However, it is not always done with a few 'find-and-replace' actions. Retroactive conversion of a playlist from absolute to relative paths is indeed possible by manual edit in a plain-text editor. with all relative playlists contained therein to remain playable on most computers, multimedia devices and operating systems. We are free to mirror the whole stuff to an external hard drive, USB stick, DVD, crypto container etc. We have option to relocate the whole directory tree to a different mount point in the filesystem. We can rename the root folder of the collection at any time.

If we save our playlists to a fixed location within the directory tree of the music collection and those playlists use relative paths, everything becomes nicely portable.

Any serious mediaplayer can deal with it, and in fact, relative file path references were supported ever since. They only define the branch of file path which is needed to find the media relative to the M3U file itself. Absolute playlist paths turn out to be the ball and chain of media file references .

Not a single track is found for playback, when user path has changed or the removable disk was assigned a different drive letter or mount point. By the next opportunity, the affectionate party playlist will explode, in embarrassing silence.

Problem | Solution | Details | License | Download | Indexįor reasons beyond rational thought, some mediaplayers still export M3U playlists with nothing else than absolute file paths.Ībsolute paths are file references with full path description, consisting of drive letter, user path, music folder, band name, album, etc. For those of us who prefer independent local media, back-up their precious music collection to external drives and use copies on several computers and devices, it's quite annoying that many popular mediaplayers won't export M3U playlists correctly with relative paths.

M3u file creator