Most (but not all) m3u playlists not being imported

Dan_Callaway · May 9, 2021, 11:46pm

My m3u playlists were created with Swinsian, a Mac-based music player. All my music is stored on a Synology NAS. The m3u files do show the correct path to my files, but only 2 out of 13 playlists are being imported. All these m3u files were made at the same time, and they all work when my existing SONOS player scans them. The 2 that are imported also work correctly, so I’m at a loss as to why the others m3u files are being ignored. All these m3u files reside in the parent directory where all of my music files live. All of my music is being indexed properly, and I have no trouble playing anything back when selected directly. I have tried deleting these playlists, re-indexing the library, then re-copying the playlists over, and the same 2 get imported each time.

Andrew_Webb · May 10, 2021, 1:43am

Do all of the files in the playlist exist within the directory structure in which the playlist is found?

Dan_Callaway · May 10, 2021, 6:01am

Yes… All the music files are in directories inside the directory where the m3u files are located. For example:
Z:\music\Jazz (directory with many files and directories inside)
Z:\music\Classical
Z:\music\Ambient
Z:\music\50sjazz.m3u
Z:\music\60sjazz.m3u
… etc…

dylan · May 10, 2021, 4:05pm

Hi @Dan_Callaway

Can you share a screenshot of Settings > Storage?

Do these playlists use relative paths or absolute? We recommend using relative paths whenever possible.

Dan_Callaway · May 10, 2021, 5:31pm

The playlists use absolute file paths…

Here is a line from one of the m3u files that are imported… The 192.168.0.5 address is my NAS drive.

#EXTINF:349, Wes Montgomery - A Day in the Life
\192.168.0.5\music\mLibrary\active\Jazz/Guitar/Wes Montgomery/[1967] A Day in the Life/01 A Day in the Life.mp3

BlackJack · May 10, 2021, 6:06pm

From Importing playlists:

In order for an M3U to appear in Roon, it must:

Include tracks from the same watched folder (tracks from other watched folders will be ignored - tracks can be stored anywhere in the watched folder where the M3U is stored, but the contents of an M3U playlist cannot span multiple watched folders)

Reference file paths that Roon can understand – if you have moved your media or your M3U file, or if you think M3U is being ignored by Roon, you should open the M3U in a text editor and confirm that the path for a given song matches the path for that track displayed in Roon. When it comes to absolute paths versus relative paths, we recommend you use relative paths to avoid issues with missing playlists if the M3U is moved to another location.

Does not exactly match the track list of the directory the M3U is stored in – if you have a playlist stored in a folder with an album, and that playlist is simply a listing of the album’s tracks, it will be skipped. Importing playlists is easy in Roon! In most cases it happens automatically as long as you have your storage set up correctly.

Looks like you have used a mix of forward and backward slashes as path delimiter. Your paths are absolute but relative paths are recommended.

Dan_Callaway · May 10, 2021, 8:36pm

I did just try replacing the exact paths with relative paths on a few of the m3u files, but that didn’t solve the problem… This odd thing (to me, anyway) is why 2 of the playlists are being discovered, and 9 of them are not. The files are formatted exactly the same.