Does XBMP or XBMC support saved playlists with descriptions? In other words is there a way for me to create a playlist called, for example, "Christmas Music.m3u" and have that work?

Reading the XBMP manual suggests that the only way to do a playlist is to select songs manually, hit Y on each one and then hit Save Playlist which gives the playlist a generic name you won't be able to really remember the next time.

Spose you could rename it with BoXplorer.XBMP doesn't have a virtual keyboard so I don't see how you could with it. XBMC has got a virtual keyboard (i think) however doesnt have a playlist feature yet (i think).

Morien

Just FTP in and change the names. Anything with a .m3u extension will be showed. I've renamed my playlists this way.

QUOTE (Aron Parsons @ Jan 7 2004, 04:22 PM)

Just FTP in and change the names.  Anything with a .m3u extension will be showed.  I've renamed my playlists this way.

Great news, thanks. Can I also create m3u files on my PC and just FTP those over or must they be created on the XBOX? I'm thinking I'll just create the ones I want in WinAMP as I have all that music duplicated on my PC for now and then go from there. Will I also be able to edit these on the XBOX?

Yes you can if you are using shares on your pc.

Make your playlist, save it on your pc, with a name such as mymusic.mu3.
Then open up mymusic.m3u file you made in a text editor (wordpad).
It will look something like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:367,Happy Birthday
\\MyComputersName\mp3\Happy Birthday.mp3
#EXTINF:389,Second Song
\\MyComputersName\mp3\Second Song.mp3

Where MyComputersName = Serving pc
mp3 = is the shared folder

Use the text editor to find and replace:

\\MyComputersName\mp3\

with

smb://User:Password@Domain/MyComputersName/mp3/

it'll end up like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:367,Happy Birthday
smb://User:Password@Domain/MyComputersName/mp3/Happy Birthday.mp3
#EXTINF:389,Second Song
smb://User:Password@Domain/MyComputersName/mp3/Second Song.mp3

Save your mymusic.mu3 playlist and FTP to your xbox to your playlist folder in your XBMP.
In XBMP go to your playlists and your playlist will show launch it and enjoy.

This is good for large music collections and works with XBMP24.

veg

oops I re-read your post and it looks like you want to make the playlist for your collection on the xbox harddrive - same Idea if you are mirroring your collection on your pc.
If you are then you can use the find and replace technique with the text editor. Just point to the right directory on the xbox:
Where my music is on the F: partition in music directory.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,Happy Birthday
f:\music\Happy Birthday.mp3
#EXTINF:-1,Second Song
f:\music\Second Song.mp3

If you don't mirror the files it would be a lot of typing though.

Thanks Veg. It all seems very capable so far. The mod guy I chose gets back on the 9th or 10th so I should be with the rest of you all next week or so. Looking forward to it.

I haven't tripped over XBMP24 yet though. No idea what that is.

BTW, the mod guy didn't plan on installing XBMC. Is it at all a problem to have both on the same system? I realize there is no playlist support on XBMC right now but it does seem to be the future.

XBMP24 is just the last official release of XBMP ver 2.4 (left out the dot) and yes you can have both XBMP and XBMC on your system.

I might add if you want to share using your computer you can set up the share by editing your config.xml in XBMP to point to your computer. There are tons of tutorials on that in the pinned topics.
veg

We need to clone you Veg. Not enough people around here yet to answer all the questions we all have. Thanks for the continued help.

Streaming doesn't do much of anything for me. I want to do pretty much everything locally on the XBOX hard drive except for loading it up of course.

If we can just get the developers to adopt a couple of other items I think are very useful, I'd be all set. The Tivo project (like this one) has two things I love; local movie showtimes and local weather including all sorts of forecasts and radar displays and such. Both are things I'd use all the time.

http://javahmo.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

Agrajag,

I just try to answer what I can. I've been there and felt the pain. Some times the answers weren't clear and it took a lot of trial and error to get things to work even after reading all the faqs and tutorials.

The stuff you want to add to the xbox media players (XBMP/XBMC) sound cool.
You need to make the suggestion in the http://www.xboxmediacenter.com forum.

I don't think you'll get much added to the XBMP anymore, but the XBMC is being developed and evolving every day.
Later,
veg

Veg, do you have any access to a FLAC audio file? I'm trying to find out if it is indeed supported on both players. Rumor is it is but no one is discussing it. I would like to find an audio format that's supported that's a lossless compressed format. While the program supports WMA9, it doesn't support WMA9 Lossless which is what I ripped all my music to in anticipation of using a PC to do all this for me.

FLAC is virtually identical but I can't get anyone to reply with a verification that it does work.

Hmm... FLAC.. never heard of it.
I googled it, now I see. Never tried it myself. But you peaked my intrest.
I will try the codec and get back to you.

veg

Ok,
The results are in.
The FLAC codec worked in XBMC not XBMP.
XBMP didn't list the file I encoded.
It may still work in XBMP if I diddle with the config.xml.
That will be my next thing to try.
veg

Rats, just changing the config.xml doesn't do the trick.
It'll see the flac encoded file but not play it.
I suspect the codec needs to added in the compile of the XBMP.
That is beyond the scope of my expertise.
Looks like you'll have to stick to the ever-developing XBMC.

veg

Well Veg, thanks for all the attempts. At least I have options. The first option would be to just use WAV files for now. I'll lose all the tags but that's not so bad. The second would be to use XBMC but without playlists, that won't work for me too well.

You should be able to use XBMC with playlists.
Heck, I was able to use my XBMP playlists with XBMC. I just browsed them when in MyMusic directory. I don't get thumbnails yet though. I haven't been pursuing the latest builds much. I don't think they added thumbs yet anyway. My Shared playlist on my pc didn't work though I think it has to do with samba and I think they fixed it now. But I use XBMP more still. I like it better right now.
veg

Well, for music-only purposes, which do you think is better? Remember, this setup is very unlikely to have a Net connection for some time. If XBMC can pull up a local playlist and supports FLAC I may not have a choice but to go that way though clearly XBMP sounds like the better solution for me overall.

I suppose you could use XBMC after you get your playlists set up. I with you on XBMP if it supported your lossless codecs I would use it. I can't imagine loading up the xbox with wav files. How do you plan on making your playlists anyway? I'm not too sure how to do them in XBMC. In XBMP I do. I would make the playlists with XBMP even the FLAC encoded recordings. Then rename them using the pc or boxsplorer. Then point XBMC to play them. I'm sure there is more than one way to skin this cat.
Or what we talked about before - set up the pc with the exact directory structure that you plan on using on the xbox make your playlist with winamp then text edit the playlist entries to the differences between your pc and xbox.
I think XBMP has a better interface and I like my thumbnails. XBMC is coming along nicely and eventually I will ditch XBMP to use it. Not for a while though.
veg

double post

I just read your reply in parts, wrote up the whole process I planned and then saw that you said exactly that same thing later in your post. <grin>

I think it should be quite easy and I do plan on initially mirroring the songs on the PC and XBOX for this reason. Later I can even zero-byte the files on the PC to save space if needed as all you need is a file there to make a playlist.

I'm also far more interested in visualizations, which aren't in XBMC, than I am in thumbnails so it's a bit hit and miss. I believe I'd be best served initially just using XBMP and using WAV's until XBMC catches up.