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| Author | MpegDec Playlists Revisted... (Read 7247 times) | ||||||||||
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MTT
256 MB  Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer 
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on: November 02, 2023, 07:05
I've had to throw everything I thought I knew about MpegDec playlists and how they work - out of the window, completely  It was looking into how the Playlist Editor created playlists, that it dawned on me, that: MpegDec uses almost zero standard playlist tags in its vocabulary. -You can have [playlist], NumberOfEntries=X, Title=, etc.; in pls type files and #EXTM3U, #EXTINF:, #PLAYLIST: etc.; in .m3u type files But, MpegDec ignores all of those. The only valid tag it appears to acknowledge is the File1=, File2=, File3=, etc.; type in playlists. Any other tag seems to be superfluous. If you have an album of mp3 files and you wish to create a playlist of that album. All you need to do is start the Playlist Editor and drag the folder holding those mp3's into the Playlist Editor's window. If the resulting list of track titles are not to your liking, you can drag them around in the window until you are happy with their order of play. Then save the file giving it a suitable name. The resulting playlist does not have an MpegDec icon, and this doesn't matter either, because you can drag the file onto MpegDec's icon and it will play the playlist. You can also change the Creator Type of the file to make it double-clickable, if you wish to. If you open your Playlist Editor created playlist in a plain text editor (drag onto BBEdit Lite or full to view), you will see that the playlist is a simple classic Mac PATH list pointing to each track. No other playlist tag is used in it's creation or required. Now File Types. This was another eye-opener. There are 30 File Types associated with the JESW Creator Type (29 if you ignore APPL for itself). What this means is that any file created by another application but also carrying one of those File Types, can be dragged onto MpegDec's icon and it will launch and try to play that file. So you can hand create a playlist using a plain text editor, and dragging it onto MpegDec will launch it and play. Hand rolling radio streaming MpegDec playlists: It is best if you create these by hand, as the Playlist Editor seems to be only suited to folders full of prerecorded mp3 tracks. Using a plain text editor, all it requires is an URL and a carriage-return and saving it, to create a playable playlist. Of course the playlist can hold multiple lines of URLs plus a carriage-return at the end of the file. If you use only the URL + return and nothing else; For example: http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_world_service MpegDec will play it as a "Streaming m3u" file. If you use "File1=", etc.; placed before the URL, as in; File1=http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_world_service then MpegDec will play it as a "Streaming pls" file. However, only if it meets this criteria; The station's URL, if it ends in a bunch of characters (no suffix) then it will return "Streaming pls" or m3u depending on whether it has a "file1=" etc.; used before the URL or not. But if the station's URL ends with an .mp3 suffix, as in; http://radionz-ice.streamguys.com/national.mp3 -MpegDec will play this as a "Streaming mp3" file regardless of whether "File1=", etc.; or not is used. Anyway, creating using a plain text editor and dragging it over onto MpegDec to launch it is easy. If you want to double-click and run the playlist this is also easy, by simply changing the Creator Type to JESW. Whether you change the File Type is OK too but unnecessary, as it will open and play a JESW TEXT file just as readily as a JESW Plst file. I've also discovered that the Playlist Editor has been using the incorrect icon for itself, all these years. It has been using a Playlist file icon instead of the Playlist Editor icon it should have been using. I've corrected this error and have added the updated Playlist Editor to the MG, at DL#2. Included with this download, I've added some AutoTyper dropper apps to automate changing playlists and mp3 files into double-clickable MpegDec files. |
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Last Edit: November 02, 2023, 07:07 by MTT
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #1 on: November 02, 2023, 23:49
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The breakdown on the playlist creation was masterfully illustrated and top-notch, MTT, truly!!  I also loved the use of the Apfel Garamond typeface, much like the S7T site it makes it all-the-more official!  I too saw how little MpegDec needed to work inside playlists and was equally shocked at the number of file types when I went to configure my IE web browser, ohmygosh! 
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #2 on: March 20, 2024, 11:34
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Just pushing this one up because it's such a great content. I think we should put this on the page, because it should not be lost. I can attest to things working as MTT described them. Made my own playlist last weekend and it works fine. MpegDec is much less resource intensive than other players (e.g. SoundJam) which makes it a preference not only on faster 68k Macs, but also on 1st gen PowerPC machines.
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