Changing Winamp playlist location (playlist entry)

[Dr. Masturbanti]

Hello everybody,

So I had to transfer my music from one P to another, after the old one was old.
Of course, new one has different hard-drive names, so even though before I was in "D:\My Music\NameOfTheAlbums", now I am in ""E:\My Music\NameOfTheAlbums""

Just one letter, but I am not able to change it.

Now I have found thread for this problem from somebody who was having the same problem before:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=288542

Problem is, their solution is not working for me.

If I will open playlist in Notepad++, this is the output:

code:
#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:265,01 Track 1

\My Music\Alanis Morissette\MTV unplugged\01 Track 1.mp3

#EXTINF:311,02 Track 2

\My Music\Alanis Morissette\MTV unplugged\02 Track 2.mp3

#EXTINF:283,03 Track 3...

I was surprised not to see the (C:\)at the beginning of those lines. Nevertheless, I have changed with the "replace all" function all my playlists to this:

code:
#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:265,01 Track 1

E:\My Music\Alanis Morissette\MTV unplugged\01 Track 1.mp3

#EXTINF:311,02 Track 2

E:\My Music\Alanis Morissette\MTV unplugged\02 Track 2.mp3

#EXTINF:283,03 Track 3...

But to no avail, if I will open the playlist in winamp, it won´t play.
But if I will open the individual song in that playlist, right-click at them and select "Playlist entry" I can modify that one letter and then they are playing.

Since I have a lot of playlists with lots of songs, this approach is not feasible for me.

Does anybody know what am I doing wrong?

Just so you know, what "command" have I used to change the letter at the end, see the attached picture:

Any help would be appreciated,

thanks.

[Aminifu]

Hi,

You probably have Winamp setup to use internal playlists (which it creates 1 time from your external playlists). Winamp will use these internal playlists and doesn't see any changes made to the external playlists it created these playlists from.

After you have fixed all your external playlists (with the find and replace in Notepad), go to the media library and select the Playlists heading (in the column on the far left) and then select and delete all the playlists shown on the right. Then right-click on the Playlists heading and select the command to import your fixed external playlists.

[Dr. Masturbanti]

Thanks, that´s exactly what have I needed, now it works!

[Aminifu]

Glad you got your playlists sorted out.

When using internal playlists, anytime you make a change to an external playlist that has already been imported to the media library you need to delete the corresponding internal playlist, shown in the library, and re-import the changed external playlist. If you frequently make a lot of playlist changes, you may want to consider having Winamp use the external lists instead of internal lists. However, when you delete an internal list from the library it does not affect the corresponding external list. But when the list shown in the library is the actual external list, deleting it deletes the actual external list.

When the media files are on the same drive as the Winamp program, the drive letter is not saved in the pathnames of files listed in the playlist files that Winamp creates.

Windows Disk Management tool in the Computer Management group under Administrative Tools does allow the drive letter Windows assigns to drives to be changed to another letter that is not already being used. The letters "A" and "B" should not be used and "C" should only be used for the drive that has (or will have) the operating system on it. If you want to change a drive's letter, it is best to make the change before storing anything on the drive. Any information saved (in the registry, lists, databases, etc.) that uses the original drive letter would need to be manually looked for and updated to the new letter. That could be a huge, time consuming task.


Your case was relatively simple (only needed a drive letter added to the pathnames), for more complex 'fixes' of external playlists (like when files are moved to different folders) you could try "listFix()" (http://listfix.sourceforge.net/).

Winamp's internal playlists are text files and the same tools used to edit external playlists can be used to update them also. However, Winamp assigns alphanumeric names to it's internal playlists, so the major problem is finding the correct internal playlist that corresponds to a specific external playlist name. There is a data file that keeps track of these associations for displaying the names that are shown in the library. So, when using internal playlists, it is easier to just edit the external playlists and replace the internal playlists in the library that have the same names.