alter the root path to the SD Card). To get around this, you could place your playlist.m3u file inside your overall music folder, and only quote the lower parts of the path as needed:

Singles/Here With Me - Dido.mp3
Singles/Layla - Derek & The Dominos.mp3
Singles/Nothing on but the Radio - The Alice Band.mp3
Singles/Skinny Genes - Eliza Doolittle.mp3

The above format would still work even if you copied your whole collection to a new folder, or even to a PC or other device, as long as the relative location between the playlist file and the music files does not alter.

Poweramp only saves the absolute path format, but I'm sure you can see it would only take seconds in a decent text editor to do a global search&replace and change the layout.

Andre

[Kloppstock]

Have anybody else tried and failed to from within Poweramp export your playlist to your phones internal storage/playlist folder.....i have concluded that if thats the case, 

then its cause you at the same time have an inserted SD-card in your phone...with the mp3 files on...that you have created the playlists of that you now tries to export to the internal memory but doesnt generate the files even though Poweramp think it was succefully done.

Cause as soon as i removed the SD-card and export it will release the playlists, and i can grab them and do a safe-copy to harddrive in case i get robbed, and then reinsert the SD-card.

That annoying solution was possible to perform til the day i inserted shell around my new phone...

(So its obviosly Poweramp in combination with certain SD-card types? that creates this lock down, and im not gonna change mine so i think Poweramp should adapt)

...that im to handicapped to wanna remove, can you come up with a solution to backup my Mp3u8 files out of this situation?

 

 

 

 

 

[andrewilley]

Exported backup playlists are normally saved to internal device storage (not SD Card), in the /Playlists/ folder. They use absolute paths so should be able to find your music files from wherever you want to move the resulting playlists, as long as you don't move your actual music files and folders around.

Andre

[Kloppstock]

On 2018-02-15 at 6:05 PM, andrewilley said:

"Exported backup playlists are normally saved to internal device storage (not SD Card)"

Hello, i think you must have missunderstood my prev text, if you would test to insert a SD-card and then press exort...the playlists might in fact not appear in internal playlist...until you redo this operation with SD-card removed, thats my problem and i hope its shared

Quote

 

 

 

 

 

 

in the /Playlists/ folder. They use absolute paths so should be able to find your music files from wherever you want to move the resulting playlists, as long as you don't move your actual music files and folders around.

Andre

Do you understand we correct now?

Regards Kloppstock

[andrewilley]

Still not quite sure - is your problem with Exporting playlists (to make portable files) or importing those M3U(8) files back to listen to in Poweramp?

Andre

[Kloppstock]

On 2018-02-16 at 7:57 PM, andrewilley said:

Still not quite sure - is your problem with Exporting playlists (to make portable files) or importing those M3U(8) files back to listen to in Poweramp?

Andre

The problem is that its impossible to get the M3U(8) files to appear on phones internal memory in playlist/create new playlist folder if the SD-card is not removed

first, if you have created the playlists out of tracks that resides on the SD-card it will block itself, and my problem is i cant remove the TPU shell of my phone??

to perform that..this is my first shell ever, don't know the possibilities, so i was thinking...you could explain why Power-amp behaves like this

[andrewilley]

I'm still not completely sure I understand the question (I think we possibly have different native languages).

First, if you remove an SD Card, Poweramp will think that all of the music files that it had previously scanned from there have now been "deleted". And as internal Poweramp Playlists are really just pointers to songs in PA's own Library, if a song is deleted from the library it will also disappear from any Playlist that it was previously in. This means that removing an SD Card, even for a short time, can wipe out any internal playlist contents which refer to those songs, and once gone the entries in the list cannot be recovered even when the SD Card is re-inserted and the song files get re-scanned.

To back up any internal lists though, use Settings > Folders and Library > Export Poweramp Playlists. This will create file-based copies of all your internally-created lists, which won't get deleted when an SD Card is removed. If you then copy those M3U8 files from the device's local 'Playlists' folder (where they will have been saved) onto your memory card, or to any other location that you have configured Poweramp to scan, then you will see those lists re-appear as a permanent File-Based Playlists, which Poweramp cannot further modify should the songs vanish for a while (such songs will stay in the list, but will obviously be unplayable until the physical MP3 file comes back). You can temporarily modify the internal versions of file-based lists within PA by the way, but as soon as the actual file is re-scanned for any reason it will revert to the filed copy.

Andre
 

[Kloppstock]

On 2018-04-02 at 10:46 AM, andrewilley said:

I'm still not completely sure I understand the question (I think we possibly have different native languages).

First, if you remove an SD Card, Poweramp will think that all of the music files that it had previously scanned from there have now been "deleted". And as internal Poweramp Playlists are really just pointers to songs in PA's own Library, if a song is deleted from the library it will also disappear from any Playlist that it was previously in. This means that removing an SD Card, even for a short time, can wipe out any internal playlist contents which refer to those songs, and once gone the entries in the list cannot be recovered even when the SD Card is re-inserted and the song files get re-scanned.

To back up any internal lists though, use Settings > Folders and Library > Export Poweramp Playlists. This will create file-based copies of all your internally-created lists, which won't get deleted when an SD Card is removed. If you then copy those M3U8 files from the device's local 'Playlists' folder (where they will have been saved) onto your memory card, or to any other location that you have configured Poweramp to scan, then you will see those lists re-appear as a permanent File-Based Playlists, which Poweramp cannot further modify should the songs vanish for a while (such songs will stay in the list, but will obviously be unplayable until the physical MP3 file comes back). You can temporarily modify the internal versions of file-based lists within PA by the way, but as soon as the actual file is re-scanned for any reason it will revert to the filed copy.

Andre
 

The goal is to make a safe-copy of my m3u8files to my hard-drive as before

I don't know what have happen but all of a sudden it copied the m3u8 files to internal-playlist folder, but an old problem reappeared anyway... jst to make my credibility

even worse from this phase i am with you :). The problem is now that only! my biggest m3u8 file on 138 kb refuse to be copied to hard drive from the playlist folder

"error during copying on file or folder - unidentified error"

its impossible to rename the file both internally and externally to a shorter filename (the first thing to try) and to generate a new will create a file that behaves similar

playlist/filename= "Men fascisterna var starka 1" <.-------it added that "1" at the end, that is not there internally inside Poweramp

How can we go around that copy unidentified error?

 

[andrewilley]

I expect the "1" extension would be if a file of the same name already exists in the folder that PA is trying to save to, to stop it overwriting the original copy. Can you open the problem .M3U8 file in a text editor, even if you can't copy it to your PC for some reason? Then you could try saving it to a different location.

Andre