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Build 807 auto update makes most playlists songs disappear


Reef

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After build 807 auto update most of my playlists songs disappeared.Playlists with 600,700 and 900+ songs now have dozens or less songs now.Tried get help with Poweramp support but they didn't offered any solution and was of no help.Solved the problem myself checking internal memory (no the SD card one) playlists folder box in settings > library > songs folders,then the M3U8 playlists are displayed on the playlists menu.Then I added these playlists (there were 2 of each,the originals and the copies .1) to each of the matching playlists affected.After that,I deleted the M3U8 playlists and exported the remaining playlists (in settings > library settings > import/export playlists).Finally unchecked the playlists box that I checked before in order the M3U8 playlists not be shown

Problem solved!

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Generally, playlists are updated by rescans, but rescan is sometime blocked by Android (due to background execution policy). The best solution is to do a Full Rescan in this case (some other options may trigger such rescan as well, like music folders selection).

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I, too, just discovered that all my playlists, with a couple of exceptions, are now empty, no files listed in the m3u8 files in the Playlists directory.  The exceptions seem to contain references to songs located in the Downloads directory, so that a playlist formerly populated with 100 songs, now has 4.  I have not created or added to any playlist for months.  I did not even authorize the upgrade to build 807, it just happened automatically.  I've performed at least 4 rescans, full and otherwise.  The artist folders seem to have all their songs.

 

If I understand Reef's solution, his playlists were intact, but were not displaying their contents until he did whatever he did with his m3u8 files.  I seem to have lost everything but the names of my playlists, unless the originals are hiding somewhere.  Am I simply out of luck?  Having spent considerable time creating my playlists, it's a rather catastrophic failure to have them disappear without any action on my part.  What could cause this behavior?  Is there a way to prevent this catastrophe in the future, or must I perform a backup to an external device after any change to a playlist?

 

Fwiw, I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S6, running Android 7.0, Poweramp v3-build-807-play (Full Version)

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Ah, that helps in understanding the situation.  While I haven''t created a new playlist in a few months, I'm sure I've added an item or moved something around in some playlist.  I can recall at least one instance recently of tapping the wrong place and finding myself in reorder mode, and then tapping <back> to recover my mode.  It's possible my phone's memory was full, as it often is on this little 64G phone.  Virtually all my music has been side loaded, via USB/mtp from CDs ripped onto a laptop running Ubuntu 16.10, ending up in Phone/Music on the S6 in Artist/Album hierarchy.  In Poweramp I create playlists from Recently Added, using default settings, and so far, everything has "just worked."  I listen to podcasts via BeyondPod, several times a day, and music via Poweramp at least every two days, always via playlists.  I would notice the deflated Playlist library immediately.  I copied a podcast file from the laptop recently via bluetooth, but I'd think that would be outside Poweramp's interest, unless I tried to play it.

The source files are still in the Music/ tree, and all the boxes are checked in the Rescan settings, though the "Internal storage" might have been unchecked when I first started poking into the situation.  Apparently something spooked PA into thinking that tree was unmounted external storage and so it wiped the playlists.  I don't recall setting the rescan Fonders Selection checkboxes to all on, except for "Internal storage," so I assume it's a default.  I think given how I use Poweramp, that reducing the tree as much as possible makes sense.  But what''s the difference between "Internal storage" and Music, for apps that play music only from that tree?

  What I need is a <Rebuild Playlist From Rescan> function.  The fact that the current files in Playlists/ are zero length suggests it's not a switchable xml tag; that info is gone.  Tried closing/restarting PA, to no avail.  On the theory that an sd card might come and go, I can see a use for persistent playlists.  Am I overlooking a way to recover the playlist content?  Thought I'd ask before rebuilding them from scratch.  Another item for the backup list.

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I've just checked my own Playlists and found a few missing in PA. I've checked the physical M3U files and they are now zero bytes. I do have copies on my PC (they use relative paths) so I'll copy them back, but something has definitely corrupted the files and I have not manually accessed them since I copied them from my PC, the only app that would have accessed them at all is PA. The last-modified date on one of the zero-byte files is 11 Oct 2018 (whereas the original master file on my PC is several years old).

Andre

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Interesting, as I have test devices with a lot of playlists and those playlists survive constant PA development and updates.

I will double check the code (again it intended to save them only after actual user activity in Playlists UI).

It can save them (in empty state) if you e.g. updated (no proper music folders selected, thus playlists may be visually empty), went to playlists, long pressed something or clicked SELECT.

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On 11/18/2018 at 3:26 PM, maxmp said:

It saves them when user changes something in such playlist. That’s supported starting from v1.

Really? Wow, even I still have stuff to learn! :)

That has never happened for me with file-based playlists in the past though, they have always remained intact and unchanged whenever I modified the local version of the list within PA. And that's what I've been advising users for many years now, so I assume I'm not the only one who has that experience.

[Edit to add update]

I just tried removing a few tracks from a file based-playlist. The first time PA removed the filename line from the physical file, just as you said it should. The second song I tried did not seem to have been removed from the playlist file when I loaded the M3U back into a text editor. The third time I tried, I ended up with a zero-byte playlist file. My sample M3U file was using relative paths in case that makes a difference, and PA playing from the playlist at the time. 

Andre

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On 11/17/2018 at 1:05 AM, jimo said:

I, too, just discovered that all my playlists, with a couple of exceptions, are now empty, no files listed in the m3u8 files in the Playlists directory.  The exceptions seem to contain references to songs located in the Downloads directory, so that a playlist formerly populated with 100 songs, now has 4.  I have not created or added to any playlist for months.  I did not even authorize the upgrade to build 807, it just happened automatically.  I've performed at least 4 rescans, full and otherwise.  The artist folders seem to have all their songs.

..I seem to have lost everything but the names of my playlists, unless the originals are hiding somewhere.  Am I simply out of luck?  Having spent considerable time creating my playlists, it's a rather catastrophic failure to have them disappear without any action on my part.  What could cause this behavior?  Is there a way to prevent this catastrophe in the future, or must I perform a backup to an external device after any change to a playlist?

Feel deep sympathy with you, exactly the same happened to me three times, I have a big library of 2400 songs and almost 100 playlists, which were painstakingly added and edited, every time.. you can imagine. Some of the playlists were forever lost, others I managed to salvage via New  Playlist Manager.

As I was working before with the official version, I decided to switch to beta one.

Things are better now, but I think I maybe have found a bug.

Since the two days I installed it, on two occasions, the playlist I was editing (mostly id tags) crashed and playlist gone.

This has happened also with the official version, where, apart from the playlists disappearing, also the songs in the song lists appeared to have lost all edited information. This luckily corrected itself after I closing and reopening the application several times. So could these crashes be somehow related to editing?

My phone is Redmi Note 5A Prime, runs Android  version 7.12N2G47H

Jimo, my friend, after what happened , I have backed up all my playlists in playlist default folder, in New Playlist Manager application, in One Drive and in another player I have, just to be on the safe side.

 

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