Deleting legacy playlists?

[Dreakon13 143]

I've heard around the forums that 4.7 playlists won't automatically update with the new 4.8 features, so after updating to 4.8 I made new playlists from the old playlists.  However now I can't delete the old playlists.  The Delete button seems to be missing.  It is there on the new playlists though.

Hopefully I don't need to drill into the filesystem to manually delete folders or files since Synology isn't very friendly in that regard, would be kinda nice if I could through the interface, but it's a one time thing so I will if I have to.  Appreciate any help!

 

 

Edited February 2, 2024 by Dreakon13

[tmurphy2792 27]

You're doing a step better than me, I've been unable to find my old playlists so I could recreate them.

 

How did you go about recreating them?

[Dreakon13 143]

13 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

You're doing a step better than me, I've been unable to find my old playlists so I could recreate them.

 

How did you go about recreating them?

The old playlists were still there for me after updating from 4.7.14.0 to 4.8.0.80.  Didn't have to do anything special to see them.

To recreate them I just started to play the playlist in full, then used "Save Play Queue to Playlist" to a new playlist.  For the Simpsons one (since I didn't want to actually start playback and potentially transcode) I just multi-selected the contents of the original playlist and used "Add to Playlist".

Edited February 2, 2024 by Dreakon13

[tmurphy2792 27]

Really interesting, my playlists are straight up gone from within Emby.

After work today I need to log into my host machine and see if I can find the files and do something to convert them. Otherwise I'm just having to recreate my playlists manually.

[MBSki 1114]

Just now, tmurphy2792 said:

Really interesting, my playlists are straight up gone from within Emby.

After work today I need to log into my host machine and see if I can find the files and do something to convert them. Otherwise I'm just having to recreate my playlists manually.

This is really concerning. Were your playlists created in Emby or pulled in from m3u files?

@Luke I've seen this comment in multiple posts now. Why are playlists disappearing?

[tmurphy2792 27]

2 minutes ago, MBSki said:

This is really concerning. Were your playlists created in Emby or pulled in from m3u files?

@Luke I've seen this comment in multiple posts now. Why are playlists disappearing?

They were created natively in Emby.

My guess is this is related to the change in 4.8 where they changed playlists to use m3u and deprecated xml (I may have that backwards?).

Would have liked to see automagic conversion as part of that update process, but I guess it could have been problematic to implement... Or it was intended to happen and was problematic. LoL 

Hopefully there's a manual way to run a script or something on the files, since I'm sure the old files still exist somewhere.

Fortunately in my case I only recently started creating playlists for myself, so I'm already almost done rebuilding them manually. Though I'm sure some users who have been around longer and have bigger libraries are getting absolutely hosed by this.

[MBSki 1114]

3 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

They were created natively in Emby.

Ok, good to know. Thanks. I have several created natively that I'll need to look out for.

3 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

My guess is this is related to the change in 4.8 where they changed playlists to use m3u and deprecated xml (I may have that backwards?).

Yes, that seems right. They wanted to move to m3u rather then their proprietary xml.

4 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

Would have liked to see automagic conversion as part of that update process, but I guess it could have been problematic to implement... Or it was intended to happen and was problematic. LoL 

Agree, I asked about this awhile ago and Luke said it wasn't possible. Theoretically you can copy from the existing playlist to a new playlist. BUT, they need to be there to copy from! Ugh!

4 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

Hopefully there's a manual way to run a script or something on the files, since I'm sure the old files still exist somewhere.

Fortunately in my case I only recently started creating playlists for myself, so I'm already almost done rebuilding them manually. Though I'm sure some users who have been around longer and have bigger libraries are getting absolutely hosed by this.

Yea, I have playlists with 1,000's of items and this would really make my life miserable. I'm waiting to see if there's a fix before I upgrade. 

[tmurphy2792 27]

@MBSki

Just to add an interesting observation. The "playlist" section was completely absent from the top of my music library as well as the sidebar navigation in all of my client apps (web, windows, android). Almost as if I had 0 playlists to show.

 

As soon as I did create a new playlist it reappeared, and inside there I still had some really old m3u playlists created in VLC back before I started using Emby. They weren't visible though till I created a new one in Emby.

[MBSki 1114]

Just now, tmurphy2792 said:

@MBSki

Just to add an interesting observation. The "playlist" section was completely absent from the top of my music library as well as the sidebar navigation in all of my client apps (web, windows, android). Almost as if I had 0 playlists to show.

