Playlists

[dzangger67]

I finally got around to looking at the playlist functionality; it's one of the features that I really liked about this library. A couple of observations.

1. I can't seem to append items to the playlist. When I add a track, it just seems to recreate the playlist file.
2. The Track information reports incorrect titles. There are extra dashes in the title. Is this information

Thanks for your time.

[Zeugma440]

I can't seem to append items to the playlist. When I add a track, it just seems to recreate the playlist file.

Did you take a look at the code snippets?

The Track information reports incorrect titles. There are extra dashes in the title. Is this information

That does look like a bug. Could you upload the playlist file please?

[dzangger67]

Yes, I did start with the snippets for both reading and writing. There's good information in those code snippets to get us started but I didn't see anything about append. Let me look again; I could have easily missed it.

This is the code I'm using to print out the contents of the playlist.

IPlaylistIO theReader = PlaylistIOFactory.GetInstance().GetPlaylistIO(@"C:\Users\dzang\source\repos\DigitalAudioCatalog\bin\Debug\net8.0-windows\Playlists\Test.m3u");

// Option A : Get file paths
foreach (string s in theReader.FilePaths)
{
    Debug.Print(s);
}

// Option B : Get ready-to-use tracks (instances of ATL.Track)
foreach (Track t in theReader.Tracks)
{
    Debug.Print($"From Playlist Track -> [{t.TrackNumber}] [{t.Title}]");
    Track t2 = new Track(t.Path);
    Debug.Print($"From          Track -> [{t2.TrackNumber}] [{t2.Title}]");
}

Test.txt

[Zeugma440]

I've created a fix for the incorrect titles. The fix will be available on next release.

Regarding appending files to a playlist, here's working code

IPlaylistIO pls = PlaylistIOFactory.GetInstance().GetPlaylistIO(playlistPath);

// With paths
IList<string> paths = pls.FilePaths;
paths.Add("<somePath>");
pls.FilePaths = paths;
pls.Save();

// With tracks
IList<Track> tracks = pls.Tracks;
tracks.Add(new Track("<somePath>"));
pls.Tracks = tracks;
pls.Save();

Just realized code snippets were missing calls to IPlaylistIO.Save 😅

[dzangger67]

I didn't think about loading the paths and then appending to that. Thank you for taking the time to fix this. I truly appreciate it.

[dzangger67]

As a follow-up, I've got some EXTINF lines with -1 for duration. Do you believe this is related to the issue above? Some files do load the time just fine. As you can see from the bottom image, ATL does report the correct duration when I create a Track instance.

All my thanks.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,1-01 - Fly (from 'Giants EP')
M:\Music\Test\Bolshoi\1985 - Giants (Box Set)\1-01 - Fly (from 'Giants EP').mp3
#EXTINF:-1,1-02 - Sliding Seagulls (from 'Giants EP')
M:\Music\Test\Bolshoi\1985 - Giants (Box Set)\1-02 - Sliding Seagulls (from 'Giants EP').mp3
#EXTINF:-1,1-03 - Hail Mary (from 'Giants EP')
M:\Music\Test\Bolshoi\1985 - Giants (Box Set)\1-03 - Hail Mary (from 'Giants EP').mp3
#EXTINF:-1,1-04 - Giants (from 'Giants EP')
M:\Music\Test\Bolshoi\1985 - Giants (Box Set)\1-04 - Giants (from 'Giants EP').mp3

[Zeugma440]

I'm sorry but I don't get what the problem is, as you referred to many different things on your post. Could you please explain what you intended to do, the result you got and why do you think it's wrong?

[dzangger67]

Sure. From what I read about the #EXTINF line, the first value is the song duration in seconds. And my tracks are showing a -1. Even though the actual Track itself has a valid duration. Since it appears that the Titles are wrong when reading the playlist, I was wondering if that was causing an issue with the Duration. My screenshot above shows that the tracks actually do have a Duration even though -1 is being written to the playlist. I hope that makes more sense.

[Zeugma440]

Thanks for pointing that out.

There's a certain logic behind what you saw, and to understand that logic, one has to know how that part of the library was initially coded, and how the old Playlist API looked like.

Now to be completely honest, that logic makes no sense considering how the API is designed today. I'm going to fix that to avoid any further misunderstandings.

[Zeugma440]

Fixes are available on today's v6.15. Thanks again for your feedback.

[dzangger67]

Thank you for fixing the duration. The issue with the -'s in the title still remain. If you load a playlist, and iterate through the Tracks, you'll notice that the titles all start with " - ". What happens is that each time you read and write the playlist, it keeps adding a - to the #EXTINF line.

As an example. I write a single track to a blank playlist. Everything looks good.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:278,A Drop In The Gray - All The Same
M:\Music\Test\A Drop In The Gray\1984 - Certain Sculptures\01 - All The Same.mp3

Now, I add another track to the playlist. To do this, I have to read the playlist, add the new track, and write the lines again. Now you can see that the first track now has 2 -'s in the #EXTINF line.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:278,A Drop In The Gray - - All The Same
M:\Music\Test\A Drop In The Gray\1984 - Certain Sculptures\01 - All The Same.mp3
#EXTINF:253,A Drop In The Gray - Wide Eyed One
M:\Music\Test\A Drop In The Gray\1984 - Certain Sculptures\02 - Wide Eyed One.mp3

And when I add a 3rd track to the playlist, this is what the playlist lines look like before I add the track. These are the TrackNumber, Artist, and Title fields in brackets.

[1] [A Drop In The Gray] [- - All The Same]
[2] [A Drop In The Gray] [- Wide Eyed One]

And this is the code I use to print the above

            IPlaylistIO pls = PlaylistIOFactory.GetInstance().GetPlaylistIO(playlistName);

            foreach(Track t in pls.Tracks)
            {
                Debug.Print($"[{t.TrackNumber}] [{t.Artist}] [{t.Title}]");
            }

I'm sorry to trouble you with this.

[Zeugma440]

Alright. I'll write an unit test for that to make sure everything goes smoothly for next release 👍

[dzangger67]

Thank you

[Zeugma440]

That's done for next release 😄

[dzangger67]

Thank you so much !!!

[Zeugma440]

Fix is available on today's v6.16. Enjoy~

[dzangger67]

This works. Thank you very much for taking the time to fix this :)