Tutorials > How to create and manage a playlist

Supported standard playlist formats are the following:

•

M3U

•

PLS

•

WPL

Starting from version 4.0 of the component, MultiMedia Soft has introduced a new proprietary playlist format named PDJ; this new format allows adding volume points automation and cue points management to playlist's elements and also the use of encrypted sounds generated using the CryptSound™ application; for details about the use of this new format refer to the How to manage Volume Automation tutorial.

When using the PDJ format with one single player, the availability of mixing points, cue points and volume automation points is not mandatory: you can in any case use this format as other common playlist formats as seen below (note that, respect to usage with volume automation attributes, the tag FaderPlayList is in this case changed into NormalPlayList):

<?xml version="1.0"?>

</PlayListItems>

</NormalPlayList>

In a similar way, in case you should need using encrypted sounds with a single player, you could have something like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

</PlayListItems>

</NormalPlayList>

The use of the "bxx" extension for encrypted files pointed by a PDJ playlist file allows the component to recognize these files as encrypted audio files. Although not mandatory, it's always suggested the use of this extension for encrypted audio files pointed by a playlist file in PDJ format.

A normal playlist can be created from scratch using the PlayListCreate method.

In case you should need adding volume automation features to your playlist, you could use the PlayListCreate method passing PLAYLIST_AUTOMATION_MODE to the nMode parameter; further information about the use of Volume Automation can be found inside the How to manage Volume Automation tutorial.

If a playlist already exists on your PC, you can load it into a player through the PlayListLoad method; a call to this method won't return control to the container application until the playlist has been loaded completely so, if the playlist should be very long, it could block your user interface for a while; for this reason there is the possibility to call the PlayListLoadSync method which will perform playlist analysis and loading in a separate thread: the container application is informed about the loading advancement through the PlayListLoadStart, PlayListLoadPerc and PlayListLoadDone events.

A playlist can also be created directly from a CD using the PlayListLoadFromCd method that will automatically load all the available CD audio tracks.

At runtime, when an item of the playlist is loaded into the player, the PlaylistSoundLoaded event is generated. If the loading fails, for example because the format of the item is not supported or because the item is not available inside the system, the PlaylistSoundLoadFailure event is generated.

A playlist, loaded from disk or created from scratch, can be modified through the following methods:

PlayListAddItem to add one or more new songs to the playlist

PlayListAddItemWithTag to add a new song to the playlist with an associated tag string: this tag string will be reported by the PlaylistSoundLoaded event when the item is loaded into the player at runtime.

PlayListRemoveItem to remove a song from the playlist

PlayListMoveItem to change the position of a song

PlayListGetCount to retrieve the number of songs currently in the playlist

PlayListGetItemString to retrieve information about a chosen song

PlayListSetLoop to make the playlist loop when it has been executed completely

PlayListSetShuffle to set a random playing order of the playlist songs

Once the playlist has been filled you can save it on your PC using the PlayListSave method.

When the playlist has been loaded with volume automation enabled, the following methods can be used to modify contained items:

PlayListItemVolAutomPointAdd to add a new volume automation point to an existing item

PlayListItemVolAutomSetMixPos to modify mixing positions of an existing item

PlayListItemVolAutomPointRemove to remove a volume automation point from an existing item

PlayListItemCuePointAdd to add a new cue point to an existing item

PlayListItemCuePointRemove to remove a cue point from an existing item

The playlist can be executed using the following methods:

PlayListExecute to start the playlist execution from the beginning

PlayListExecNext to execute the next song

PlayListExecPrev to execute the previous song

PlayListExecAt to execute the song at the given position

PlayListStop to stop the automatic execution of the playlist

Playlists can also be used, through the embedded Automatic Fader, for cross-fading between two players: for details about using the Automatic Fader refer to the How to use the Automatic Fader section.

A playlist file can consist of both audio tracks and/or video clips: based upon the file extension, the control will decide if the file to be loaded is an audio track or a video clip; for formats like MP4 and WMV, which can be supported in both ways but which are considered as video clips by default, you can use the AudioExtensionAdd method in order to load them as simple audio tracks and to ignore the contained video stream.

Samples of use of playlists in Visual C#.NET and Visual Basic.NET can be found inside the following samples installed with the product's setup package:

- Playlists

- Fader