As soon as I did create a new playlist it reappeared, and inside there I still had some really old m3u playlists created in VLC back before I started using Emby. They weren't visible though till I created a new one in Emby.

Hmmm, that's strange. And once you created the new playlist, did all of your playlists show up or just some?

[tmurphy2792 27]

3 minutes ago, MBSki said:

Ok, good to know. Thanks. I have several created natively that I'll need to look out for.

Yes, that seems right. They wanted to move to m3u rather then their proprietary xml.

Agree, I asked about this awhile ago and Luke said it wasn't possible. Theoretically you can copy from the existing playlist to a new playlist. BUT, they need to be there to copy from! Ugh!

Yea, I have playlists with 1,000's of items and this would really make my life miserable. I'm waiting to see if there's a fix before I upgrade. 

Normally I like to be a late adopter for this very reason. Let some other poor sap eat bugs. Today I am the poor sap and I didn't even think to bring hot sauce.

The consolation here is that I'd rather be the canary in this case so people like you who would feel it more can hopefully migrate smoothly.

1 minute ago, MBSki said:

Hmmm, that's strange. And once you created the new playlist, did all of your playlists show up or just some?

Only the m3u files came back. The xml files are still NOT showing in Emby.

When I get off work today I'm going to dig through the host machine and see if they're even still there. My guess is yes, but it's interesting other users still get to see their old playlists.

[MBSki 1114]

4 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

The consolation here is that I'd rather be the canary in this case so people like you who would feel it more can hopefully migrate smoothly.

Well I for one appreciate it immensely. Thank you for your service. 

4 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

Only the m3u files came back. The xml files are still NOT showing in Emby.

When I get off work today I'm going to dig through the host machine and see if they're even still there. My guess is yes, but it's interesting other users still get to see their old playlists.

That's really concerning. My Emby created playlists are the biggest playlists I have! Yikes!

[Dreakon13 143]

Doesn't really help much I'm sure, but my playlists were made in Emby so I guess it would've been the proprietary xml kind? Wonder what the difference could be.

[Tremas 199]

 

9 minutes ago, tmurphy2792 said:

The consolation here is that I'd rather be the canary in this case so people like you who would feel it more can hopefully migrate smoothly.

If it helps, many thanks from me too. Following the beta discussions, I knew this was going to be painful - but these are some good tips from @Dreakon13. I have my emby playlists backed up via the backup plugin. If that helps anyone, make sure to do that before upgrading (if it isn't too late).

Based on past emby upgrades it may also be a "please be patient" scenario. Once you created the new playlist it may take some time for the system to fire off library scans and update the database - as I'm sure there are lots of other database updates going on with the upgrade.

[tmurphy2792 27]

54 minutes ago, MBSki said:

Well I for one appreciate it immensely. Thank you for your service. 

That's really concerning. My Emby created playlists are the biggest playlists I have! Yikes!

 

29 minutes ago, Tremas said:

 

If it helps, many thanks from me too. Following the beta discussions, I knew this was going to be painful - but these are some good tips from @Dreakon13. I have my emby playlists backed up via the backup plugin. If that helps anyone, make sure to do that before upgrading (if it isn't too late).

Based on past emby upgrades it may also be a "please be patient" scenario. Once you created the new playlist it may take some time for the system to fire off library scans and update the database - as I'm sure there are lots of other database updates going on with the upgrade.

 

[Dreakon13 143]

On an unrelated but related note, in regards to my original question of how to delete, I went ahead and brushed up on SSH and how to access the EmbyServer folder on my Synology NAS and manually deleted the old playlists.  Scanned the playlist library and they're gone now.

Feels like there should probably be a way to delete the 4.7 or older playlists through the interface, but that was my only issue with 4.8 so far at least.

Edited February 2, 2024 by Dreakon13

[tmurphy2792 27]

51 minutes ago, Dreakon13 said:

On an unrelated but related note, in regards to my original question of how to delete, I went ahead and brushed up on SSH and how to access the EmbyServer folder on my Synology NAS and manually deleted the old playlists.  Scanned the playlist library and they're gone now.

Feels like there should probably be a way to delete the 4.7 or older playlists through the interface, but that was my only issue with 4.8 so far at least.

