Opening Playlists from Realm Works

[goldensword52]

Hi everyone, I'm attempting to make a Realm Works snippet that will open a playlist in my external media player. I've created a foreign object snippet, and told that to open a particular .m3u file on my computer. When I activate the link, it opens up my media player, but the music does not play and I get the following error message:

"Windows Media Player cannot find the file. If you are trying to play, burn, or sync an item that is in your library, the item might point to a file that has been moved, renamed, or deleted."

I've tried using several other media players as well, and none of the ones I've tried have worked. If I just double click the link in windows explorer, it plays just fine. So I have to assume the problem is with the way that Realm Works tries to open the file.

Has anyone else had any luck in opening .m3u files with realm works? Or is there some other way of getting realm works to play multiple different audio files? Thanks.

[BoomerET]

I just installed VLC, created a playlist, saved as .m3u.
I saved the .m3u file in the same directory as the mp3 files.

When I clicked, it opened VLC and started playing the first mp3 from the playlist.

Then I moved the file to my desktop, removed the reference in RW, and created a new reference, using the file that was on my desktop. It again worked and played the first file in the playlist.

So, I suspect you need to stop using Windows Media Player, and use a better media player.

Any help, feel free to ask, let's get the party started!


BoomerET

[goldensword52]

Well, the bad news is that VLC doesn't correctly play the playlist either. The good news is, VLC's error message is much more helpful. I got something like this for each track in the playlist:

File reading failed:
VLC could not open the file "C:\Users\Reggie\AppData\Local\Temp\RealmWorks\..\ E.S. Posthumus\Unearthed\Antissa.mp3" (Bad file descriptor).

It turns out that my playlist was using local pathnames instead of absolute pathnames. So I changed all of the pathnames for the songs to be absolute instead of relative. Now Realm Works opens the playlist just fine using any of my media players.

So I guess the lesson to be learned here is that Realm Works doesn't really play nice with relative pathnames in .m3u formats. If you're going to open a playlist in realm works, make sure that you use absolute pathnames in the playlist file. Thanks for your help in solving the problem BoomerET.

[Farling]

Relative pathnames require a particular starting point, don't they?
How does RW know what your starting point is?

[BoomerET]

That was my very first comment when I started my post, but wasn't sure that the OP would know what I was talking about absolute/relative.

So, first I wanted to give him some immediate relief that it could in fact be done.

Glad to hear you got it working!!



BoomerET

[lifer4700]

Excellent information, thank you for sharing the solution!