Non ASCII Characters in Playlists

[cca]

I tried to transfer a Playlist today and while the tracks were transfered properly, the playlist file that Winamp sents to my Android phone appears to not be in UTF-8 format.

The problem is that the Winamp for Android does not display songs in the playlist that have a Japanese tittle for example. Completely skips them like they don't exist.

It can play them fine if I add them manually, but I the whole point is to be able to create those playlists on the Desktop, otherwise I can use any other player.

Please fix this.

[cca]

Having updated to the version 0.92 and 5.60 this issue stills remains. Winamp for android cannot reliably handle playlists prepared from the desktop version that contain non ASCII characters in the song name, eg Japanese.

I have a playlist of 85 songs, when I transfer it to my device Winamp shows only 82. Where are the rest? Vanished, but the files are there. And all three missing files have a Japanese song name.

This is a not properly working feature.

[DrO]

what is needed is m3u8 support as the m3u format does not handle those characters correctly but from what i remember being talked about, there is no native m3u8 support in the playlist loader api's being used, hence why there has been no change.

what needs to be done, i don't know but i believe there was talk of making the pmp stuff generate a m3u8 playlist along with the m3u playlist but if the app isn't able to use them then it is a bit pointless at the moment.

so i can understand it being annoying but based on the format of files being used, it is (unfortunately) working correctly as it should be.

-daz

[cca]

I do not know about the apis used, what I see is that the Winamp app reads the m3u file and converts it to an android media playlist than can be used from any other media player in the system including the native android media player. If I can add manually non-ASCII named songs in the playlist using media player apps, including WInamp itself, I cannot understand why the app cannot support this.

As I have many multilanguage songs, this is a big minus for me, offering me nothing I cannot find in other free apps. I still have to create my lists manually.

[DrO]

Originally Posted by cca

what I see is that the Winamp app reads the m3u file and converts it to an android media playlist than can be used from any other media player in the system including the native android media player.

it's because the files being sent over to the device are in the non-multilanguage compatible m3u file, to work correctly it needs to be using a UTF-8 encoding for the file paths and if the reader on Android does not support the correctly named m3u8 playlists then it won't work (which seems to be the case).

yes it will work if you manually add files into the playlist editor (or whatever it is on the app - i don't have anything that would allow me to even try it) and i've no idea if the devs making the app are even able to create a custom playlist loader which would allow for m3u8 support and so resolve the issue you're having.

the problem is that for compatibility with other things / players (the Android app isn't the only thing Winamp has to cope with), the m3u format cannot be changed hence why the m3u8 format was introduced to the main Winamp program a few years ago but for whatever reason the pmp support was never updated to also produce m3u8 playlists at the same time.

-daz

[cca]

What I can tell you is that there is no native support of wither m3u or m3u8 in Android. After the Winamp app loads it, it will convert using some Android API obviously. It seems strange to me, because it CAN actually add to the list songs with non-ASCII Artists' name, but not with non-ASCII song name!

[DrO]

http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=pla...e.java;hb=HEAD shows that m3u, pls and wpl are supported (line 79) and i've seen other people using m3u playlists on the app so it is supported. additionally, from that list of 3 supported formats in the core, wpl _may_ support utf-8 but that then requires make an wpl writer in the main Winamp core and that's just not worth it.

and based on http://developer.android.com/referen...Playlists.html then it should be possible to implement m3u8 support.

all i'm trying to do is explain why it won't work (and this is something that other media apps on android have issues with as well from a quick search) but as you seem to know more i'm just going to not bother anymore.

-daz

[cca]

I cannot say I know more, all I can report is what I see on my device. I thought m3u is not supported since I never managed to open a m3u file directly.

For now let's just say that this is a problem for me and anyone who is not just listening to Western countries music. Which is a big part of the globe.

[marceros]

Hello,

Although this thread is from a year and a half ago, I'm having the same problem with files that have spanish names with non-ascii characters.

I would like to know if there is any news or workaround to the problem of songs that disappear from the playlist in android.

Thanks,
Marcelo