M3U files: problems with certain characters?

[jrvjrv]

I have two .m3u files that at first glance seem like they should behave the same. These are both on an ubuntu 18.04 machine. One is

/media/jrv/seagate4T/music/Adams, John/BBC Music v11 n2- Andriessen- Short Ride in a Fast Machine, The Chairman Dances, Harmonium/m3u.Harmonium.m3u
and its contents are:
03 Harmonium- I. Negative Love.flac
04 Harmonium- II. Because I Could Not Stop for Death.flac
05 Harmonium- III. Wild Nights.flac

The other is
/media/jrv/seagate4T/music/Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus/AAM, Schröder, Hogwood- The Symphonies Vol 5 Disc 1/m3u.Symphony in C major K213c[K208].m3u
and its contents are:
01 Symphony in C major K213c[K208]- I. Molto allegro.flac
02 Symphony in C major K213c[K208]- II. Andantino.flac
03 Symphony in C major K213c[K208]- III. Presto assai.flac

The first plays just fine. If I try to play the second nothing happens. In messages vlc says, "main info: playlist is empty"

If I copy the three .flac files in the second .m3u and rename them a1.flac, a2.flac, and a3.flac, then create a test.m3u with those names, vlc works correctly. So it seems that vlc is unhappy with certain characters in the file names. What characters does vlc not like to find in a .m3u file, and is there any way to escape them?

JR

[jrvjrv]

It seems the square brackets are the problem, and url encoding works to fix it. This works:

01 Symphony in C major K213c%5bK208%5d- I. Molto allegro.flac
02 Symphony in C major K213c%5bK208%5d- II. Andantino.flac
03 Symphony in C major K213c%5bK208%5d- III. Presto assai.flac

Are there any other characters that won't work without encoding?

JR

[blueice_haller]

Today I came across the same situation with VLC 3.0.20 Vetinary.
Yes there is indeed an character that cause issues: The hyphen - and space around it.
If your m3u is the following, VLC cuts the text before including the hyphen, so that the Title shows just 100% Deutscher Schlager!

Code: Select all

#EXTM3U #EXTINF:0,Radio Paloma - 100% Deutscher Schlager! #EXTVLCOPT:network-caching=1000 http://pool.radiopaloma.de/RADIOPALOMA.mp3 #EXTINF:0,Radio Paloma - 100% Deutscher Schlager! #EXTVLCOPT:network-caching=1000 http://pool.radiopaloma.de/RADIOPALOMA.mp3

I tried to encode the hyphen with %2d and %2D, but then the Title shows Radio Paloma %2d 100% Deutscher Schlager! or Radio Paloma %2D 100% Deutscher Schlager!.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The defacto format for EXTINF is duration comma author hyphen title, so no surprises there. This is intended behaviour that is followed by most players (not just VLC) AFAIK.

[blueice_haller]

Thank you. I need to change my example so that it works as expected:

Code: Select all

#EXTM3U #EXTINF:0, - Radio Paloma - 100% Deutscher Schlager! #EXTVLCOPT:network-caching=1000 http://pool.radiopaloma.de/RADIOPALOMA.mp3 #EXTINF:0, - Radio Paloma - 100% Deutscher Schlager! #EXTVLCOPT:network-caching=1000 http://pool.radiopaloma.de/RADIOPALOMA.mp3