How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

There's a common misconception that the default tablet Media Player does not support playlists, so I figured that I would correct that and show you how to create and use them.

Media Player has two views, Library and Now Playing. Now Playing *IS* your playlist. Let me say that again. Now Playing *IS* your playlist.

I know, it should have simply been called "Playlist", but what can you do, eh?

So, how do we use it?

If you are in your library and simply hit play on a song, it imports the entire list of songs over to Now Playing, assuming you want the entire list in your playlist. That's not a bad assumption to make in general. (This also works in any list. If you are looking at an album and just click play, the playlist will consist of the entire album.)

So, how do I make my own playlist?

From your library, click and drag to select songs that you want to have in your playlist and then hit play. Say we've selected 20 songs and hit play. Now Playing will report "Now playing 1 of 20". Clicking on the Now Playing list button should show your created playlist.

What if your songs aren't all next to each other in the library? Well, start off selecting ones that are and hitting play... then return to the Library view and then select the others that you want and choose from the Media Player menu Clip -> Add to 'Now Playing' list. You should then see your songs added to the playlist.

How do I save my created playlist?

At any time, you can save your playlist by choosing Clip -> Save 'Now Playing' list as... in the Media Player menu.

How do I reload a saved playlist?

If you have already saved a playlist, you can find it in two places. First, you can use the Media Player menu and choose Open and find the physical file that you saved the playlist to.

You can also go into your Library and find the newly added Playlists list under Library > Music > Playlists.

It might be possible to do the same thing with videos, but as I haven't tried it yet, I can't say for sure.

(Also note that you have dynamically created playlists here for recently added songs, recently played songs and songs you've never played before.)

Anyways, I hope this helps you use the Media Player a little better.
(I'll be adding screenshots to this sometime tonight in case my explanations aren't good enough. There's also a chance this will not work in OS2007... as I no longer have it, I can't tell.)

I suppose my quest to get more people to use the default software better and make it more useful continues. ;)

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Wow you are fast. :)

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Jaiku got the exclusive... when I wasn't getting 504 gateway errors anyway.

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Thanks, you made my day!!

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Thanks! Still it's a usability flaw. But I guess according to Nokia it supports playlists, just like to them Microb has tabs. Ah well..

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Agreed (though I disagree on what you said about Microb because that's what the task switcher handles, but anyways...), I shouldn't have to make a how-to to explain to anyone how to use what should be a easy to figure out/discover feature.

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Looks like this bug and this one .

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

I don't have that option in the media player - is there a certain version this has to be done with? I am running OS2007 on an N800, and I don't have a "add to now playing list" option. It seems buggy, too - do I maybe need an update? I have the main repos all enabled, and it tells me I am up to date.

I'm kind of at a loss here.

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Just wanted to point out that you might also want to mention that you can add songs to your "now playing" playlist by selecting them in file manager; unfortunately they don't get added to the playlist, they replace it, but it's still kind of handy especially when playing things over the shared folders option...

Simply drag and select a bunch of MP3s, then go file->open and they'll show up as your playlist.

My biggest problem with the native media player (and virtually all media players for the tablet) is that it's obsessed with the whole "library" idea; while a library is cool and handy at times, it doesn't do squat for when I want to add in some files from shared folders that may or may not be there.

I'm sure the howto has been handy for lots of people though! Thanks!

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Here's a bump - this technique still doesn't work for me - I just don't have the options you refer to. I'll try to install the screenshot app and show you what I mean, because I just am not getting anywhere.

Are there any additional steps I might've missed?

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

The "add to playlist" using the library has one problem for me. It the library doesn't have browse by folder! All my music is arranged by folder. Browse by Artist, Album, Genre isn't helpful since it basically list all my song in one huge list. Most of my songs are by different Artist, Album, however they basically all in the same genre.

I would really like to use add to playlist, but is very hard when you sort through a list of 1000+ songs...

Re: How-To: Creating and Using Playlists with Media Player
 

Thanks for the writeup. It explains alot. I followed the instructions to the letter. After twenty minutes, i'd added three tracks to a playlist of three hundred some odd that should be there for the book i'm 'reading'. I might get better at it after awhile. However, the directions are so hard to remember, i'm guessing that there's a total paradigm impedence mismatch. I'm so trying to bake this cake with an application that knows how to drill holes in the dirt, or something. You might say that Media Player has playlists. That would be overstatement. You might say that there is a usablilty problem. That would be understatement.

I'd continue using my command line script that creates playlists from a directory of files. Or i would, except that it stopped working when i last reflashed. It creates a file, say 'pods.m3u', with lines like
file:///media/mmc2/Audio/pod/somefile.mp3
And 'Media Player' lets me open the file, and it shows me the list of files. But when i click on one, it says 'Unable to find media file'. If i open the mp3 file by itself, it plays it. However, then i have to do an open for each file. One down, 300 to go. Tough to do while driving.

For that matter, is there a function that lets you play all the files in a directory, in name order? Then i wouldn't need playlists. When you rip a CD, you get a collection of files in a directory. I copy them about as a unit. I imagine that there are people out there who dump all their files into one directory - like 'My Documents' on Winders. (I don't run Winders). I suppose there are people who play huge collections of CDs in random shuffle mode. So, there's a parent directory with tonnes of subdirectories, each with an album. Let it shuffle on that. Or play them in order. Either way, no playlists needed.