Issues Playing Music from Imported iTunes Playlists

I'm currently breaking my head trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I have a playlist from iTunes that I have exported to an m3u file and converted to relative paths using the script i found on GitHub. The formatting seems correct since I can now finally import the playlist and all the right tracks show up. However none of the tracks load and their cover art is also blank in the playlist. I have tried changing the root around from the standard ..\..\ to ..\..\Music to ..\ with no change in how the playlist acts.

I'm working a bit in the blind since I have been unable to find some documentation for how the player interprets the format of the playlist, so I'm hoping to find some guidance here.

Really enjoying the product, and if I could easily update/import playlists from iTunes I would basically have everything I need!

Comments

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    Hey @tdv . The paths for files in the playlist should be relative to the root of your drive. You should ignore the "start folder" setting.

    I took a look at your playlists - you have two.

    "All Music" has paths starting Music/ which looks like they should work, so long as Music/ is in the root of your Google Drive. However, looking at your library I don't think that's the case. The Google Drive this is linked to appears to have artist folders at the root.

    "Top Rated" has paths starting Compilations/ and other folder names (A'/ , Animal Collective/ ) that look like they would work with the above storage. However, it's linked to a different Google Drive with just playlists inside.

    So I'm a bit confused... obviously you've been swapping things around so maybe that's not the original state you thought things were in.

  • tdvtdv Member

    Well the root of my drive is within "My Laptop/Music" on Drive as it is sync'ing from my laptop. So it has the long root-string as root I suppose? That's why I tried starting directly at the artist folders as I assumed it would start in my Music folder, using Music/ as a base didn't work either or "folderstring"/artist.

    Because it took a very long time for the Bulk-Import to scan through all my folders, I tried creating a new folder on "My Laptop" with just playlists. Is that what's causing the issue?

  • tdvtdv Member

    I rebuilt my "All Songs" playlist as the old one referred to my old Google Drive location. So the new one should have the correct path, I just can't find a way to show that path, so I could copy it for my imported playlists.

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    The laptop location is irrelevant as far as Astiga is concerned. All that matters is your Google Drive.

    Are you saying your Google Drive has "My Laptop" as a root folder? I'm a little confused, I didn't see this referenced in the sync logs.

  • tdvtdv Member

    I might be saying some things in a confusing manner, due to lack of technical understanding, but I'll try again:

    Originally, my Music was in a Drive folder called "Music" in the tab "My Drive". That was also where the original playlist of "All Songs" you looked at referred to.

    To use "Drive for Desktop" to automatically sync, the folder is in the Drive tab called "Computers" -> "My Laptop" -> "Music". So I have changed my drive root folder using the format "https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" as instructed. The sync works beautifully, but I think the issue is in having the playlist referring to the right Drive location of the files.

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    Ok, I will have to try to replicate this from scratch - sorry, I ran out of time this week. Will look at it early next week.

    To use "Drive for Desktop" to automatically sync, the folder is in the Drive tab called "Computers" -> "My Laptop" -> "Music".

    It looks like My Computer -> My Laptop is inside Windows Explorer, right? This is to make sure I replicate the same thing accurately...

    The sync works beautifully

    Do you mean the Google Drive sync between your laptop and Google Drive, or the Astiga sync? I think the former.

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator
    edited January 2022

    Ok, I just re-stepped through this myself.

    TL;DR - the path for a file must be relative to the location of the M3U file. Ignore any parent folders, "initial folder" or not.

    I have a test library in my Google Drive which is the path /Astiga/test-libraries/scratch/. Within that I have a file Giant_Steps/04-Spiral.flac. This M3U file, in the initial folder /Astiga/test-libraries/scratch/, works:

    Giant_Steps/04-Spiral.flac
    

    I also created this file inside the Giant_Steps folder:

    04-Spiral.flac
    

    Therefore:

    • Playlist entries must not begin with a forward-slash (an absolute path).
    • Playlists should be created in some child of the initial folder.
    • The path for each entry in the playlist is relative to the location of the M3U file.
    • Because you cannot have absolute paths and entries are relative to the M3U location, you can't refer to sibling folders.
  • tdvtdv Member

    Thanks a bunch for the help, I've tried to really understand your steps, but I'm still hitting a wall.

