Importing playlists from system library

[Pauser]

I have several playlists created with my phone's standard music app. When I invoke the "import playlists' function in Poweramp, I do not see the playlists imported. I do see a msg flash rapidly but it's too quick to read. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

[andrewilley]

Have all of the music tracks in those playlists been scanned into Poweramp's regular library? Songs must already be present in the main library view for Playlists to be able to include them. 

Andre

[Pauser]

Yes Andre. The playlists contain valid music files in poweamp's library.

[andrewilley]

Then they ought to import correctly. They should appear an internal Poweramp playlists after the import. Can you export them to M3U playlist files via another systemapp and then PA can read them in that format? Something like New Playlist Manager in the Play store I think can handle both system and Poweramp lists.

Andre

[Pauser]

I've already tried that using Playlist Backup app. The import flat out does not work. I can see playlists with my standard music player and Google play music app. Why can I not import these into Poweramp?

[Pauser]

As a last ditch effort, here's what I did:

1. Took a file-based playlist that I was using in Poweramp of 174 files of the best jazz music you ever heard and imported it into the system playlists library using an app called Playlist Backup.

2. Opened my standard music player and verified the playlist. Music player plays the playlist just fine.

3. Opened Poweramp and imported system library playlists. Nothing, no playlist is imported. When I imported, I expected a slight pause because the list contained 174 files but it immediately comes back. No message, no nothing.

[flyingdutchman]

Did you as Andre suggested and tried it as a m3u playlist. Ensure you place it in a folder scanned by Poweramp. Does this play as expected?

[Pauser]

Yes. Please see my last post. I thought I found a way to get my file-based m3u playlists into internal playlists in Poweramp but, darn, the last step didn't work (see my last post). Poweramp let me down. It almost seems as if the 'import from system library' is a stub or dead code in the software.

[flyingdutchman]

You do not import m3u plsylists. They should play without anything done to them. Dont get confused that other music players play the playlist as they may well have their own media databases. Did you create your file based playlist with Poweramp?, ie export to m3u8. To make sure your playlists are actually in the android database ( and not some other as Poweramp will not see this) use my app (free or paid) to verify the android playlists. 

[Pauser]

Yes I created the m3u8 playlist files with Poweramp. I renamed the file to allow playlist backup/restore app to import them into the android media library. The fact that I can see and play the playlist from 2 different players ( standard lg player and google play music) tells me they are in the android media library,

[Pauser]

Here is a followup to my problem. I performed the exact steps on my unrooted phone running android 7 and the import works just fine. It does not work on my rooted phone running android 4.4.2.

Does the root have anything to do with this?

[flyingdutchman]

It may be that rooting has changed permissions on file systems, you would think that rooting would improve access rather than restrict. 

[Pauser]

Access to systems folders by apps are supposed to be brokered thru the SuperUser app. Poweramp is not doing this.

[Pauser]

Follow up to my last posts...the problem is not root. I unrooted my phone and the import still does not work. Don't know if this is an android 4.4 problem or a limitation on this phone. The phone is an lg ultimate 2 (lgl41c) that I have been using Poweramp on for years. It only has 1gig of ram but I don't feel that should be a limitation.

[andrewilley]

Poweramp does not need root access, and should not request it.

Andre

[Pauser]

Please see my last post.

[Pauser]

Is it possible that Poweramp is looking in the wrong file path for importing from the android media library?

[flyingdutchman]

If your device is rooted, you may be able to use Logcat. It can record output so you may be able to see what happens in the background.

[Pauser]

Yes it's rooted. Downloaded the app and found lots of java exceptions in the playlist import task. Below is the 1st one which probanly triggered the others:

02-28 23:52:28.409 E/PlaylistsImportTask(22341): java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: the bind value at index 1 is null

[Pauser]

This looks as if an attempt was made to pass a null string as an argument to a method call. My guess is that the folder path string to the external.db in android.providers.media for playlists is missing somewhere in my Poweramp data. If anyone knows where this is suposed to be, please let me know. Otherwise I will delete poweamp and reinstall to see if that clears it up.

[flyingdutchman]

Please post some of the relevant stacktrace

ps. is this a custom rom? 

and lastly, I suggest you clear Poweramp data and reboot your device so the pa database can be rebuilt. make sure to backup playlists etc.

[Pauser]

This is not a custom rom but it is a recovery of the standard rom for this phone.

Here's the full trace of the playlist import task:

03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192): 
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192): java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: the bind value at index 1 is null
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteProgram.bindString(SQLiteProgram.java:164)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at pv.ll1l(":109)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at pv.ll1l(":49)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at pv.doInBackground(":26)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:288)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:237)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:231)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1112)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:587)
03-01 07:00:10.059 E/PlaylistsImportTask(29192):     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:841)

[flyingdutchman]

Looks like it is down to some error on your tracks. I assume Poweramp reads each track on the android playlist and finds its equivalent in the database. I suspect it takes the trackname to identify a track so i would check if there are any strange tracknames (eg with apostrophy for example). You could clear data on both Poweramp and android and reboot. This would rebuild both databases. The android database holds the full filepath for a track so i suspect this is where Poweramp starts. Powerwmp handles it differently in its database, it holds the track only but knows in which folder to find it.

[Pauser]

I think you have it reveresed. Poweramp's databade holds the full filename and folder path for tracks in the playlist. Android's database identifies the track with an audio id. Thete is nothing unusual in the track names as I have them on another phone with no importer problems.

Phone is charging right now afterwhich I will try your suggestions.

[flyingdutchman]

No, i am not mistaken. I regularly excute sql queries on my pc  in both datbases to test things out for my app so am very familiar of their structures and content.