Re: What's The Difference ...?
- From: "Ron Canazzi" <aa2vm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <winamp4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:17:58 -0400
Hi Andria, Reg and the rest of you:
So you wanna know what the difference between pls and m3u files is hah?!
Well, I finally got time to research this myself and so I went to google and
did a search and here's what I found. Now will someone please explain this
in simple terms? No wonder no one has been able to anser this one!
Taken from:
http://gonze.com/playlists/playlist-format-survey.html
M3U
Description:
Every line in an M3U file is either a comment, a blank, or a resource to
render. A comment line begins with the pound sign, #. Blanks are ignored. A
resource
is the address of a media file.
A resource address can be anything the M3U reader is capable of
understanding. These include absolute filesystem paths, relative filesystem
paths (with
the base undefined by the file format), and URLs.
A resource can be anything the M3U reader is capable of rendering. To my
knowledge these are always audio files, but there is no set reason for that
to
be true. However, it may not be wise to point to proprietary media formats
like Real streaming audio in an M3U file, since many players will throw a
user-visible
error for media they cannot render.
The design philosophy of M3U is to let resource data types do the work.
Players that don't understand an address or resource type usually skip the
entry.
The ability to reference URLs, in addition to filesystem paths, was added
this way; some players (Winamp and XMMS, notably) simply added the ability
to
handle URLs to their M3U readers.
Support for M3U features varies wildly. iTunes, for example, will only
render the first entry in an M3U file.
M3U is by far the most popular playlist format, probably due to its
simplicity. It is an ad-hoc standard with no formal definition, no canonical
source,
and no owner.
Example:
# This is an absolute filesystem path
c:/music/foo.mp3
# This is a relative filesystem path
foo/fighters.mp3
# This is a URL
http://foofighters.com/somesong.mp3
Mime type:
audio/mpegurl (recommended)
audio/x-mpegurl
Distinguishing features:
A simple list of files, one per line.
Definition URL:
http://www.schworak.com/programming/music/playlist_m3u.asp
Originator:
Winamp (?)
Implementations:
Winamp, XMMS, many more
Metadata support:
Before ID3 tags were widely supported by MP3 players, a flavor of M3U called
Extended M3U was used to indicate audio metadata. Extended M3U is now
obsolete.
The following description of Extended M3U is copied in verbatim from
Google's cache of the reverse-engineered documentation at
http://hanna.pyxidis.org/tech/m3u.html,
which is now a defunct URL.
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:111,3rd Bass - Al z A-B-Cee z
mp3/3rd Bass/3rd bass - Al z A-B-Cee z.mp3
#EXTINF:462,Apoptygma Berzerk - Kathy«s song (VNV Nation rmx)
mp3/Apoptygma Berzerk/Apoptygma Berzerk - Kathy's Song (Victoria Mix by VNV
Nation).mp3
#EXTINF:394,Apoptygma Berzerk - Kathy's Song
mp3/Apoptygma Berzerk/Apoptygma Berzerk - Kathy's Song.mp3
#EXTINF:307,Apoptygma Bezerk - Starsign
mp3/Apoptygma Berzerk/Apoptygma Berzerk - Starsign.mp3
#EXTINF:282,Various_Artists - Butthole Surfers: They Came In
mp3/Butthole_Surfers-They_Came_In.mp3
The First line, "#EXTM3U" is the format descriptor, in this case M3U (or
Extended M3U as it can be called). It does not change, it's always this.
The second and third operate in a pair. The second begins "#EXTINF:" which
serves as the record marker. The "#EXTINF" is unchanging. After the colon is
a number: this number is the length of the track in whole seconds (not
minutes:seconds or anything else. Then comes a comma and the name of the
tune (not
the FILE NAME). A good list generator will suck this data from the ID3 tag
if there is one, and if not it will take the file name with the extension
chopped
off.
The second line of this pair (the third line) is the actual file name of the
media in question. In my example they aren't fully qualified because I run
this list by typing "noatun foo.m3u" in my home directory and my music is in
~/mp3, so it just follows the paths as relative from the path of invocation.
PLS
Description:
A proprietary format used for playing Shoutcast and Icecast streams. The
syntax of a PLS file is the same syntax as a Windows .ini file and was
probably
chosen because of support in the Windows API.
Example:
[Playlist]
NumberOfEntries=1
File1=http://www.panix.com/web/faq/multimedia/sample.mp3
Title1=Bird Song
Length1=21
Version=2
Mime type:
audio/x-scpls
Distinguishing features:
A Windows .ini file
Definition URL:
PLS is documented via reverse engineering. One source of documentation is at
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QT6WhatsNew/Chap1/chapter_1_section_58.html.
Originator:
Winamp
Implementations:
Winamp, QuickTime
Metadata support:
Metadata is included in the entry for each song, in a set of parallel arrays
where FileN=[address of file]; TitleN=[title of song].
----- Original Message -----
From: "Reg Webb" <reg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <winamp4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 8:50 AM
Subject: Re: What's The Difference ...?
Hi Andrea
I also keep asking that question, but nobody ever tells me. Maybe it's
classified information, or maybe nobody knows. As you probably know,
the .PLS files are commonly used for streaming content, and .M3U for
local use. But that doesn't explain what the real difference is. Come
on you syntax gurus!
Reg
In message <001401c4963c$61ed1cb0$0201a8c0@Andrea>, Andrea Sherry
<sherryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>Between an .m3u play list and a .pls file?
>mailto:sherryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>When you have eliminated the impossible.
>whatever remains, however improbable,
>must be the truth.
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--
Reg Webb
Website:
http://www.regwebb.com
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