.m3u Playlist - Tracks missing with Minimserver

Posted by: Jason on 24 July 2016

Morning All,

I have finally given up on the Naim App playlist function as it constantly loses tracks from its playlists.  Reading from advice here, I decided to build an m3u playlist within my music folder on the NAS.

So, I have used Audio Station within my Synology NAS to build the playlists and all the tracks appear as .m3u files within the playlists.

The strange thing is that if I access and play the playlists using Synology's own upnp server, everything is fine and works as it should, however, when I use Minimserver (my chosen server) several of the tracks in each playlist do not appear.

I can see no obvious reason why, the tracks that don't appear in Minimserver were all added in the same way as the ones that do; they are present in the folder and play with the Synology server, so I'm perplexed as to why some do not show in the playlist when I use Minimserver.

I can see no difference in the settings for each track; they are all wav files and if I navigate to the tracks that don't appear via album or artist, they are there and play fine, I just can't see them under playlists!

Any one experienced similar or have any ideas?

Thanks,  Jason.

Posted on: 24 July 2016 by sjbabbey

Looks like it may be a directory/filepath issue in the m3u files. If you have a PC you can open the m3u files as txt files using notepad (if you have a Mac I think this can be done using TextEdit). Have a look at the filepaths for the "missing" tracks. Do they point to the correct folders on your NAS drive? Do they look different in format to the tracks which work OK?

For example, do any of the filepaths have backslash (\) separators instead of forward slash (/) which is the format used by your NAS drive ?

If you see any obvious errors in the filepaths, these can be edited using your text editing program and re-saved with an m3u playlist file extension.

Posted on: 24 July 2016 by Jason

Many thanks for the information sjbabbey, I will do as you suggest and see if I can find any differences in the filepaths.

Jason.

Posted on: 24 July 2016 by Jason

Well, I've just been in and had a look at the filepaths.  No problems that I could see, but in doing so, I think I have worked out what had happened.

I have two accounts with which I log on to my Synology NAS, one is an admin account, the other a user account.  It would appear that in the playlists where I have tracks missing, I created the playlist, added some tracks, then came back to it at a later time and added some more tracks under the admin account, rather than in the user account in which the playlist was created.

It appears that somewhere, there is a setting within the permissions that stops the admin account adding tracks into a user created playlist and/or vice versa.

I copied the information in Notebook from the playlist I had created, deleted the playlist, re-created the playlist and pasted the same information into the new playlist and Miniserver sees all that information.

It's a little odd, because as I say, Synology's own server still sees all the tracks regardless of whether I add tracks under an admin or user logon, it is only Minim that doesn't!

SJBABBEY, thanks for the heads up about using Notebook, a very helpful little tip!!

Posted on: 24 July 2016 by sjbabbey

Glad you managed to sort out your issue. As you say, it is probably a permissions issue. I have a couple of QNAP servers so not sure whether the settings are the same. On my servers, permissions (read/write/execute) are accessed via the File Station app. My playlists are kept within the default multimedia folder which grants access to Group users.

In any event, I have always used Notepad to create my own m3u playlists so haven't fallen foul of any permissions issue.

ATB

Steve