For some time I have been unable to play .m3u playlists in VLC 3.0.11 - even ones that are created by adding a bunch of tracks to the VLC playlist and going "Save Playlist to File..." When attempting to open such a file I get an error popup which says
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'file://home/myself/Music/Albums/some_album/some_album.m3u'
Check the log for details.
So I do "vlc -vv" from a command prompt and try again and I get
Your message contains 10115 characters.
The maximum number of allowed characters is 5998.
I have looked through this several times and still cannot see what the problem is. Any ideas?
Edit: Ah yes, the log output is missing. Because the forum won't allow me to post it. Despite it being just the output that's produced after attempting the failing action, and not the whole thing. In other words, only about 100 lines or so. But I assure you, it contains no clues whatsoever as to why VLC won't play any .m3u files. Tried to find an alternative way of sharing the log output, but none seem to work, including PasteBin. GitHub gists now require a log in. Etc etc etc. Am I screwed? I just want to listen to some music, you know, like I did back in the 90s. Maybe I'm expecting too much.
Edit 2: A less ambitious "vlc -v" produces this output when trying to open an M3u playlist
[00007f6a48001800] mjpeg demux warning: no more data
[00007f6a48001800] mjpeg demux error: cannot peek
[00007f6a48001800] avformat demux warning: cannot peek
Which is just as unhelpful as the longer output produced with "vlc -vv", but at least short enough that I can actually share it with you.
Edit 3: Digging through the longer log output from "vlc -vv" I see
[00007faa7000b6b0] playlist stream debug: found valid M3U playlist
[00007faa7000b6b0] main stream debug: using stream_filter module "playlist"
[00007faa7000b6b0] main stream debug: stream filter added to 0x7faa70008b70
[00007faa70010c50] main stream debug: looking for stream_filter module matching "any": 26 candidates
[00007faa70010c50] main stream debug: no stream_filter modules matched
[00007faa70010c50] main stream debug: looking for stream_filter module matching "prefetch": 26 candidates
[00007faa70010c50] prefetch stream debug: using 16777216 bytes buffer, 16777216 bytes read
[00007faa70010c50] main stream debug: using stream_filter module "prefetch"
[00007faa68000e10] lua art finder debug: skipping script (unmatched scope) /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vlc/lua/meta/art/00_musicbrainz.luac
[00007faa70010c50] prefetch stream debug: end of stream
[00007faa7000eb00] main stream_directory debug: looking for stream_directory module matching "any": 1 candidates
[00007faa68000e10] lua art finder debug: Trying Lua playlist script /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vlc/lua/meta/art/01_googleimage.luac
[00007faa7000eb00] main stream_directory debug: no stream_directory modules matched
[00007faa70019a40] main input source debug: attachment of directory-extractor failed for file:///home/myself/Music/Albums/some_album/some_album.m3u
[00007faa70005640] main stream debug: looking for stream_filter module matching "record": 26 candidates
[00007faa70005640] main stream debug: using stream_filter module "record"
[00007faa70019a40] main input source debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='any' location='/home/myself/Music/Albums/some_album/some_album.m3u' file='/home/myself/Music/Albums/some_album/some_album.m3u'
[00007faa70001220] main demux debug: looking for demux module matching "m3u": 55 candidates
[00007faa70001220] es demux debug: cannot peek
[00007faa70001220] es demux debug: cannot peek
[00007faa70001220] es demux debug: cannot peek
[00007faa70001220] es demux debug: cannot peek
[00007faa70001220] es demux debug: cannot peek
[00007faa68000e10] lua art finder debug: skipping script (unmatched scope) /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vlc/lua/meta/art/01_googleimage.luac
[00007faa70001220] mod demux debug: MOD validation failed (ext=m3u)
Is that perhaps a clue? Damned if I know. Does anyone?