playlist, linux, freenas, ps3, ubuntu, esx, winamp, oh my!

[desertmouse1234]

After spending a while getting this to work, I thought I would put this info together for those trying to do likewise.

Here is what I did to get playlists to work on my ps3 and ps3 media server. First, here is my setup:

PMS running on a 64 bit virtual ubuntu 11 server. Autofs is used to map from ubuntu to my freenas nfs share for access to my videos and flac music files. Network is wired gigabit. PMS is version 1.30.1.
Freenas server is running on 64 bit dual-core amd with 8 gb of ram. The virtual ubuntu is set to run on 2 virtual processors with 4 gb of virtual ram. The server hosting all my virtual machines is a 64 bit esxi 4.1 server running on dual quad-core amd with 16 gb of ram.

Created a directory in ubuntu called hera. Autofs maps to the nfs root (set to read-only) on freenas 0.7.2 build 6694 of mnt/data01 which has a folder named shared which has subfolders named playlist, videos, and music_lossless.

When autofs mounts the share inside of the hera directory, it shows up as 'shared' and contains the 3 folders noted above.

PMS is set to share the playlist, videos, and music_lossless folders. The music files are entirely flac. The shared folders in PMS show up as /hera/shared/playlist, then ..../videos, then ...../music_lossless.

PMS is set to enable the media library cache, hide file extensions, hide transcode folder, hide video settings folder and hide transcoding engine names. File order is set to A - Z.

From windows xp, I map to a cifs,or smb, share on the freenas server to /mnt/data01; so it shows up in windows as H:\. I have read-write access to the playlist, videos, and music_lossless folders within the shared directory.

I use winamp to export a playlist in pls format using the flac files on the H drive as the source.

The playlist file puts the flac files in this format:

[playlist]
File1=H:\shared\music_lossless\ACDC\Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap\Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - 01 - ACDC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.flac
Title1=ACDC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Length1=231
File2=H:\shared\music_lossless\The Alan Parsons Project\Eye In The Sky\Eye In The Sky - 01 - The Alan Parsons Project - Sirius.flac
Title2=The Alan Parsons Project - Sirius
Length2=115

Then on windows, I open the pls file using textpad......I imagine similar test editors will work, but I prefer textpad......and replace all the \ with a /. Then I replace all instances of 'H:/shared/music_lossless' with '/hera/shared/music_lossless' so that my pls looks like this:

[playlist]
File1=/hera/shared/music_lossless/ACDC/Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap/Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - 01 - ACDC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.flac
Title1=ACDC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Length1=231
File2=/hera/shared/music_lossless/The Alan Parsons Project/Eye In The Sky/Eye In The Sky - 01 - The Alan Parsons Project - Sirius.flac
Title2=The Alan Parsons Project - Sirius
Length2=115

Then to get PMS to read the changes to the files, I reboot the ubuntu server. Once it is back up, I power on the ps3, go to the music section, open the ps3 media server listed there, go to the playlist folder (in the media server, not the built-in ps3 playlists folder), wait a few moments until it finishes reading the playlist into memory, then when the playlist files show up, I can access them and it will show the music files,as well as the coverart embedded in the flac file.

Nice to be able to have the playlist show up this way as I can filter which songs I want to hear versus an entire album at a time. Once I start playing a song in the playlist, I can select the ps3 shuffle feature which will play the songs in the playlist in a random order so I get the advantages of a jukebox.

[Rabbit Hole]

Nice workaround of yours!
I'm trying to do something similar and the playlists of Winamp might just do the trick.

I have my flac collection on a win7 computer with PMS installed. Most of my flacs are one album per file with embedded cue sheet and cover art. When streaming from PMS to the PS3 I can play the complete flac files and also the cover art is displayed, but the individual tracks of the flac file as specified in the embedded cue sheet are not displayed on the PS3, and consequently not selectable. The use of the Winamp playlists might be the solution to this. Do you think I could create a playlist in Winamp with all the tracks of my flacs, so that they then become selectable in the PS3? Where would I have to put that playlist file? Which format must those playlist have? I'm not familiar with Winamp, maybe you can give me some advise. Would be great if I had a Jukebox functionality on the PS3.

Thanks...

[Rabbit Hole]

damn, I've tried and realized that Winamp doesn't read embedded cues. I've tried the pug-in "CuePlayer" for Winamp, but wasn't successful neither.

if anybody has an idea on how to make the cue file embedded in a flac accessible on the PS3, please post it.

Cheers...