Relative versus absolute links within Foobar2000 saved playlists

2024-01-02 17:59:52

It's puzzling why Foobar2000 doesn't save playlists with relative links by default.  Absolute links made a lot of sense in 2010 when most people were using a single PC to save & play their music collection. The music files might be on different fixed or temporary drives.

Now it is common to upload a music collection to the cloud, or perhaps a shared drive on a local wifi network.  Music is played from many different devices.  References to fixed drive letters often makes no sense. 

One or more of the Foobar2000 beta releases did in fact create relative links. I thought the problem was fixed.  Unfortunately the latest release is saving absolute links.  It is odd that there is no obvious way to choose between relative/absolute links.  This is a common feature in programs that create playlists.  Perhaps I'm missing something.

I'm using an ancient Windows utility called "Playlist Creator 3.6.2"  to easily fix Foobar2000 playlists.  You can download the utility from many sites, for instance:  https://www.google.com/search?q=playlist+creator+3.6.2
It's an awkward playlist builder, you'll want to stick with Foobar2000 to compose your playlists.  You run the utility after saving playlists from Foobar2000.

First time you run Playlist Creator set two parameters:
Settings->extended information -> deselect “write extended information”
(I suggest this to create cleaner M3U files)
Settings -> playlist details -> “relative”

Drag the playlist you want to fix into Playlist Creator
Select “open for editing” (rather than insert) from the dialog box.
The filename and location will be set to overwrite your file.  Click “Create Playlist”

There are other programs to create relative-link playlists.
Using Foobar2000 & Playlist Creator together is pretty simple.


MOD edit: changed link to generic google search

Re: Relative versus absolute links within Foobar2000 saved playlists

Reply #1 – 2024-01-02 20:02:40

Perhaps pay some attention to where you save the playlists. As a rule of thumb saving playlists in any parent directory of the referenced files will result in relative paths. Portable foobar2000 also has (or at least had) some special casing to take its install dir into account and used ".." in paths to be able to reverse out of its install dir.

If your files for example reside in "M:\Music\FLACs\<anything...>" then saving the playlists in "M:\" or "M:\Music\" or "M:\Music\FLACs\" will result in relative paths being used. But if you save them for example in "M:\Music\playlists\" foobar2000 is currently content with just using absolute paths.

Re: Relative versus absolute links within Foobar2000 saved playlists

Reply #2 – 2024-01-02 23:13:33

Case,
I know about the exception that relative links work if you place all your playlists in the same directory tree branch with all the music files at lower levels. No offense, but this sort of inflexibility is reminiscent of computer practices in 1980.   People with sprawling music collections want to disperse or group their playlists wherever it makes sense to them.   Directory trees and relative links make it easy.   It would be too tedious to explain examples from my own collections, but please trust that making the system rigid is bad.

Re: Relative versus absolute links within Foobar2000 saved playlists

Reply #3 – 2024-01-03 08:24:30

If you use my Playlist Manager (see sig), you can set if relative or absolute paths are used, no matter where music or playlist is located (as long as the music is in the same HDD than the playlist though). No need to have music at lower levels, also works with things like ..\..\...\music\my file.mp3 or more exotic combinations.

You can also export playlists and set specific relative path roots (even if the original playlist used absolute paths), so if you export them, they work on any system or dir tree. I use it to export playlists to kodi or foobarMobile, where music is stored in a relative path totally different than my PC.

Re: Relative versus absolute links within Foobar2000 saved playlists

Reply #4 – 2024-01-04 18:59:35

Regor,
I downloaded your Playlist Manager .zip file and read through portions of your 150 page (!) manual.  I am so impressed with the detail with which you address all facets of your creation.   I have many decades of experience in programming, both with databases and signal processing type stuff.  So I can figure things out with some effort.  I  don't know what a "spider monkey panel" means.  I guess it is a component that gets added to Foobar and provides a standard interface to run scripts?   No need to explain anything. I expect that your tool is  excellent, it's just that there is a high bar to adoption by the majority of Foobar users who are not Github geeks.

I'll figure out your playlist manage even though it seems way more capable than I need.  Probably it has a lot of advantages I just never thought about.

Re: Relative versus absolute links within Foobar2000 saved playlists

Reply #5 – 2024-01-05 23:04:04

Yes, Spider Monkey Panel it's a component for Foobar that needs to be installed first , then you add the Playlist Manager. This is the latest version that you should use https://github.com/regorxxx/Playlist-Manager-SMP/releases/download/v0.12.1/foo_spider_monkey_panel-v1.6.1-mod.fb2k-component.
 Just a simple advice: you can test first on a new, portable Foobar. This way your old Foobar configuration is safe from any possible mistake.Then, after you see how things are going, you can add the Playlist Manager to your old Foobar configuration.