Serviio

Hi there,

I've tried making a playlist using both VLC and WMP in order to have hours of background cafe-style music for an upcoming occasion. The audio is stored on a NAS, along with the playlist file. The music is all served well using Serviio otherwise.

Unfortunately Serviio lists the playlist as being added in the console, but it's never in the list of available media. I've tried saving it as .m3u and .xspf but can't seem to use them.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Does it show under Audio -> Playlists?

A couple of things to try. First, stop servio (not just the console) make sure the service is stopped. Add the playlist then restart serviio. Be patient a large list take time to parse. If it doesn't appear check the song titles for unusual characters. I believe if your character set is wrong serviio will struggle to "finalize" adding the list. You will need to adjust the character set.

Second, Just rename the playlist the dynamic poller may then pick it up.

I use really large playlist for the same reason. Using the first option above I haven't had any problems for quite some time. The character set (I believe UTF-8) ZIP ???? was causing problems when beta testing 1.5.2 once that was resolved stopping the server adding playlist and restarting has worked every time.

If you have Playlist Creator 3, try opening the file and resaving it as a pls file. When I had problems with m3u, changing to pls worked fine. Make sure the file path is set correctly. I had some playlists that used relative paths, and the media did not show until I redid the playlist with absolute paths. Since your files are on a NAS, make sure you are using a UNC path, not a drive letter.

That's where I have been looking for it. It's not there, and not in the music folder.



Thanks, will have a look into this. I'm not convinced stopping then adding the file then starting will work, given the console showed it was added when I force refreshed it.

Is there an easy way to check for "unusual characters"?



I forgot to add that I've saved it as a .pls file also. Might look at Playlist Creator. In the list, files are listed as "\\ds413\Audio\Music\XXX.flac or XXX.mp3 or XXX.m4a

Attached is an example of a m3u that works in an environment that includes a Nas. A snippet of a playlist I use for background noise with approximately 200 titles. Note the ".." as opposed to a UNC or Mapped drive such as "m:\ or \\saw\music". Create a folder called playlist in the tree where the audio files are stored. Use your playlist creating software and save the .wpl .m3u or what ever to a work folder not included in the serviio library. Open the created file and edit it if needed (see below). Then copy the playlist file to the folder created in the serviio library path.

Edit if Necessary...........
if you are using Windows media player the to create the list it more than likely will create a playlist with local paths. Won't work across shared devices. The .. in a m3u just tells it to append the path to the beginning of the string. As long as the playlist file exists in the same folder tree the path will be correct.

May seem long handed but I have created playlists this way that include 4-500 titles that I use for exactly the purpose you describe. As for Restarting the service I know for a fact that the poller will do a fresh search on each restart. I just do it out of habit and it hasn't failed me.

Additionally, If the poller cannot validate any items in the playlist it will not show in the media browser. So, if the path used in the playlist cannot be resolved the playlist won't appear in the media browser even if it shows as added in the log.

Thanks snowflake.

I opened the .m3u in Word, chose to find and replace "\\DS413\Audio" with ".." and then saved the changed data to a new .m3u file.

Serviio found then added the new playlist and it seems to be working. Looks like it was all to do with the paths directing it to \\DS413\ on the LAN.

Thanks again for your help!

Nick