Glad you got it sorted and figured out.

 

Sorry I kinda derailed your post.

[MBSki 1114]

1 hour ago, Dreakon13 said:

On an unrelated but related note, in regards to my original question of how to delete, I went ahead and brushed up on SSH and how to access the EmbyServer folder on my Synology NAS and manually deleted the old playlists.  Scanned the playlist library and they're gone now.

Feels like there should probably be a way to delete the 4.7 or older playlists through the interface, but that was my only issue with 4.8 so far at least.

This isn't going to be ideal for the majority of users. @Luke do you have this marked as a bug that needs to be fixed?

[Tremas 199]

@Dreakon13- just to get this out of the way, were you certain that the user account had permissions to delete from the associated library? Also are you sure it was the account that created the playlist? Not exactly sure how it works in the new release, but the image below is from 4.7 user settings

[Dreakon13 143]

1 hour ago, Tremas said:

@Dreakon13- just to get this out of the way, were you certain that the user account had permissions to delete from the associated library? Also are you sure it was the account that created the playlist? Not exactly sure how it works in the new release, but the image below is from 4.7 user settings

I don't have "Allow Media Deletion" enabled for any library.

However, that was never an issue deleting playlists before.  And I'm able to delete new playlists on 4.8 without that setting enabled.

The playlists, old and new, were all made with my admin user.

Edited February 2, 2024 by Dreakon13

[Luke 42078]

Try checking the box for the playlists library. You don't need to do that in order to delete the new 4.8 playlists, but you may have to do it for the old ones.

[Dreakon13 143]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

Try checking the box for the playlists library. You don't need to do that in order to delete the new 4.8 playlists, but you may have to do it for the old ones.

Thanks Luke, I worked around it and deleted the playlists from the filesystem, so I no longer have any old playlists to test that with.  Hopefully if someone else needs it, they can give that a try.

And hopefully if there are issues with playlists getting lost in the upgrade like some of the other folks in this thread, the team can get that isolated and resolved.

[Tremas 199]

21 minutes ago, Luke said:

Try checking the box for the playlists library. You don't need to do that in order to delete the new 4.8 playlists, but you may have to do it for the old ones.

Wait.. so a user doesn't need to have delete privileges to remove playlists from the system anymore?

[Luke 42078]

3 minutes ago, Tremas said:

Wait.. so a user doesn't need to have delete privileges to remove playlists from the system anymore?

Who said that?  They don’t need to be granted permission to delete their own private playlists.

[Tremas 199]

29 minutes ago, Luke said:

Who said that?  They don’t need to be granted permission to delete their own private playlists.

Ok, I'm just trying to understand. I like that I can currently use permissions to prevent myself from deleting my own private playlists by accident. I've been following the forums as much as I can, but I haven't run the beta and there isn't documentation (yet?) about how we transition playlists or how these new features work. The recommendation above to multi-select contents in an old playlist and use it to create a new one is a great idea that I wouldn't have thought about until I was already a week into doing it manually with a text editor. That might be a good thing to document in the knowledge base.

That said, it makes me nervous that my child could accidentally delete my playlist from the TV if I leave the room without logging out. At least that's where my head goes. I prefer to only delete anything as an admin. I take it the new backup plugin is saving new style playlists? The image n this thread shows you can set multiple backups of "your database", but does that include playlists? Not sure where playlists are located now. I have lots of questions, but I don't want to learn the hard way - I've been burned too many times.

For the first time, I am not eager to update to the latest version but instead will be waiting patiently for these other brave heroes to upgrade and regale us with their experience. Maybe I'll jump in somewhere around Hotfix 2 or 3. That's not a criticism, just feedback regarding customer pain points and anxiety around the product. Please take it as such.

[Baenwort 118]

7 hours ago, Tremas said:

 

If it helps, many thanks from me too. Following the beta discussions, I knew this was going to be painful - but these are some good tips from @Dreakon13. I have my emby playlists backed up via the backup plugin. If that helps anyone, make sure to do that before upgrading (if it isn't too late).

Based on past emby upgrades it may also be a "please be patient" scenario. Once you created the new playlist it may take some time for the system to fire off library scans and update the database - as I'm sure there are lots of other database updates going on with the upgrade.

Could you link to those tips?

So far I haven't come across a good resource of all the breaking changes and other items that will require my action in the 4.8 update.