Playlist woes

[riothamus 53]

Hi,

I created a (very) long playlist for all of Star Trek (following this page if other Trekkies want to try it).  I've found that it would be easier to manually add some episodes due to their story placement by just editing the XML files directly as trying to rearrange everything via the web interface can be tedious and time-consuming on such a long playlist.

So I edited the XML file, then copied them out of the playlist directory to my home directory for backup.  I then (following the advice found here) I would re-scan the library files for my Playlist library.  What shows up is the original playlist prior to my manual edits, as if scanning the library files just dumps whatever is in the database for that playlist back out again.  I even changed the <CanEdit> tag from 'true' to 'false', but even that didn't prevent my manual changes from getting overwritten.

Is there a better/easier/smarter way of doing this?  

[PenkethBoy 2068]

try shutting down emby before you edit the playlist

then do a lib scan after its back up

Edited February 23, 2021 by PenkethBoy

[riothamus 53]

Thanks.  I gave that a go, but I still ended up with the same results.

[Luke 42078]

For this usage I would probably just suggest a standard m3u8 playlist if this is how you want to edit it.

[riothamus 53]

15 minutes ago, Luke said:

For this usage I would probably just suggest a standard m3u8 playlist if this is how you want to edit it.

Ok.  So I could create the m3u8 playlist and copy that into the playlist directory?

[Luke 42078]

You can also put it in your music library folders.

[riothamus 53]

1 minute ago, Luke said:

You can also put it in your music library folders.

Ok, I'll try the m3u8 file out.  I like that idea a bit better since I could use it with other players too.  Not sure about tossing this into the music library since this is made up of video files.  But it is cool if I could use an m3u8 playlist there as well.

[Luke 42078]

Has this advice helped?

[riothamus 53]

Sorry I didn't get back to you on this.  I was actually going to make a script that would just convert my playlist.xml file into an m3u8 file, but it chokes up on a filename with an ampersand in it:

$ xmlstarlet sel -t -m "//Path" -v . -n playlist.xml 
playlist.xml:320.94: EntityRef: expecting ';'
misc/tv/Star Trek: Short Treks/Season 2/Star Trek: Short Treks - 02x01 - Q&A.mkv
                                                                               ^

I did rename the file and give it another go to create the M3U, but I was also wondering if the playlist parser within Emby is having an issue with the ampersand as well?

Also, fwiw, I created a folder called 'test' under the playlists directory and copied over the M3U playlist as 'playlist.m3u8' in the test directory.  I made sure that 'emby' had ownership over both directory and playlist file.  After a library rescan, however, the test playlist does not show up in the Playlists library.

Edited March 1, 2021 by riothamus

[riothamus 53]

Just a follow up, after I renamed the file (to remove the ampersand from the title) and made the adjustment in my playlist to reflect that, I copied over the modified playlist.xml into the playlist directory.  Scanning just the library of the Playlists did not cut it, so I scanned all libraries.  After that completed I re-checked the playlist for my Star Trek episodes, and everything showed up in proper order.  So having a special character ('&' in this case) through the Playlist scanning for a loop.

[Luke 42078]

Thanks for the feedback.