Playlist error from Syntax M3U playlist file

[Luccio]

MediaPortal Version: v0.2.2.0 + SVN 13781
MediaPortal Skin: BlueTwo
Windows Version: XP SP2

Sound Card: Lynx L22
Sound Card Driver: Lynx ASIO


I find a little error :

When I double-click on playlist file (*.m3u).
Then then playlist is playing.

Perfect... but the bass player refuses to play the titles with "accents" like in these letters à, é, è, ô, ö, ó, Ö, etc. The most important syntax error is with the " ' " like, for example, in "Depeche Mode - A Pain That I’m Used To"

Can you fix these playlist errors from syntax particularities ?


I want to precise if I double-click in music files directly, Bass Player plays the files correctly.


Best regards.
Luccio.

[Koudijs]

Hi Luccio,

I created an m3u file containing the song "You're All I Have" but I can play it without problems (using BASS). Please attach the m3u file that gives problems and the MediaPortal.log file created while you reproduce the problem. Do this after you have set the log level to debug (configuration.exe -> General). The logfile can be found in ..\MediaPortal\log.

Regards,
Jan

[Yany]

Same problem here. Files containing " ' " are skipped in playlist. Playing the file dirrectly gives no error.

"2007-11-02 09:52:01.750000 [Info.][MPMain]: PlaylistPlayer: *** unable to play - H:\Hudba\60´s\CD 01\Helen Shapiro

- Walkin� back to happiness.mp3 - skipping track!"

[naape]

had the same problem.

solution i've found is make playlists with winamp and save playlist as utf-8 (.m3u8) and then rename the playlist to .m3u

[hwahrmann]

You shouldn't have the problem at all.
If the playlist has been created on the same machine, i.e. a simple text editor shows the quotes correctly, then MP should be ableto read the file with the quotes.
Thie has been fixed more than a year ago.

[GillBates]

I just ran into this problem on the Mediaportal's in my mom's house:
I have a shared directory on Mediaportal machine "B" which is mapped on Mediaportal A and Mediaportal B as M:\ and contains all music and playlists (m3u) which list the files as M:\Music\bla bla bla...
· Both MP's play songs that don't have special characters perfectly.
· Mediaportal A has version 1.0.0.0 RC1 according to the dialog at startup, and has problems displaying/playing songs with special characters in them.
· Mediaportal B has version 0.2.3 according to startup dialog and shows and plays the same playlists without a problem.

Can anyone verify this?

BTW in some of the posts in this thread people are mistaking the accent ´ for the apostrophe ' notice the difference in the slant vs the vertical, that is why I believe my problem to be related.

[hwahrmann]

can ypu post a sample file name.
i was trying all kind of special characters and i'm not able to reproduce.

[GillBates]

Thanks for the quick reply, this is one of the examples, the ones I've been testing it with are
19 Montréal, End Titles.mp3
10 Mélodie (Souvenir D'un Lieu Cher).mp3

Now that I have a bit more time, I'll elaborate:
I manage 2 households with 2 HTPC's each: my mom's and mine.
Both of us use Macbook Pro's and obviously iTunes for our music management / iPod sync, however she wanted to have her playlists in both Mediaportals at home.

I've made it work by having a program installed in the Macbooks that syncs the iTunes Music folder and the xml iTunes library to the "master" HTPC, after this I made a program in VB.net that runs on a schedule and:
* parses out the itunes xml
* replaces the path from the macbook to a path that both HTPC's will recognize
* exports all playlists as m3u's to a specified folder.
(if anyone is interested in this program I'd be happy to share it, drop me a line)

My first issue with this was to do some character replacing because the itunes xml formats special characters in a very strange way, once that got fixed it's been smooth so far.


Still, the master HTPC (0.2.3) reads the m3u's with no problem and the secondary HTPC (1.0.0 RC1) is having some trouble with it. Next week I'll try updating the secondary HTPC to the latest RC and report back if the problem is solved.

Thanks in advance!

[hwahrmann]

Well, the reason is that your file is ANSI encoded.
With the special characters inside, you need to encode it UTF8.

So you need to modify your program to store the file with UTF8 encoding, or you open the file in an editor which can save files in UTF8 encoding. (e.g. Notepad++)

[GillBates]

Originally Posted by hwahrmann

Well, the reason is that your file is ANSI encoded.
With the special characters inside, you need to encode it UTF8.

So you need to modify your program to store the file with UTF8 encoding, or you open the file in an editor which can save files in UTF8 encoding. (e.g. Notepad++)

You got it! All I had to do was change one line of code in my program and it's been great. I don't know where I got the idea that files were created as UTF8 by default.

I literally only had to add the part in red:
objReader = New StreamWriter(FullPath, False, Encoding.UTF8)

Thanks a bunch