I am trying to use CATraxx to generate playlists to be used by my Media Player. It is a standalone 1 TB hard disk with media playing firmware. It can be connected to the PC for maintenance (copy, id3 tag etc.) and it can be used standalone to play the musics.

This media player can use playlists in the relative mode. The audio files are always referenced by its location relative to the root. For example, one line of the .m3u playlist file might be:
..\AUDIO\Etta James\1975 - Etta James vol.1 - Tell Mama\10 - Watch Dog.mp3
where the initial double dot means the root of the disk.

So far, I can use CATraxx to generate dynamic playlists, but only in the absolute mode. For the example above, CATraxx would generate:
Y:\AUDIO\Etta James\1975 - Etta James vol.1 - Tell Mama\10 - Watch Dog.mp3
This line is unreadable by my Media Player which, of course, does not know what Y:\ means.

Is there any way of getting CATraxx to generate relative playlists similar to the model above ???
By the way, I am trying to generate 900+ playlists for about 100,000 musics in 6,000 albums of 800 artists, which makes the manual editing of each line in the playlists impracticable.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

I don't know the CATraxx answer, if there is one, but aren't .m3u files just text? In which case perhaps a quick Edit > Search and Replace > "Y:" by ".." should provide a workaround?
Perhaps you could even use the much praised AutoHotKey (see http://www.fnprg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5854 and also search for subsequent posts) to automate this?

Ken

Thinks: Is this a record? Have I answered a post by providing nothing but other questions?

The CATraxx answer is NO!

A simple search/replace is the way to do it.

It's an interesting issue you raise (although I'm aware of no operating system where "../" means the root). My question is, how would CATraxx determine relative to what the path should be? CATraxx would have to know the directory in which the playlist was stored (if that's the starting point) before it could generate a playlist.

Perhaps that is the answer, as it would allow you to maintain parallel structures on your mobile device and home computer, assuming your mobile device allows that level of control.

- Jeff

I read this post in a way, where I assumed the same structure on both the 1TB media and in CATraxx (PC).

The only difference was the Y:\... part.

If that's not the case, it's almost an impossible task.

A path starting with a drive letter, a UNC host name (or I believe a single path separator like a backslash) are "absolute" paths in that it doesn't matter what the "current directory" is, the paths point to the same place.

Relative paths start with a subfolder or a "..", and point to a directory that depends on the current directory.

My understanding of the post was that the mobile device's root is not the same as the PC's, but the directory structure is the same relatively speaking (i.e., from some arbitrary starting folder). For the M3U file to work, the paths in it would have to be relative to the M3U's folder location, not absolute relative to some mapped drive letter.

- Jeff

I don't think we need to argue about absolute and relative paths.
At least I know what it is.

In my reply I referred to Y:\... meaning a drive and 1 or more folders.
If you strip off/replace as much as necessary, it should work.
But doing it for 900 playlists (manually), good luck.

Wasn't trying to argue, only explain.

- Jeff

THANKS TO ALL, for your contributions to my issue.

I apologize for being away, but my notifier was not working

Some semantics here: when I say "relative" I mean relative to the root of its drive.

So:
The only playlist that always works is the relative one, it stores the paths relative to the root and is independent of the place where the playlist resides (provided that it is in the same disk). Even if we change the location of the playlist it still works.
CATraxx uses the assumption that the musics may reside in a different disk, but in the same computer (hence, the indication of the disk letter).
A very simple tweak in the CATraxx playlist maker would allow either version of the playlist (with ..\ for relative paths and with [drive]:\ for absolute paths).

By the way, [to JSonnabend1]
..\ really means the root (in DOS, and in all related batch files or Command Prompt environments).
And when you say

the answer is that CATraxx already knows where the playlist is stored, because it gives the correct absolute path. And the relative path is always relative to the root. If you refer to my first post you will see what I mean.
And yes, you are (almost) right when you say:

which I could correct to "For the M3U file to work, the paths in it would have to be relative to the M3U's folder location or to its root". This may be redundant after what was said, but is true anyway .

Finally, batch editing the 900 playlists is possible, there are many editors around. But it is unpractical to keep dynamic playlists this way.

Cheers.

What do you mean "keep dynamic playlists this way?" Dynamic playlists (in the CATraxx sense of "dynamic") do not generate M3U files.

Whenever you export a playlist to M3U, you could simply do the search-and-replace then, no?

- Jeff

BTW, a path that is "relative" to the root is by definition not relative, IMO, but that's really besides the point for our purposes.