How to create playlists and load them onto BB?

[PsychedelicWonders]

I see the area on my BB under Media>Music for Playlists, but how exactly do I create a playlist in my computer and then get it to that particular folder?

I would assume making a playlist is as easy as copying files to a particular folder and naming it whatever you want... but wont this take up double HDD space if you are making duplicate folders of the same file?

When I access my Micro SD card and go under music, there is no additional folder for Playlists?

It just lists my songs?

[PsychedelicWonders]

bump on this...

[zzzbullseye]

You should be able to create an m3u playlist on most popular media players (Windows Media Player, MediaMonkey, iTunes, WinAmp, etc.), export it, and copy it over to your BB in mass storage mode.

The BB media player will recognize it from anywhere on the media card - whether the BB media player correctly lists the contents depends on the m3u format and the location of the m3u relative to the files it references. I edit the m3u to the format shown below (aided by Media Monkey) and copy it to the root of the music folder (\Blackberry\music). Below is an example of the contents of an m3u that would work for music located in the "\Blackberry\music\Green Day\American Idoit" folder.


.\Green Day\American Idoit\American Idoit.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Jesus Of Suburbia.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Holiday.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Boulevard Of Broken Dreams.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Are We the Waiting.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\St. Jimmy.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Give Me Novacaine.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\She's a Rebel.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Extraordinary Girl.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Letterbomb.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Wake Me Up When September Ends.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Homecoming.mp3
.\Green Day\American Idoit\Whatsername.mp3

Notice the ".\Artist\Album\filename" path resolution to guide the media player to the file location. The preceding "." before the folder\file path is important as it indicates the parent folder to the media player, where the m3u file is located, in this case "\Blackberry\music".


You could also use actual unedited m3u files directly (example below). When using this format, you have to place the m3u file in the same folder as the mp3 files referenced (in this case "\Blackberry\music\Green Day\American Idoit"), otherwise the media player won't be able to locate the mp3s and the playlist will indicate "no files" in the media player.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:174,Green Day - American Idoit
01 - American Idoitmp3
#EXTINF:548,Green Day - Jesus Of Suburbia
02 - Jesus Of Suburbia.mp3
#EXTINF:232,Green Day - Holiday
03 - Holiday.mp3
#EXTINF:260,Green Day - Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
04 - Boulevard Of Broken Dreams.mp3
#EXTINF:162,Green Day - Are We the Waiting
05 - Are We the Waiting.mp3
#EXTINF:175,Green Day - St. Jimmy
06 - St. Jimmy.mp3
#EXTINF:205,Green Day - Give Me Novacaine
07 - Give Me Novacaine.mp3
#EXTINF:120,Green Day - She's a Rebel
08 - She's a Rebel.mp3
#EXTINF:213,Green Day - Extraordinary Girl
09 - Extraordinary Girl.mp3
#EXTINF:246,Green Day - Letterbomb
10 - Letterbomb.mp3
#EXTINF:285,Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends
11 - Wake Me Up When September Ends.mp3
#EXTINF:558,Green Day - Homecoming
12 - Homecoming.mp3
#EXTINF:252,Green Day - Whatsername
13 - Whatsername.mp3

You can name the playlists whatever you like. For what it's worth, I use a standard naming convention of "Artist - Album", or something like "Artist - Favs" for a favorites mix.

This may be somewhat confusing...good luck!

Oh, and I had to intentionally misspell the word "Idoit" because the CB forum was replacing it with asterisks....

[checkingout]

zzzbullseye,

Nice write up. I will try this when I finally get a memory card.

[zzzbullseye]

Thanks! I've got around 1000 mp3s on my 8Gb SDHC media card, all of them are "catalogued" by m3u playlists. It just makes for a much cleaner presentation of music in the media player. It took a lot of futzing around with format and location to get the media player to consistently recognize and display them correctly.

Also worthy of mention is the apparent limitation of the media player to only be capable of indexing 1000 files, irrespective of media card size - at least on OS 4.3. I could add somewhere around double this amount based on the bitrate I use, but the media player just starts "dropping files off the back end". There is some hope this has been corrected on OS 4.5 and above. You can search the forum for more on this topic.

Cheers!

[benzworm]

I just use blackberry media sync to copy over my playlists...

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[zzzbullseye]

Originally Posted by benzworm

I just use blackberry media sync to copy over my playlists...

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

If you choose to use iTunes as your PC/Mac media player, sounds like this is a good solution...personally I'm not a fan of iTunes. To each his own.

[jikelly]

Media sync, hum.

[exelant]

It is really so easy with windows media and 4.5 OS. (And great write up zzz!)
I had been dragging and dropping music, when one time I plugged in while winmedia was open. It synced and started loading all the tunes on my PC onto my berry. I stopped that and arranged all the music files on my PC the way I wanted them on my berry, then plugged back in and let my PC media player sync with my Curve. It worked great, and I have folders for each artist and albums seperated in each folder. It even made it's own music directory apart from the one you see when you use the explore function. Very easy!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[ProductionTD]

I am having difficulties with this. I found out how to edit the m3u in media money, but no matter what file configuration i try will the songs play. They are showing up in my play list and they are on the phone, but the play list wont function. Any ideas?

[jbs-horn]

I had the same problem. There's a workaround.

In your Media player hit the menu button and select "Explore." Browse to the playlist folder and select the playlist that way. If it is properly set up it should play.

[adkted2me]

I have a problem with this.. I have a car audio system that does not allow me to search for artists, songs, etc bc it's in bed with Apple and will only read folders to do such for an Ipod

[StoneTheCrows]

I don't know if this helps but:

Creating a Playlist using the Storm is a Pain in the A**. SO much simpler to use WMP to create your playlist. However, I had trouble getting my WMP playlists onto my Storm and in the end gave up and wrote a small utility that takes a WMP Playlist and converts it to the format that the Storm likes.

If your BB music is set up to mirror your PC music i.e. ..\Music Folder\Artist\Album\Track.mp3 the utility will work for you. You can use the utility with your phone connected or not. If not connected, you will have to save the converted playlist to your PC for later transfer to your phone. If the Phone is connected, you can save directly to your phones music folder.

As I don't have enough posts yet, I can't post the link but PM me and I'll pass it on to you.

There's nothing smart or ground breaking here, it just parses the WMP Playlist and creates the Storm Playlist text to save to a file.

I hope you find it useful.

NB: If your Storm Doesn't show up in Windows Explorer, then you will need to run a Utility that makes it so, there are a couple around and are probably linked to somewhere on this site.

[walkie74]

Here's what I found to work, after two frustrating hours.


How to create playlists on the Blackberry 83xx using Windows Media (if you’re not using it as your primary music player):

Create a folder on the desktop. Drag all the songs you want in your playlist into that folder.

Connect your Blackberry. Cancel other options.

Open Windows Media Player. Create a new playlist. Go to “Edit In List Pane”. Drag the music from the folder into the playlist pane on the right. Save it, then close the list pane.

Then, open Blackberry Desk Manager. Find the new playlist under “Music”, check the box, then sync it. Disconnect and you're done.

[miskr]

After mounting the PlayBook to '/mnt/PlayBook/ via USB I go to the 'music' folder on /mnt/PlayBook/ where I have sub folders, e.g. salsa.

For example, I want to create a playlist of all the files in folder 'music/salsa' so I just do:

$ ls --color=never -1 --file-type salsa/ > Salsa.m3u

Note: There is no need to add the directory information as PlayBook appears to find mp3 files (I have only tried with mp3) anywhere in or below 'music' folder.