Unsure how to adjust my m3u playlists so they work in Emby

[Architekt 7]

Loving Emby so far. I have my music library set up to import playlists found. This is what my music library set up looks like:

As you can see, I have direct paths set up (the "(Optional) Shared network folder" option set). All the music runs off my NAS, and Emby runs off OpenMediaVault, a Debian distro on another box with access to the above paths (and you can see where they got mounted: /srv/remotemount/).

Emby correctly picks up the m3u playlists in the separate playlists folder on the NAS but they're all empty. So obviously the issue is the mismatch in the paths in the playlists being imported and what the file structure on Emby is.

That's what I don't know how to fix. I wrote a simple program that converts the M3U playlist paths to be compatible with Emby (well, it WILL once I know the correct mapping) and copies it over to the NAS, after which I do a rescan on the music lib.

Here is the layout of my music and playlists on my local computer:

Music folder: D:\OneDrive\Music\Default\Media
Playlist folder: D:\OneDrive\Music\Default
Destination playlist folder for use by Emby: D:\OneDrive\Music\Default\playlists (this gets sync'd to my NAS instantly, just like my music does)

Here is an example playlist on my local computer:

./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/01 - Hollywood.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/02 - New York.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/03 - Chicago.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/04 - Miami.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/05 - Pittsburgh.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/06 - San Francisco.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/07 - Philidelphia.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/08 - Detroit.mp3
./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/09 - Los Angeles.mp3

From the above folder layout, the tracks are, as you can see, all organized in this structure:

D:\OneDrive\Music\Default\Media\<artist name, 1.8.7 in this case>\<album name, in this case: The Cities Collection>\<track name: 01 - Hollywood.mp3> 

On my NAS, it looks slightly different. On the NAS, I have this folder structure:

\\192.168.3.210\music
\\192.168.3.210\music\playlists (where I'm copying the M3Us from my local computer's \Music\Default\playlists folder)
\\192.168.3.210\music\Default\Media

Example path using the above same track example on the NAS:
\\192.168.3.210\music\Default\Media\<artist: 1.8.7>\<album: The Cities Collection>\01 - Hollywood.mp3

 

To try and get more info, I went into the metadata manager to look at paths.

For example, with that same above track, in Metadata Manager->Music->music->1.8.7->The Cities Collection->Hollywood, it shows this as the path:

\\192.168.3.210\music\Default\Media\1.8.7\The Cities Collection\01 - Hollywood.mp3

And in the same Music library, the path for the above playlist under Metadata Manager->Music->playlists->1.8.7. The Cities Collection I see this:

\\192.168.3.210\music\playlists\1.8.7. The Cities Collection.m3u

So I guess the question is, in the original playlist, how should I change the following path from the local machine to how it's set up in Emby?

./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/01 - Hollywood.mp3

Thanks a ton!

[Luke 42077]

HI, if you're using full paths inside the playlists, then you'll need to match the format that you've got in Emby library setup, which means /srv/remotemount/music The network path is currently not used with this function, although we might be able to support that.

So yes, this means if you format the playlists like that, then they will not work on windows.

Alternatively you can use relative paths in the playlists, and that should allow them to work universally.

[Architekt 7]

I'm actually already using relative paths. Here's an example relative path on my desktop PC inside an m3u file:

./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/01 - Hollywood.mp3

How would I modify the above to work with Emby? ../music/1.8.7/.........? or something else?

I'm not worried about them not working on PC: I have a program I wrote that copies the modified Emby compatible playlists to a different folder that syncs with Emby and is in its Library path list.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/01 - Hollywood.mp3

So in this example, where is it relative from?

[Architekt 7]

The playlist is in this directory: D:\OneDrive\Music\Default

OneDrive
|
--Music
   |
   --Default
   |
     --1.8.7. The Cities Collection.m3u

 

The music files it refers to are relative to the path of the playlist itself: that's why it's starting with ./Media, meaning that the Media folder is in the current folder. That's just how my music player software writes the files out, I didn't create that style.

So in the above example with paths, the songs would be located here:

D:\OneDrive\Music\Default\Media\1.8.7\The Cities Collection\<tracks>.mp3

OneDrive
|
--Music
   |
   --Default
   |
     --Media (this is 1 folder below where the .m3u is)
     |
       --1.8.7
     |
       --The Cities Collection
     |
       01 - Hollywood.mp3
       02 - New York.mp3
       etc

[Luke 42077]

OK then yea that looks like it should all be fine. What NAS and what version of the server?

[Architekt 7]

Synology DS1522+ running the latest version (and no plug ins besides the pre installed ones): DSM 7.2-64570 Update 3

If you're asking about the media server, OpenMediaVault, which is what is mounting that Synology video and audio folders and placing them in /srv/remotemount, then I am running OpenMediaVault 6.9.2 Which came out Oct. 1.

[Architekt 7]

If you meant Emby server version, 4.7.14.0

 

Edit; I think I found the fix. I changed the line FROM this:

./Media/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/01 - Hollywood.mp3

TO THIS:

/srv/remotemount/music/1.8.7/The Cities Collection/09 - Los Angeles.mp3

And now my playlists are showing all the music correctly. Thanks!

Edited October 6, 2023 by Architekt

[Luke 42077]

Well that's an absolute path but I'm glad to hear you've got this resolved. We'll look into what might have happened with the relative paths.