Why do some of my M3U playlists work, but others do not populate with songs?

[RLanger7228 54]

I have my iTunes music folder duplicated/synced on my Synology NAS under the Shared Folder  /Music, so the folder & sub-folder structure is identical to what is on my computer (except for the ROOT part, of course).  I exported some playlists from Apple Music using the procedure I outlined in my recent post below:  

The first playlist I did this for worked perfectly (Bistro Mediterranean).  The playlist was recognized in Emby, all the songs appeared when I opened the list, and they play & shuffle as expected (that's why I made the post, to share my success).  However, when I tried the exact same procedure on 3 other playlists from the same library, the playlists themselves get recognized by Emby automatically (appear in the PlayList listing), but they are empty when I open them & Playing tells me there are no songs to play.  This remains true even after I re-Scan Library Files & waiting hours to re-check if anything changed with time (as has happened to me on occasion with other new content issues).

I have uploaded 2 examples in case inspection might reveal the issue: Bistro works & Nostalgic doesn't.  A quick visual inspection reveals them to be basically identical (except for the content).  I can't imagine why one works & the others don't.  I find inconsistent computer problems to be exquisitely frustrating, though they usually turn out to be some sort of non-obvious "user error".  If I performed the exact same find & replace function for the file path ROOT on both files, generated by the same Apple Music program in the same way, why should they behave differently?

 

Bistro Mediterranean.m3u Nostalgic.m3u

[Happy2Play 9352]

And the server log for when you imported the playlist.

[RLanger7228 54]

I included today's log, which includes the new playlists that were empty as one file, and yesterday & the day before (couldn't remember which day I uploaded the working file) as a multi-download single file, with the dates in the file name(s).

 

BTW, is there any "sensitive" information in the log files that I am so blithely uploading?  Does anyone but Emby administrators get access to them?

embyserver - 2024-01-19.txt embyserver-63872755200 - 2024:01:18 & 17.txt

[Luke 39638]

hi, are you sure these are the log files from when the playlist was imported? It doesn't appear in them.

[RLanger7228 54]

That is so weird!  01/19 definitely was the day I imported 2 of the new empty playlists (as an experiment), Sunday - that is one of the files.  The other log file should cover Saturday & Friday (multi-download).  I DEFINITELY worked on all this over the weekend. I imported the successful playlist on the day I made the post about how to export/import, Sat nite into Sunday.    That should definitely be covered by the logs I uploaded. Curiouser & curiouser...

Could the fact that they don't show up in the log file have anything to do with why they are not populating?  However, If they are not at all being recognized by the system, why are they showing up in the playlist page?  AND, if one of them IS working, why is IT not showing up in the log file, since it successfully imported?  Maddening!

The SS shows the playlist page in the music section.  The working playlist has an image I added.  The empty ones are grey, since there are no songs with album art to create the image (as the first one did before I uploaded that image).

Where do I go from here?

Edited January 21 by RLanger7228
added thought.

[Luke 39638]

HI try refreshing the metadata on one of the empty ones and see if that helps.

[RLanger7228 54]

OK.  I tried refreshing the metadata on all 4 empty playlists, half with replacing images, half without.  Still no songs populating. Just for a goof, I Uploaded the log for today, in case it reveals anything. 

embyserver - 2024-01-21.txt

[RLanger7228 54]

Just for a goof, I tried deleting the 4 "empty" playlists from the Music Playlist section, then re-importing them & refreshing the metadata, just in case some error happened when they were first imported.  The working playlist still works, so I left it alone.  After waiting some time to allow Emby to refresh the data, the playlists are still empty.

As another experiment, I copied the one working playlist M3U file to a non-indexed folder on the NAS, renamed it "Test Duplicate", then added it back to the Music/Playlist folder.  After < 5 minutes, it was automatically recognized & populated with songs.  This suggests that despite being created "identically", there must be something fundamentally different between the files themselves, rather than with Emby processing them.

After a deeper dive in comparing the files, I found that the "mistake" was mine:  While I had changed the ROOT of the file path, the actual names of the main music folders are different on my computer & the NAS (and I neglected to change that part in the M3U files).  When I deleted the empty playlists and edited the M3U files to reflect the NAS version of the main music folder name, then re-imported them into EMBY, they (almost) all were recognized & populated with songs.  One playlist was still empty:  When I examined it closely, I found that the folder name which should have been Volume1 was actually Vomume1.  Once I corrected THAT mistake & re-imported it, it was recognized, populated & played as expected.  PROBLEM SOLVED!

This just reinforces my theory that atypical, inconsistent computer behavior is most often due to overlooked little mistakes.  Even 1 character wrong in a file path makes all the difference.

Edited January 26 by RLanger7228
Added a screenshot of the successful Playlist page

[Luke 39638]

Hi, thanks for following up.