m3u scrambled

[boswpb]

'Music Collection' sorted a long playlist on 'track'. Although the display appears alphabetical, the m3u file is scrambled starting half way through. Is there special .wma support that I'm missing? I'm running WinXP-SP2-RC2.

[xoas]

Re: m3u scrambled

When you say "scrambled", do you mean the tracks are no longer in the order you thought you had them in? Hopefully the tracks play ok, etc?
My own experience with the Playlist Editor, which I don't use a great deal, is that it has had a tendancy to load files in odd places in the playlist. Are you sure that your tracks were in the order you wanted them in before you saved the Playlist?
Spoon's own recommendation is that for anything much longer than about 30 trracks you might be better off treating them as a separate Music Collection.
You might try to edit your playlist to get it into a specific order and then save it. Clear and close Playlist Editor. Reopen it and open your saved Playlist. Is it in the same order you left it?
Do any of you other users have some experience with long playlists with dAP?

As for you, boswpb, you might try the experiment I suggested and if my assumptions as to your problem are off-base, please clarify.
Best wishes,
Bill Mikkelsen

[boswpb]

Re: m3u scrambled

I tried to make a 400-line playlist of MyMusic directory. The selection seems to be in order. After 'Make Playlist of Selected', dAP lists the first 197 in alphabetical order, and the remaining in random order. This anomaly occurs before saving the m3u file. If trimmed to 30 .wma songs, the random order still occurs after 'Make Playlist of Selected'. Seems like dAP configuration? I installed just two dAP components: dBpowerAMP-r3-beta5, and dBpowerAMP-codec-wmav9. The later reported on installation that it could not start the conversion program. I thought it would allow .wma in 'My Music Collection'. My PC has 512mb with 300mb available at the time. :blush:

[boswpb]

Re: m3u scrambled

Could there be a conflict with WinXP-SP2-RC2's memory manager. I have done long playlists before without real trouble. :blush:

[xoas]

Re: m3u scrambled

Try this. Open your Playlist Editor (from the MMC screen it looks like the outline of a P to the right of the volume slider, on nearly all skins it will appear as a button with either a P or outline of one). Right click on any of the tracks. From the menu, select "Sort By" and then select "Artist". You should be fine.
If it does not work, please let us know.
Best wishes,
Bill Mikkelsen

[donny]

Re: m3u scrambled

probably the problem is in the filenames, or in the actual tags in the files... but you can always (as xoas said) sort by... and in an extreme case you can try to save the playlist and then try to edit in an other program... I sometimes use winamp as a playlists editor cause it has some nice features in that area... (which in dAP aren't really necesary)

[boswpb]

Re: m3u scrambled

Does mp10 have hidden library/playlist authority? Maybe I need an stardardized tag editor? At any rate, I figure WinAmp worked fine this time... sorted/saved 400-line .m3u playlist. Thank you for the advice, etc.

[xoas]

Re: m3u scrambled

I am not sure what you mean by "hidden library/playlist authority."
As for the initial jumbled track order, I don't think that is a tag issue (although tagging issues could contribute to the result). I think that this is simply a kink in the Playlist Creation/Editing function. As you say, it does jumble the order of tracks when they are initially loaded. But the "Sort By" function worked quickly to sort a 147 item playlist for me by Artist without trouble. It can also sort by Track or give you a random sort. For finer tuning, you can arrange the order of each track though this takes more time, especially for a long playlist.

This being said, dAP handles many Playlist functions through the MMC (My Music Colection). To start out with, MMC allows you to have multiple music collections. But probably the greatest strength of dAP is in the Selective Play function. It allows a user fairly quickly to select or deselect tracks for listening by genre, artist, preference and year (in dAP r2). So say you wake up and decide you want to only listen to Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and Tom Waites. You open dAP, click on Selective Play, go to the Artist section, and select to exclude all artists, then select Duke Ellington, Woody Herman and Tom Waites. And that is all you will hear from dAP until you change the setting again. This is enormously useful for Christmas music (which most people don't want to be hearing for 10 to 11 months out of the year).
You can also create different "User Highlight States" which can help create different sets, although I have not toyed with this function.

Best wishes,
Bill Mikkelsen