Listview Listitem TAG property & .m3u

[hipopony66]

Hey, I'm planning on actually doing this right this time for compatibility. Can someone give me an example of how to use the Listview.listitem "tag" property? I'm wanting to do this so I can save playlists in my program as m3u. Also, I know these playlists are just text files, but how are they arranged? I want to be able to create playlists that are compatible with Winamp & Mediaplayer, as well as my program. I was using my own file extension and textfile pattern, but it was only compatible with my program. Sooo........ I'm wanting to go *.m3u. Any help is extremely appreciated.

[MidgetsBro]

Just make a simple, one line playlist in winamp, then open it with notepad. I know the first line is always #EXTM3U, then comments are preceeded by # as well, I think. In my winamp playlist, each song filename is preceeded with a line

#EXTINF:songlength(315),trackname(AC/DC - It's a Long Way To the Top)

But I don't know if windows media player reads those lines.

[MidgetsBro]

Oh and you can use the listview's tag property for anything... it holds a variant I believe:

ListView1.ListItems(1).Tag = "whatever (string or number)"

[hipopony66]

Ok, here's a good one for you. If I open and then copy and paste all the info in a m3u to another and save it, it works and loads in winamp, but say I just cut and paste the first 2 songs then it loads into the playlist, but won't play. and if you rightclick on it in the winamp playlist and choose show file info, it says "no file". Any ideas on this? So basically this works:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:310,Puddle of Mudd - Blurry (acoustic)(1)
D:\My Music\Other\Puddle of Mudd - Blurry (acoustic)(1).mp3
#EXTINF:184,Jimmy Eat World - The Middle (Acoustic)
D:\My Music\Other\Jimmy Eat World - The Middle (Acoustic).mp3
#EXTINF:281,train - drops of jupiter (acoustic)
D:\My Music\Other\Train - Drops of Jupiter (acoustic).mp3
#EXTINF:238,Weezer - Pink Triangle
D:\My Music\Weezer - Pink Triangle.mp3
#EXTINF:259,Tenacious D - Tribute
D:\My Music\Other\Tenacious D - Tribute to the Greatest Song in the World.mp3

and this doesn't:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:310,Puddle of Mudd - Blurry (acoustic)(1)
D:\My Music\Other\Puddle of Mudd - Blurry (acoustic)(1).mp3

Now if I'm right here, this makes no sense. #EXTM3U states the file is a playlist, the #EXTINF:310,Puddle of Mudd - Blurry (acoustic)(1) tells winamp the track is 310 secs, and the rest is the tag info. Then the followin line is simply the path of the file. So why would my second example not work. Any enlightenment is appreciated.

[MidgetsBro]

Do you have a return after the filename? There might need to be a blank line after the file name for winamp to read it properly.

[hipopony66]

I opened up an old Napster *.m3u playlist in notepad and it just has filepaths. And Mediaplayer and Winamp both read this so I guess it's the best way to go. Thanks for your help

[hipopony66]

Winamp load the list but won't play it, and Mediaplayer says the filepath doesn't exist when it does. Is *.m3u not a STANDARD? Seems like it should be.

[hipopony66]

n/m