Can I keep the current playlist in sync with library?

[mjbrown]

This seems like something that should be pretty basic, but I've tried searching and didn't find exactly what I was looking for, so I'm asking here.

When I first set up the media library, the playlist window was automatically populated with the entire contents of the library. This happened to be exactly what I wanted, because I want to let Winamp play everything in the library in shuffle mode, broadcasting via the SHOUTcast DSP.

The library changes daily, so I've configured it to rescan every 1440 minutes. However, this doesn't affect the playlist. I want the playlist to stay in sync; everything in the library should be in the playlist. Is this possible? I don't see a way to automate it, but maybe I'm overlooking something.

[DrO]

there's nothing natively in place which will do it. without a plug-in or native code changes, the library and main playlist editor are completely separate instances.

-daz

[MrSinatra]

this is something i am also looking for.

whats really needed is a scheduler / dynamic shuffle play randomizer.

i described this more or less here:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=351953

[mjbrown]

OK, thanks. I will rely on a script to generate the playlist separately, then.

Here is what I'm currently doing in a Windows command shell to generate a playlist of all the music files in a given folder tree:

code:
chcp 65001 && dir T:\music /b /s | findstr /e /l ".mp3 .flac .m4a .wav .wma .ogg .mp2" | findstr /e /l /v ".lnk" > playlist.m3u8

Of course, replace T:\music with the actual folder to scan (or list of folders, space-separated). You can omit any filename extensions that you don't want to look for.

Explanation:

chcp 65001 sets UTF-8 mode, which isn't well supported for displaying text in the command shell (you'll probably get bogus "out of memory" errors), but it works correctly when redirecting output to a file as we're doing here. If you need to keep working in the same window after this, run chcp again to change to your normal codepage (e.g. chcp 437 in the U.S.)

dir X /b /s recursively lists the contents of folder X, outputting one complete file path or folder path per line. Wrap X in double quotes if it contains spaces. You can specify multiple folders if you want, separated by spaces.

findstr /e /l "X Y Z" extracts just the lines which end (/e) with the literal string (/l) X, Y, or Z.

findstr /e /l /v "X" extracts the lines which don't (/v) end (/e) with the literal string (/l) X.

&& means do the next command if the previous one succeeded.

| means pipe the output of the last command to the next one.

> X means write the output of the last command to the file X instead of the console.

To automate the playlist generation in Windows Vista and up, open the Task Scheduler (just start typing task in the Start menu's search box) and create a new task with a 'Start a program' action. Enter any name and description you want. Set the trigger time so that it will run daily, just a couple minutes into the future so you can test it right away. Set the program to cmd.exe and the arguments to /C "foo" where foo is the command line as given above. "Start in" should be the path of the folder where you want playlist.m3u8 to be created (I use the path of my Desktop), or you can leave it blank and specify the full path in the arguments. If it works properly, you'll briefly see a command shell window open with the output of chcp (65001 is UTF-8), and then it will close once the playlist is generated. If all goes well, go back into the task's properties and change the trigger schedule to whatever you really want.

[HuduGuru]

Sorry but will winamp automatically rescan changed playlist?

[Aminifu]

Sorry but will winamp automatically rescan changed playlist?

Unfortunately, no.

[mjbrown]

Indeed, that would be a nice feature or plugin. Someone asked about it at least once before. I looked through all the playlist plugins on winamp.com, but no one has yet written something to do this.

As it stands, I keep the generated playlist, or a shortcut to it, on my desktop, so I can double-click it to force a reload.

[Martini63]

I also need this automatic updated playlist. Winamp with some addon (Essential & Autoamp) is my solution since 2007 for background music in a fashion store.

[mjbrown]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before now. Can't see the forest for the trees, I guess.

I have M3U8 files configured to open in Winamp by default. So all I had to do to get the playlist to load after being rebuilt was add

code:
 && playlist.m3u8

to the end of the command line in my previous post. The only downside of this is that it takes effect immediately, interrupting whatever song is currently playing. Small price to pay, really, especially when your station has no listeners, like mine.

[mjbrown]

Correction to my last post:

code:
&& start /b playlist.m3u8

(otherwise the window stays open).