Import Playlist Not Working

[BingBadaBoom]

I know this issue has been addressed before but I'm unable to find a fix. I'm trying to export my old playlist to my new phone. New phone has all the same music files as my old phone and the full version of Poweramp . Therefore I would assume the playlist file wouldn't have trouble importing because the file path would be the same. But when exporting my playlist through my old phone, which converts the file to a m3u8 file, to my new phone, the new phone imports playlist without any music showing up. It just shows as "Name.m3u8" with no music inside the playlist. What is the issue? I made sure I checked all the same folders that my old phone had but I still get this problem. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you, BingBadaBoom.

[andrewilley]

Could you check the text contents of the M3U8 file and see if it exactly matches the music names and directly structure on your new device? (The root SD Card name will obviously be different, but PA should cope with that). Also have all the songs been copied to your new device and scanned into the Library?

Andre

[BingBadaBoom]

@andrewilley Not sure how I'm supposed to check the contents of the file, but yes I have scanned all the music files and copied them to my old phone in PA.

Thanks, Bing

[flyingdutchman]

You could try the import facility on New Playlist Manager (or Free New playlist Manager), It will import "foreign" m3u playlists and create new android playlists which you can then export as .m3u again. It also creates a log file so you can check afterwards

[BingBadaBoom]

@flyingdutchman  When I export to m3u format" using New Playlist Manager, where do the written files go? I cant seem to find the folder.

Thanks, Bing

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, BingBadaBoom said:

Not sure how I'm supposed to check the contents of the file

Just load it into any text editor, it should be a plain vanilla ASCII file with lines of text.

Andre

[BingBadaBoom]

1 hour ago, flyingdutchman said:

You could try the import facility on New Playlist Manager (or Free New playlist Manager), It will import "foreign" m3u playlists and create new android playlists which you can then export as .m3u again. It also creates a log file so you can check afterwards

I was able to find the files. I used the New Playlist Manager to first export the files as a m3u, then imported them into my new phone. I encounter the same issue. I also loaded the m3u8/m3u file in a text editor and the file path seems to be correct. Not sure why PA isn't loading the files into the playlist. Ill keep messing around with the tool and see if i can get anything to work.

Thanks for your help guys, Bing

[maxmp]

Poweramp uses last directory and file name to match playlist songs. If your new device have your music:

- in the last directory named differently - in your case, not in exactly “Julio’s Music SD” folder

- or in folders not checked/allowed in Settings / Library / Music Folders

tracks won’t be matched, but there will be just unplayable entires in recent Poweramp builds. Your list is empty so I wonder what Poweramp build is it.

[andrewilley]

@BingBadaBoom I assume the typo in the playlist file content, "Julio’s Muisc SD" isn't the cause? Is the folder name on your new device also spelled Muisc ?

Andre

[BingBadaBoom]

On 5/15/2020 at 3:12 AM, andrewilley said:

@BingBadaBoom I assume the typo in the playlist file content, "Julio’s Muisc SD" isn't the cause? Is the folder name on your new device also spelled Muisc ?

Andre

I'll try to see if thats what caused the issue. That is a typo and did make sure the directory was named the same as my old phone so Poweramp could find the playlist correctly.

Thanks for the help, Bing

[andrewilley]

If that doesn't turn out to be the cause, please could you use the Poweramp Library views to find one of the songs that is referenced in the playlist (such as "Moonlight - Surfing.mp3". Then long-press on the song and select Info/Tags, and you should see the exact path for the file that Poweramp found. As far as the first folder level, it needs to match exactly with the playlist content.

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@BingBadaBoom, although maxmp explained the last folder and trackname are used to match, my app simply uses the trackname. It does not care where it is located. It will check this name against the android media database and if found then it will add it to the new android playlist. If this does not work there is an issue with your tracknames.

[andrewilley]

22 minutes ago, flyingdutchman said:

my app simply uses the trackname. It does not care where it is located.

Out of interest, how do you handle cases where (for example) I have about 60 movie soundtrack folders, a lot of which contain tracks such as "Main Titles.mp3" and "End Credits.mp3" ? 

Andre

[flyingdutchman]

@andrewilley, unfortunately, this would probably result in the first record returned used for the playlist.

[andrewilley]

52 minutes ago, flyingdutchman said:

unfortunately, this would probably result in the first record returned used for the playlist.

Might be worth looking into cases where there are duplicated names in the folder tree sometimes, and try to resolve dups by checking their containing folder name too. This would also affect any tracks which have the same filename but different contents - for example when an artist also releases an Acoustic or a Live album which contains tracks with the exact same filenames as their original versions, but located in different folders.

Andre

[BingBadaBoom]

12 hours ago, flyingdutchman said:

@BingBadaBoom, although maxmp explained the last folder and trackname are used to match, my app simply uses the trackname. It does not care where it is located. It will check this name against the android media database and if found then it will add it to the new android playlist. If this does not work there is an issue with your tracknames.

That's a possibility that my track name is an issue. Poweramp allows you to edit tags. So is it possible that the m3u8 file is saved under the edited tags and not the original? I have, or should I say, almost all my songs have edited track names that were changed through PA. But to counter this issue, and to save all my edited tags from PA, I was able to find a folder in PA files that's saves all downloaded album art and edited tag caches. I put those files in my old phone and my all my music's edited tags and album art were successfully transferred over.

FYI- I haven't tried to change the directory name yet to see if that was an issue. (Changing muisc to Music) I'll try within the next couple of days to see if that was an issue. Thanks all, Bing

[andrewilley]

Editing tags won't make any difference to PA Playlists, you can change those as much as you want. The #EXTINF  meta information in the playlist file is ignored, all that PA needs in order to find a song is that both the filename and its containing folder match. Otherwise it's a bit like someone posting you a letter with your name spelled correctly, but quoting a different street name and town.  

So if you want to correct that muisc typo, you need to first change the physical folder name itself, AND also every occurrence of that wording in all of your playlist files (using global search-and-replace in any decent text editor).

Andre

[BingBadaBoom]

1 minute ago, andrewilley said:

Editing tags won't make any difference to PA Playlists, you can change those as much as you want. The #EXTINF  meta information in the playlist file is ignored, all that PA needs in order to find a song is that both the filename and its containing folder match. Otherwise it's a bit like someone posting you a letter with your name spelled correctly, but quoting a different street name and town.  
 

Andre

Let's just hope this just doesn't come down to the misspelled word "muisc" with in the file directory... I used New Playlist Manger though and it didn't resolve my issue. I'll find out tomorrow night after work.

Thanks again, Bing

[andrewilley]

3 hours ago, BingBadaBoom said:

Let's just hope this just doesn't come down to the misspelled word "muisc" with in the file directory...

As long as BOTH the text quoted in the playlist AND the actual directory/folder name are the same, it should work. So you either need both of them to be spelled correctly as "music", or both misspelled as "muisc". If they don't both match though, it won't work as PA will be looking for some directory path that does not exist.

Andre

[BingBadaBoom]

@andrewilley  I'm happy to say, and somewhat frustrated with myself, that fixing the typo "muisc" fixed my problem. Gosh who knew that such an error could result in such frustration. I really appreciate all the help guys. Such a great and understanding community. Have a great day! ( :

-Bing

[andrewilley]

Glad you got it sorted. Directory paths and folder names are very literal, a single changed letter makes it a completely new location even if a human can see what the mistake was. 

Andre