The VideoLAN Forums

Hi.

This is a request for XSPF - http://xspf.org/ support.
This is the most well thought out playlist format that I have seen.
Unfortunately, their is NO Video Player that can handle XSPF yet.
Since I think VLC is the best media player, I would love it if folks took this request seriously and be the first to offer a true shareable playlist media player... to handle not just music, but also Video and meta data.

This would be popular, especially with people from the videoblogging culture.

Thanks,

sull
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XSPF is the XML format for sharing playlists.

* It is open -- No proprietary lock-in.
* It is portable -- You should be able to send a playlist to your friend and have it work.
* It is well-engineered -- Most playlist formats get the easy things wrong.

Unlike M3U
XSPF is XML.
Unlike SMIL
XSPF is simple.
Unlike ASX
XSPF is open.

Seconded, but with an agenda.

VLC'ers: I'm the project mom for XSPF. XSPF is a sister project to Ogg, a playlist format under the Xiph umbrella. Implementing it should be easy and fast, and should help in the general quest to move from proprietary formats to open ones.

Feel free to email me (lucas@gonze.com) about details.

Supporting XSPF is already on your todo-list. I don't know how far the development already got actually. This won't be included in our forthcoming 0.8.4 release, but it is targeted for the next version.
Please have a look at ticket #18 for details.

I look forward to seeing XSPF support in VideoLAN... (The sooner the better! )

great. glad its on the radar already.

apparently winamp and yahoo media engine support xspf, but vlc could be the first quality video player to support it... and thats what is much needed.

sull

One thing though...
As far as I can see XSPF doesn't support storing a "nested" playlist. VLC does, and any XML based playlist format we would choose should have this ability as well. I'm not sure XSPF does.

One thing though...
As far as I can see XSPF doesn't support storing a "nested" playlist. VLC does, and any XML based playlist format we would choose should have this ability as well. I'm not sure XSPF does.

That's correct. It does support linking to a nested playlist (and one of the XSPF players implements this) but not embedding one.

Can you tell me a bit more about the high-level idea with nesting playlists, The DJ?

I mean structures such as these:

http://sidekick.student.utwente.nl/vide ... aylist.jpg

a tree based playlist format where a directory expands into a subnode with all its files, a opened playlist is transformed to a node which contains all it's linked files etc.

I cannot get the right playlist to play. I put in the right code and followed directions exactly according to the following site:(http://forevergeek.com/articles/xspf_a_ ... r_site.php)
uploaded all the files and the player works but plays the hideout playlist(http://www.hideout.com.br/blog/)instead.
how can i get my playlist to playinstead of theirs?

(i didnt copy & paste anything, everything was typed out and filled in correctly so that all urls matched my url sites)

Yeah - for me it works perfectly from home after I'd uploaded everything using a mac and does now - but when I went to the site from a works pc it just loaded the hideout playlist.I have seen this problem mentioned on other forums and I did see somewhere that someone was using the .txt suffix at the end of their playlist instead of .xspf - but that can't be right can it?? I'll keep trying,cos when it works it's fantastic,but not if only I can hear it!

OK I reckon I've fixed it - a good way to be sure of the code for the playlist file if your getting muddled like me is to log in to webjay,set up a new playlist and feed in the url of your mp3 - then choose xspf from the menu webjay offers you to playback with and just download the html,and copy it.The other thing is if your using an uploader like fetch - you may have to keep changing the names of everything to avoid conflict - cos you might be sitting there like me - a complete moron,wondering why you've changed everything and it should be working but it's still doing the same darn thing it was 20 minutes ago..And bringing the cache size of your browser to zero helps,so that it refreshes each time you go to the page.I don't know why it does this - I only delve so far into the technicalities of things but anyway,
http://webjay.org/ is the place for playlists,
the code on this page helped me also:-
http://forevergeek.com/articles/xspf_a_ ... r_site.php
but of course theres alot on the original
http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/ page.If your bored and want to see if I've got it working on my site yet,go to
http://www.rgpaddler.co.uk/ and if the music playing isn't by me then everything I just said was a load of cobblers! Cheers

Sorry I realised I've just entered the same url you mentioned earlier.wot a geek!

any updates on xspf support?

I came to request this feature as well. Glad people have done it already, and look, there's even Lucas here. He's a nice guy, and I reckon he'll help the developers as much as possible to get XSPF support alright.

XSPF can be used for both video and music. The fact it's an open standard is not just a bonus, it means things don't get patented, or changed abruptly, and it also means support among software remains constant.

Now, all it's needed is for more software to support this playlist format. Please, I know this sounds selfish, but make it a priority to get XSPF support on VLC.

coming real soon now
Someone already sent a patch. Just needs some validation.

Very glad to hear this. Godspeed, and thanks go for whoever created the patch.

sweet!
i've been doing a lot of talking lately about playlists....
decided to check on the status over here....
great to hear that its coming as of 2 weeks ago.

where are we at today?

thanks!

sull

We're waiting for fixes to the original patch (coding style stuff and tree architecture support for VLC playlist). It should be available in 0.8.5.

Thanx dionoea, tree support will be Sooooo helpful.
It will enable grouping different input types.
At the moment v0.85 seems to support some sort of treeing (NODES or I see some may refer to it as nesting), but these are lost when you save a playlist and then open the playlist later?


What I am doing is to create a playlist for use at the church.

• One NODE contains MP3's which when played present the visualizations (It will be great if the Repeat One button on the Playlist will then repeat the selected tree as we could then loop MP3's before moving to play a video. )
  Another NODE has video clips
  The last NODE has the Dshow entry so that we can "switch" to the live camera feed easily at any stage just by clicking the entry in the playlist. (Without the tree feature you have to try scroll through tons of entries in the playlist (MP3's) to try find the Dshow entry - not so quick)

At the moment we use three apps to play MP3's, videos and project the camera feed VLC has sorted that out BIG TIME

using XSPF extensions to store the tree structure is planed. I doubt that it will be done in 0.8.5.