Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

VBTeam — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:15:09 GMT

Hi, Alicia,

I'd like to help, but I'm not quite understanding the question. WPL files are playlist files, which simply contain references to media files -- there's no chance of a WPL being converted to an MP3 file itself. I just tried this myself, and when I do an "Open with Zune" on a WPL file, all that happens is that Zune launches, but it does nothing -- it doesn't actually know what to do with a WPL file. So, I'm wondering if you had some typos in your question?

Here's what I would have expected -- I would download a set of MP3 files (or maybe WMA files), which was perhaps accompanied by a WPL playlist. I'd change the WPL extension to a ZPL extension. I'd launch the Zune software and make sure that it detected the new files (some people have their Zune software set up for manual detection rather than automatic, for example). Then I'd sync my device -- both the MP3's and the ZPL file would get pushed to the device.

Let me know if you have more info. Given that, I may or may not be able to answer (I'm not on the Zune team, and I don't know much more than anyone else about it.)

--Matt--*

P.S. I like old time radio shows, too. I'm halfway through a volume of "Fibber McGee and Molly" shows that my wife got me for Christmas -- they're quite fun!

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

Alicia — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:32:39 GMT

I downloaded some old time radio shows from the net. When they downloaded they were wpl files, so I right clicked each one and said "Open With" Zune. That apparently changed them to MP3's because they downloaded to My Documents folder with file extensions of .mp3.......so here's my problem......when I click on the file it opens with Zune and plays normally in the "Now Playing" area of the Zune Software. When I got to save as a new playlist it saves it and the title is there, but when I try to sync it to the Zune it says the file is empty (no megabytes) Can you offer any help on how to get these files to sync with my Zune? I've already checked my zune settings and it should accept a mp3 file...I don't understand....please help!

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

VBTeam — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:17:24 GMT

Yep, the real point of this post was just to provide an update to the earlier two posts, which dealt with customizing playlists, so that you could copy them to Zune playlists at the same time that you reordered the lists. If you don't care about playlist ordering, then simple renaming or copying is the way to go.

--Matt--*

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

dan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:19:11 GMT

I just made a play list in WMP and then renamed it to .zpl so that worked fine. I could have added my own code to make it work like that but then i remembered that i am lazy, so i went and did it in WMP. But thank you for the source code. i am sure i can find some use for it eventually.

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

VBTeam — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:59:36 GMT

Hi, Dan,

Sorry for any confusion -- "could" in my blog posts means "if you take the concepts you've leanred in these blogs, you could extend it to do even more." Mostly, with these blog posts, I'm trying to introduce the various concepts (or SDKs on occasion) by applying them to a particular problem I'm trying to solve at home. In my case, I generally add songs via the WMP (since I need to do this anyway for my home stereo system), and then use this program to rearrange them in an order that's not offensive to my ears when playing the songs back on the Zune or on Sync. So, that's as much as I do with this program.

That being said, almost every concept you need to add arbitrary songs to a playlist is in this program and in the three blogs that relate to it -- opening of a new or existing playlist and adding media items to it, and I discuss those a bit in the other two blogs (links to them are in the above article) which had the original code. The one missing element is simply the creation of the media object representing the file (i.e., explicitly associating it with the file -- but that's just another method in the class namespace which is (I believe) associated with either playlist or library object.

Hope this clears things up!

--Matt--*

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

dan — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 05:43:04 GMT

"could be *used* for handling adding songs"

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

dan — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 05:42:01 GMT

How do you add songs to the play list. i tried drag and drop other than that i don't know what to do. i browsed the code and i don't see anything that could be sued for handling adding songs

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

VBTeam — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 05:05:47 GMT

Done!

--Matt--*

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

dan — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:39:03 GMT

Thanks that will be really cool!

re: Building a Zune Playlist (Matt Gertz)

VBTeam — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:33:34 GMT

Hi, Dan,

Yes, I will do that tonight when I get home. (I've actually changed it slightly to make it a little more efficient.)

--Matt--*