+- MinimServer Forum (https://forum.minimserver.com)
+-- Forum: MinimServer (/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: General (/forumdisplay.php?fid=2)
+--- Thread: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? (/showthread.php?tid=2902)
Pages: 1 2
Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - krutsch - 03-02-2016 00:22
Hi All,
I'm almost ready to "enjoy the music"; I've been spending way too much time playing around with devices and software and I want to bring all of this in for a landing.
I've settled on my FLAC collection, on a Mac Mini running MinimServer with BubbleUPnP Server, using an iPad w/ Linn Kazoo or my Samsung Note 4 running Bubble. My Bryston BDP-1 and Cubox-i4Pro (Volumio) renderers all work, play gapless and life is good.
MPD on the Bryston may outperform uPnP, SQ-wise, but the control software is just brutal (MPDroid, MPaD, Volumio, Bryston's Manic Moose really take the fun out of listening to music).
So, one last problem to solve... playlists.
I have about a 150 playlists in my iTunes library (I am an old mix tape guy and I have playlists that I've curated that pre-date digital music :-)
What is everyone else doing for playlist editing/management on a Mac?
Is there any way to create playlists once and share them across control points and renderers (i.e. I can create playlists in Kazoo, but they only exist on my iPad and not on my Mac - same issue for Bubble). I am willing to re-create playlists by hand, as I want to listen to them, but I only want to do this once.
Thanks, in advance, for any suggestions...
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - simoncn - 03-02-2016 10:24
(03-02-2016 00:22)krutsch Wrote: Is there any way to create playlists once and share them across control points and renderers (i.e. I can create playlists in Kazoo, but they only exist on my iPad and not on my Mac - same issue for Bubble). I am willing to re-create playlists by hand, as I want to listen to them, but I only want to do this once.
Take a look at oddgravity Playlist Creator. This creates playlists as .m3u files on the server which means they are persistent and accessible to all control points and renderers. Unfortunately, it only runs on Windows but there might be something available for Mac that works in a similar fashion. Alternatively, if you have a Windows PC, you could run Playlist Creator on Windows to create playlists on the Mac (make sure you choose "forward slashes" and "relative paths").
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - krutsch - 03-02-2016 16:22
(03-02-2016 10:24)simoncn Wrote: Take a look at oddgravity Playlist Creator. This creates playlists as .m3u files on the server which means they are persistent and accessible to all control points and renderers. Unfortunately, it only runs on Windows but there might be something available for Mac that works in a similar fashion. Alternatively, if you have a Windows PC, you could run Playlist Creator on Windows to create playlists on the Mac (make sure you choose "forward slashes" and "relative paths").
Vox Music Player
Very elegant. Allows drag-and-drop from the Finder and saves playlists as M3U with relative paths. Brilliant UI.
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - krutsch - 03-02-2016 16:27
(03-02-2016 16:22)krutsch Wrote: Vox Music Player
Very elegant. Allows drag-and-drop from the Finder and saves playlists as M3U with relative paths. Brilliant UI.
All I need now: playlist art work.
Are you still considering that, Simon :-)
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - simoncn - 03-02-2016 17:38
(03-02-2016 16:22)krutsch Wrote: Very elegant. Allows drag-and-drop from the Finder and saves playlists as M3U with relative paths. Brilliant UI.
If the file path contains any UTF-8 characters, the playlist must be saved as .m3u8. Does Vox do this?
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - simoncn - 03-02-2016 17:40
(03-02-2016 16:27)krutsch Wrote: All I need now: playlist art work.
Are you still considering that, Simon :-)
Yes, this is still on the (long) to-do list.
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - krutsch - 04-02-2016 17:24
(03-02-2016 17:38)simoncn Wrote: If the file path contains any UTF-8 characters, the playlist must be saved as .m3u8. Does Vox do this?
Good catch. It saves as .m3u. I created a playlist from Hélène Grimaud and, as expected, the playlist showed up as empty in Kazoo.
All I had to do, however, was rename the file to .m3u8 and the playlist now shows all contents and plays fine.
That's odd... is this a Vox problem?
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - simoncn - 04-02-2016 19:57
(04-02-2016 17:24)krutsch Wrote: Good catch. It saves as .m3u. I created a playlist from Hélène Grimaud and, as expected, the playlist showed up as empty in Kazoo.
All I had to do, however, was rename the file to .m3u8 and the playlist now shows all contents and plays fine.
That's odd... is this a Vox problem?
I think it is a Vox problem because the original M3U specification uses the Windows-1252 (ISO 8859-1) code page for .m3u files. This is getting much less relevant these days but there are probably still a few .m3u playlists that depend on it.
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - krutsch - 04-02-2016 21:15
(04-02-2016 19:57)simoncn Wrote:(04-02-2016 17:24)krutsch Wrote: Good catch. It saves as .m3u. I created a playlist from Hélène Grimaud and, as expected, the playlist showed up as empty in Kazoo.
All I had to do, however, was rename the file to .m3u8 and the playlist now shows all contents and plays fine.
That's odd... is this a Vox problem?
I think it is a Vox problem because the original M3U specification uses the Windows-1252 (ISO 8859-1) code page for .m3u files. This is getting much less relevant these days but there are probably still a few .m3u playlists that depend on it.
I've posted something to the Vox forum to ask what codepage(s) they are supporting; if they are using UTF-8, why not save the file as .m3u8?
But, I am also curious why simply changing the file extension allows MinimServer to correctly read/interpret a playlist with special characters (i.e. like Hélène Grimaud).
RE: Playlist Strategy ... what to use? - simoncn - 04-02-2016 22:01
(04-02-2016 21:15)krutsch Wrote: But, I am also curious why simply changing the file extension allows MinimServer to correctly read/interpret a playlist with special characters (i.e. like Hélène Grimaud).
Following the original M3U specification (see this page), MinimServer uses the ISO-8859-1 character encoding if the file extension .m3u and it uses the UTF-8 character encoding if the file extension is .m3u8. So if the file extension is .m3u, the UTF-8 representation of Hélène Grimaud is decoded according to the ISO-8859-1 rules, which doesn't produce a correct result.