Playlists in TVersity

Starting from version 0.9.5 TVersity supports video and photo playlists in addition to M3U and PLS audio playlists. The format for video, image and audio playlists can be PLS, M3U, RSS and ATOM.

Unlike previous versions where TVersity expected to find MP3 audio files inside M3U and PLS, recent versions check the actual format of each playlist item and based on it decide where in the library it should be placed. If a playlist is comprised of audio files then as before it will be placed in the playlist section of the audio library. Unlike before, the image and video library now also have playlist sections and so playlist comprised of video items only or image items only will be placed under the corresponding playlist sections. Mixed playlists are also allowed and will be placed in the video section.

You may even mix URLs and local files into the same playlist creating any kind of collection you see fit and you can also nest playlists within one another. This kind of flexibility, designed to let you truly personalize your media, is above and beyond any other media server out there.

Here is an example of a video playlist file in PLS format:

VTS_03_1.VOB
VTS_03_2.VOB
VTS_03_3.VOB
VTS_03_4.VOB
VTS_03_5.VOB
VTS_03_6.VOB

Just give it some name and save it in the same folder as the items inside it and it will work as expected.

If you wish to place the playlist in a different folder you will need to include a full or relative path and not just the file names. Here is an example:

c:\movies\VTS_03_1.VOB
..\movies\VTS_03_2.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_3.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_4.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_5.VOB
c:\movies\VTS_03_6.VOB

If you prefer RSS files, it will look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>A Test RSS Playlist - Be Cool</title>
<link/>
<description>Nothing in particular</description>
<item>
<title>Be Cool - 1</title>
<enclosure url="D:\My Movies\BE_COOL_WS\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.VOB" length="" type=""/>
</item>
<item>
<title>Be Cool - 2</title>
<enclosure url="D:\My Movies\BE_COOL_WS\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_2.vob" length="" type=""/>
</item>
<item>
<title>Be Cool - 3</title>
<enclosure url="D:\My Movies\BE_COOL_WS\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_3.vob" length="" type=""/>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Here it is in Atom feed, taking into advantage the fact that each entry can have more than one link associated with it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed>
<title>Test Atom with Enclosures</title>
<entry>
<title>Be Cool</title>
<link rel="enclosure" href="VTS_03_2.VOB" length="162344448" type="video/mpeg" title="Bee Cool 1"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="VTS_03_3.VOB" type="video/mpeg" title="Bee Cool 2"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="VTS_03_4.VOB" title="Bee Cool 3"/>
</entry>

<entry>
<title>Some other Movie</title>
<link rel="enclosure" href="..\other\VTS_03_2.VOB"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="..\other\VTS_03_3.VOB"/>
<link rel="enclosure" href="..\other\VTS_03_4.VOB"/>
</entry>
</feed>

A similar playlist can be constructed in RSS with the Media RSS extensions by Yahoo using the media:group element from those extensions.

Please note that in all the XML files, the title, length, and type are optional. Moreover they are almost always ignored for local files since the information is taken from the file itself and so they are meaningful only for URLs.