Playlist Format

[Jen N]

Hi 

I just changed phones and imported the saved Playlists from my other phone.

On the old phone the playlist had the name and you could add a star or symbol.

But I can't do this now or can't find how I did it.

Also all the playlists have the extension showing (.m3u8) where as that didn't show before. You just had the name.

Thanks for any tips?

[flyingdutchman]

@Jen N it is really simple,  just make sure Poweramp is able to scan the folder which holds the playlists.It will find them and recreate new ones internally. Once that has happened you can move the .m3u8 playlists elsewhere or delete them.

(assuming you retained the folder structure from your old phone)

 

[andrewilley]

When you exported your original playlists, you changed them from internal Poweramp database lists into physical .M3U8 backup files that can be copied and used on another device. That's why you now see the full filename (including its extender) when you transfer them to a new device.

If the original playlist names happened to include any special characters that aren't allowed within regular filenames on Android storage, those characters would have been stripped out to create valid filenames.

If you want to convert these file-based playlists back to internal Poweramp lists (which have more naming flexibility) just long-press on any playlist title and tap '+ Playlist'. On the next screen, tap '+ Add New' and choose a suitable name for your new list, and all of the contents from the file-based list will be copied to a newly created internal playlist. Repeat for the rest of your playlists, and then you can remove the .M3U8 files from storage - or just move them to somewhere Poweramp can't scan.

Andre

[andrewilley]

7 minutes ago, flyingdutchman said:

It will find them and recreate new ones internally. Once that has happened you can move the .m3u8 playlists elsewhere or delete them.

If you delete a physical playlist file from storage, the next PA Rescan will remove that item from the Library (just like when audio files are removed).

Andre

[Jen N]

Thank you all!! Particularly andrewilley, did the trick !! 

[Mwa]

Is there any other way to do this? I've spent the last couple of days making a lot of playlists in winamp, and having to manually rename hundreds of playlist names on my phone would be a bother. I really like Poweramp so far, but I do wish the m3u8 file extension wasn't visible.

[andrewilley]

@Mwa If any given playlist has been read from a file, then PA will display that full filename - including the extender such as .M3U, .M3U8, .PLS, etc. as that is part of the name. Otherwise you wouldn't have anything to show you it was a file rather than an internal (local database only) playlist.

If you have a lot of files, and you want to change them to internal memory-based playlists (which are more volatile, and can thus more easily be lost) then you can do that either using the method I described above one at a time, or using a third-party app such as FlyingDutchman's 'New Playlist Manager' from the Play Store. Personally I keep my externally-generated files as M3U though, as I feel that a file-based format is a little more robust.

@maxmp Just a thought, but as this isn't the first time someone has requested hiding the extenders on file-based playlists, could that perhaps be made a tickbox in List Options menu for the top-level Playlists category? And if that option is selected, display a little file/folder symbol in the metadata next to any file-based names instead?

Andre