A couple of suggestions for playlists

[bg2019 5]

Greetings. I have a couple of suggestions for playlist management which I'd find handy, and maybe others would too. My use case specifically focuses on M3U playlists for music, though maybe they'd be handy more broadly too. Thanks.

 

1. Playlist integrity

If an M3U playlist references a track that for whatever reason cannot be found, currently that track simply disappears from the playlist with no indication of a problem. It would be useful to still show that track, highlighting that it's missing so the issue can be addressed. I have a growing number of playlists in M3U format and should a track drop off the system or be moved so that the path given is no longer valid, I currently have no at-a-glance way of knowing a) that there's an issue at all, and b) where the issue is.

In addition to the track listing of the playlist showing the missing track, perhaps there could also be a flag shown on the Playlist screen so that any playlists with issues are easily seen (maybe an exclamation mark icon placed over the playlist image art).

My use case here is that I'm restructuring my music into a better, consistent, and more logical organisation, but this breaks some existing playlist references. I use playlists for compilation albums to avoid keeping duplicate tracks, so moving one file can affect a number of different playlists. While I take time to update playlists as I go, it would be very easy to make a mistake here which would not be immediately obvious. But more generally, if a track should drop off be it due to accidental deletion/renaming/corruption/whatever, that is even less likely to be noticed resulting in degrading playlists over time.

 

2. Additional data in the M3U file

In the interest of keeping information in one place, I'd like to be able to add additional data into a playlist's M3U file (e.g., release date, year, overview). I know that this data can be added into Emby after it has read the playlist file, but that separates data into two locations - the M3U file for track listing and title; the Emby database for extra information. There is the #EXTALB M3U directive which could maybe be useful for containing the overview information, though I don't know if there are standard directives for release date and year; I guess these might have to be Emby-specific in that case?

[Luke 37095]

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2. Additional data in the M3U file

In the interest of keeping information in one place, I'd like to be able to add additional data into a playlist's M3U file (e.g., release date, year, overview). I know that this data can be added into Emby after it has read the playlist file, but that separates data into two locations - the M3U file for track listing and title; the Emby database for extra information. There is the #EXTALB M3U directive which could maybe be useful for containing the overview information, though I don't know if there are standard directives for release date and year; I guess these might have to be Emby-specific in that case?

Hi, you can add whatever data you like to your playlist file, but it is not imported into emby server?

Why? Because the playlist references media that is already in your Emby library, therefore this information will already be present on whatever tracks you have. So in other words, rather than add this information to your playlist, I would suggest adding it directly to your audio files instead.

Please let us know if this helps. Thanks !

[bg2019 5]

That wouldn’t work for what I’m thinking of - it’s the overview metadata that can be added to a playlist currently via the Emby interface and then displays underneath the title. For example, I’ve created a playlist of songs based on a recent TV programme. While I’ve appropriately titled the playlist to reflect the programme which pulls through fine, there’s additional information I’ve had to manually include in the overview field. I’d like to keep this with the playlist file itself to avoid fragmentation of data. I’d also find it more straightforward to add that information in the M3U file at the time I build it, rather than add an additional process.

Hopefully the attached screenshots clarify the metadata I’m thinking about. I’m thinking that a line in the M3U file as follows could populate the overview field:

#EXTALB:A selection of music featured on "Britain's Favourite 90s Songs", as broadcast on Channel 5 over Christmas 2022. Includes songs from the main countdown of 50 tracks, plus side tracks.

With a year field, this would be the year relative to the playlist, not any of the songs. So, in this case the playlist Year is 2022, despite songs being from the 1990s.

[Luke 37095]

OK you mean for the entire playlist, not individual tracks? Looking at this I'm not sure there's anything we can use for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

[bg2019 5]

17 minutes ago, Luke said:

OK you mean for the entire playlist, not individual tracks?

Yes, that's right.

18 minutes ago, Luke said:

Looking at this I'm not sure there's anything we can use for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

That's where I got the #EXTALB directive from. It seems to fit the use for the overview information, even if loosely.

Beyond that though, there could presumably be Emby specific tags? While they would be ignored by other players, at least the data is then kept together.

[Jägs 72]

Regarding the first one—flagging missing tracks instead of "disappearing" them—this is something I requested almost two years ago, now:

I'm going through the process of properly tagging all of my music, which includes deduplicating, so I'm constantly having to rebuild/tweak playlists, and while I have a process, it is very manual—comparing backups to current versions—and it would be significantly easier if this was handled like the Subsonic example I posted.

[bg2019 5]

4 hours ago, Jägs said:

Regarding the first one—flagging missing tracks instead of "disappearing" them—this is something I requested almost two years ago, now:

I'm going through the process of properly tagging all of my music, which includes deduplicating, so I'm constantly having to rebuild/tweak playlists, and while I have a process, it is very manual—comparing backups to current versions—and it would be significantly easier if this was handled like the Subsonic example I posted.

Not quite sure how I missed your thread when searching, but yes, this sounds like the same thing. Apologies for the duplication!