Export playlist question

[Richard Cosgrove]

Hi, my apologies if this has been covered elsewhere - I have searched but can't find the answer I'm looking for.

I'm looking for the 'export playlist' to USB option, but it doesn't seem to appear on either my laptop browser, or on the mobile versions that I'm using.

My understanding is that I can set up a playlist, and then by selecting 'export playlist' it will copy the songs to my USB, but I can't see the option anywhere!

I've upgraded the firmware (21 July seems to be the latest), so I don't think that's the problem.

Any advice, guidance etc would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers, Richard

[Daniel Taylor]

Most of the commands on the B2 do not appear on the WebUI.  For those, you must use the front panel control knob.

The playlist commands - on the Playlist menu - that relate to your question are these:

Save Playlists       Saves all the playlists to USB C (no music is copied, just the playlists)
Export Playlist > <specified playlist>   Copies the song files for that playlist (in their respective folders) to USB C.

Contrary to what many may expect, the Export Playlist command does not put all the songs from your playlist into a single folder on the USB stick.  Not unless they happened to be from a single album folder on the B2 - very unlikely.  Rather, they will appear in the same folder structure in which they reside on the B2.

[Andrew Hyde]

Hi

I'm new to the forum, although I have had my B2 for almost five trouble-free years.  However, I had not previously needed to export the tracks in a playlist via USBC to a memory stick, and have hit a "brick wall".

The problem is the same one that Robert Wilson described in a post last December, but this is the most recent thread that deals with the issue.

I have had no trouble in the past Exporting to C for backup, or with importing FLAC files from C.

In short "Export Playlist" followed by selection of the playlist is followed by a few alternate flashes of the red and green LEDs (and flickering of the display), but no indication that the copying is proceeding, or completed.

"Save Playlists" (Playlist menu) and "Playlist to C" (USB menu) both save the text files to the USB drive as expected, so there seems not to be any problem on the hardware side.

I have had exactly the same result with different USB memory sticks (all freshly formatted on the B2)

I have already tried the following remedies:  - re-updating the software; re-flashing the SD card and performing a scan on the hard drive.

The latter, in the de-bug list, did include the line (twice) "Bad playlist name" - is this a clue? Changing the playlist name to a single word has had no effect.  The music is entirely classical and therefore the Album, Track and Artist names are often lengthy - might this be a problem?

I have now run out of ideas and would be grateful for any suggestions.  For info, my B2's current status is as follows:

Software Version B2B Oct 23 2020 09:56:12

28040 tracks in 1696 albums 813 artists

0 WAV 28005 FLAC 20 MP3 15 AAC

Capacity 2000.00G Used 476.01Gb

USB 0 tracks in 0 albums 0 artists

0 Youtubes

Thanks in anticipation

Andrew

[PMB]

Hi Andrew,

Track names and other titles are limited to 170 characters otherwise they are not displayed - they are still on the HDD but not displayed. So this is worth checking first.

I do know that the B2 shows it has finished the Export before it has completed and that you should leave the B2 for a few minutes longer to finish.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Andrew Hyde]

Hi Paul

Having read a few more posts on the forum and done some character  counting, I think that I have established an explanation for this particular problem (although sadly, not a solution to it).  The B2 stores Artist, Album and Track information in three separate fields.  Taking the data for the first track on the playlist that won't export, the Artist folder name is 90 characters long, the Album title name 82 characters long and the track name is 54 characters long.  None of these exceeds the 170 character limit and therefore the playlist appears correctly on the GUI and the playlist plays correctly (Play Playlist). All three elements also display as expected on the B2's screen whilst playing. When the playlist text is exported to USBC (Playlist to C) and examined - in my case using Windows Notepad, it is clear that the three elements have been concatenated into a single "Track" name, with the fields separated by backslashes.  This string is now 206 characters in length, and I suspect that if this is what the B2 is trying to write to the USB, and that is what causes the export of the tracks (Export Playlist) to fail.

I don't know if there's a simple fix - I suspect that, like random play, playlists are of less importance to most where Classical music is involved - I only use them when I want to assemble a rehearsal album, which in pre-Brennan days I did by burning a CD containing the ripped tracks.

Andrew

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Guys,

I have been doing some testing of the 'Export Playlist' function and have found a problem with it in that it has stopped working probably due to a new bug.  I have found that the function was working correctly up to and including B2B Jul 21 2020.  After that release, the function does not work.

I'm in the process of logging this as a bug on the forum, so hopefully it will be fixed fairly quickly.  I thought that I would let you know on this thread so that you don't spend hours swapping USB sticks etc,

Regards,

Peter.

[Andrew Hyde]

I was about to follow up my last post to say that trying to export a trial list with short track names didn't work,either, so my supposition was wrong, but I see that Peter has picked up on this, so I'll relax and watch this space!

Andrew

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Andrew,

I have just logged the bug on the forum, so you can see the infromation there.  One option would be to downgrade your version to 'B2B Jul 21 2020' and the function wil work again.

Regards,

Peter.