    I have made a m3u playlist called "allfolder", which is in the "Music" folder of my Google Drive. Where all the music is in other sub-folders, relative to the m3u playlist.

    It has non-absolute paths, i.e. "Khruangbin/Con Todo El Mundo/1-02 Lady and Man.mp3".

    All the songs in the playlist come up, but none can "detect" the track or play. I feel like I did the same setup as you described, but there is probably something I'm misunderstanding, sadly..

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    I'm able to see your playlist and each line is:

    Music/Music/Khruangbin/Con Todo El Mundo/1-04 August 10.mp3
    

    I'd only expect "Music/Music" if you really had a "Music" folder inside "Music". Is that what you have?

  • tdvtdv Member

    I wrote below before checking, but idk if you changed something or I just had luck reuploading/readding the m3u, but now it works!! Thanks a bunch for the help and time!


    Hmm, weird, the path in Drive is only

    My Laptop/Music/Khruangbin/Con Todo El Mundo/1-04 August 10.mp3
    

    and the m3u file is placed in the My Laptop/Music folder with no references to a "Music" folder in it's path

    #EXTINF:258,Lady and Man - Khruangbin
    
    Khruangbin/Con Todo El Mundo/1-02 Lady and Man.mp3
    

    Is how the reference looks in the m3u.

  • tdvtdv Member

    One quirk is that when playing "All Songs" on mobile. It'll only show a set 226 songs of the list, even if it correctly states a the ~4663 songs under the "Details" pane. "Play Shuffled" also only shuffles that set of 226 songs.

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    That m3u file is as I'd expect. I've just double-checked your playlist and it's appearing correctly now. This must've been updated since I last checked... 🤔

    Regarding the 226 songs in the list - I'm not sure about this. I can't see a place where we limit this in Astiga, but it might be the component we use is limiting it. I don't suppose you've allowed the playlist to play out? Does it complete after 226 songs?

  • Huh, now it works and shows all the tracks. Everything works, thanks a bunch once again!

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    Ok - if you see it again, let me know. There might be more debugging we can do.

  • Thanks to this thread, TIL you can actually export iTunes playlists (I have so many smart playlists that would be a nightmare to copy over manually)

    However, I tried to get it working myself but not sure if I am doing it right or am running into the same issue?

    M3us are saved here:

    C:\Users\mystb\OneDrive\BreanneEveMueller Addt Space\iTunes\iTunes Media\All_Playlists Files

    Music & Folders saved here:

    C:\Users\mystb\OneDrive\BreanneEveMueller Addt Space\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music

    I figured out that the M3u was referencing the local path (above) so I updated them all:

    Replace:
    C:\Users\mystb\OneDrive\BreanneEveMueller Addt Space
    with just:
    BreanneEveMueller Addt Space
    

    Thinking that since it has to hop out of the "Playlist" folder and go back into music, I should base it off of my Astiga connected storage path in settings:

    /BreanneEveMueller Addt Space/iTunes/iTunes Media

    also interesting of note is after importing the playlists (after my attempted fix) is that all songs show 0:00 (none of them play) but they seem to be the actual file name + extension, where my normal music in astiga shows up as the song name when synced.

    Sample of M3u:

    #EXTM3U
    #EXTINF:228,If I Ain't Got You - Alicia Keys
    BreanneEveMueller Addt Space\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Alicia Keys\The Diary of Alicia Keys\06 If I Ain't Got You.m4a
    

    Is there something I am missing? Know I gave a lot of info, so hope it helps!

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    Well, because I wrote:

    The path for each entry in the playlist is relative to the location of the M3U file.

    That means having a All_Playlists Files won't work I think. If the playlists are in the iTunes Media folder then it should work, and I think the paths should be something like:

    Music\Alicia Keys\The Diary of Alicia Keys\06 If I Ain't Got You.m4a
    

    Note: my brain's heap has pushed all this out of my memory now so I'm just going by what I wrote above...

  • Reread this thread again just in case there's something I missed -

    Because you cannot have absolute paths and entries are relative to the M3U location, you can't refer to sibling folders.

    Figured out problem - looks like its working now :)

  • gravelldgravelld Administrator

    😎

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