Audio Player Albums - File format?

[bodo]

Hi,

I'm using Linux to communicate with my Clie NZ90/v and like to use the Album feature of the Audio player. I can copy MP3s onto a CF or MS and listen to them on the Clie with no problem, however all songs show up in a long list (with a 512MB CF it really is a long list...) and there seems to be no way to create playlists with the SudioPlayer on the Clie.

I tried to use SonicStage in VmWare (allows to run Windows under Linux) but unfortunalty it doesn't sync to the Clie (reports no space left on the MS even when it's empty...).

Now if anybody knows something about the file format AudioPlayer/SonicStage use to store album information and/or playlists I'd ask you to share this info. Also a sample file and maybe a directory listing would be highly appreciated. This info would allow me to write a little Linux app to create similar playlists, which should help getting my music organized.

Note: I'm not asking you to share any MP3s with me, I'm only interested in playlist information.

Thanks,
BB

[jmg_NX21]

audioplayer is NOT a flexible programs, nothing NEW from $ony BUT I think I remember users saying that THEY can copy the TEXT file of the PLAYLIST, edit it on their computer and there you go, a CUSTOMIZED playlist on your CLIE.

SOme may have mulptiple versions with different names and all they do is rename ONE at a time depending on the playlist they want visible and playing.

I think this may work...

[hansschmucker]

The playlists are plain text files only containing the filenames in the order you want them to be player like

My first Song.MP3
My second Song.MP3
...

[bodo]

Thanks for the help, let me give a short summary of what I found out so far. It's little enough...

For mp3 files the file /PALM/Programs/MSAUDIO/MP3LIST.M3U is used as playlist file.
It seems standard m3u format in the sense that it lists one mp3 file perr line and doesn't contain any additional information. The order the files are listed in here is the order they show up in the player.

Other m3u files in the same directory are silently ignored by Audio Player.

So far so good, but what I'd really ike to know is how to group songs into albums. If I click on the MS icon in Audio Player to get the MS Info it lists only one album caled 'MP3'. It would be nice to find out what the file names and formats are the player uses for album information.

Thanks,
BB

[hansschmucker]

Probably via ID3 tag. I don't use it, os I can't verify, but I guess it will just look for files with the same album tag.

[golalmo]

I'm using MP3mgr that allows me to create playlist right over my cli'e.
I've attached the file to this post.

[Flash-57]

Now, in theory, shouldn't you be able to create that M3U playlist in almost any commercial audio player for your PC, like WinAmp or Media Player?

But, now that I look at these two, it looks like each program saves more than just the file name into the M3U file. The Audio Player finds this extra info, decides that it is an invalid file, and overwrites it with a new M3U file. Annoying.

Perhaps I'll have to write my own playlist generator.

[bodo]

Creating a playlist is not the problem (anymore...). You can create a playlist, call it MP3LIST.M3U an copy it into the MSAUDIO directory on your CF/MS and the Clie will use it.

This however doesn't solve the problem of multiple albums. AudioPlayer recognizes only this one playlist and has all songs in this playlist in the same album.

hansschmucker: It's not done using ID3 tags. All my MP3s have an album listen in their ID3 tags, AudioPlayer doesn't care.

Flash-57: Writing a playlist editor is exaclty what I'd like to do. But that requires to know a bit more about the structure AudioPlayer expects.

This closed source stuff is really frustrating...

[jackho]

If you just need a MP3 playlist editor, there is one already written by someone. You may try this, http://geoffreywu.uhome.net/ (sorry this site is in Chinese). Go to download area, you will find 'Playlist Editor 0.1' (This is a beta version, you use it in you own risk).

[bodo]

I wrote an playlist editor a while ago (http://gm3u.sf.net). What I'd like to do is to make it support albums for the clie....

[Flash-57]

I downloaded the Chinese one and it is not really a playlist editor, per se. What it does is to move MP3 files in and out of the MSAUDIO directory. It creates a subdirectory in that folder. Then, as you select and deselect files in your "playlist", it moves files into the subfolder, making them invisible to AudioPlayer. That's a clever idea, but not really a playlist editor.

[jackho]

Sorry, I haven't tried that before. Because I'm always playing MP3 or ATRAC3 in shuffle mode...