How to create and manage a playlist

How to create and manage a playlist

A playlist can be created from scratch using the PlayListCreate or, in alternative, the PlayListCreateSpeed methods.

If a playlist have already been created on your PC you can use 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.

Supported playlist formats are the following:

M3U

PLS

WPL

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

Operations allowed on a created or loaded playlist are the following:

PlayListAddItem to add a new song to the playlist

PlayListAddItemEx to add a new song or the contents of another playlist or the contents of a directory to the playlist

PlayListRemoveItem to remove a song from the playlist

PlayListMoveItem to change the position of a song

PlayListGetCount to retrieve the number of songs actually 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.

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

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.

Samples of use of playlists in Visual C++ 6 and Visual Basic 6 can be found inside the following samples installed with the product's setup package:

- Playlists

- Fader

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