Playlist question - building a playlist in Windows for playback on Poweramp?

[ThomasMP3]

So my music folder layout on Windows is:

d:\music\many folders and files

When I copy/sync my music to my phone's SD card, I grab the contents of the \music folder and copy it over to the SD card, inside its Music folder.

I would like to be able build playlists at home on the PC, saving these playlists to d:\music\playlists\playlistname.m3u so that when it all gets copied over to my phone, the playlists still work.

Unfortunately, VLC saves its M3U playlists with an absolute file location, i.e. "d:\music\BandName\AlbumName\song.mp3" and so Poweramp can't find that on the android.

What's the best way I can create a playlist on the PC with the root being \music and not d:\music, so that Poweramp can find the files?

Or, alternatively, am I just not doing it correctly? Is there a setting I need to modify on Poweramp? I just find it so much easier to build extensive playlists while sitting at my computer than while on my phone.

 

Edited May 25 by ThomasMP3

[Fitzian]

See the FAQ on playlists ->

 

Scroll down to "Advanced Discussion: Sharing Playlists from other devices" and there should be your answers.

 

[andrewilley]

Playlists copied over from PC file systems should work fine in Poweramp due to the way PA parses the content, I do it all the time. First, PA ignores "\" vs "/" variations, and it only tries to validate the exact filename and the first level of containing folder. So in your example, the "D:\music\BandName\" part will be ignored, and PA will only look for a match for "AlbumName/song.mp3" anywhere in your music collection on the phone.

Make sure you are saving the Playlist files (e.g. "PlaylistName.m3u") somewhere that is within the Music Folder location that you've configured on your phone, and the automatic scanner should spot them and process them accordingly.

It's all covered in more details in the Guide on the subject anyway.

Andre

[ThomasMP3]

Thank you, these links and suggestions helped!

Ultimately, what worked best for me was to make the playlist with VLC, open the playlist file with Notepad, and then run a Find & Replace. I replace "d:\Music" with "24FE-E170/Music" on the whole file (literally instantaneous), and then save the file. Once the playlist is copied over to my Android, Poweramp reads it just fine.

To anyone else, yes check those links first, that helped me a lot.

[andrewilley]

@ThomasMP3 You can edit the file if you like, but there's really no point as PA ignores all the path info anyway.

You'd need to do that to go back the other way though, as Windows needs the root drive info and it wouldn't understand the Android SD Card path.

Andre

[ThomasMP3]

Thanks, your feedback helped and I am able to sync playlists. I have one more question: Does Poweramp look at the extension on playlist tracks, or just the name of the track?

I have built extensive playlists, and I am starting to update my library with by replacing older MP3 tracks with high-quality OGG or FLAC tracks. The main filename and internal tag information is otherwise identical. Will Poweramp find these tracks in a playlist based on the first part of the filename, or will I need to refresh the playlists to show the new filename+extention ?

[andrewilley]

The audio filename, including its extender, must match exactly with the name referenced in the playlist content. So yes, you'll need to edit the playlist content to match the new names.

Andre