files with ë or é etc do not make it into playlist

[MiniMe]

Some strange things happen, unclear if it's me
Case is this:
Created a txt file of the file tree, then copy pasted /volume/bla/file.ext
and created a m3u playlist from say 100 files.
I noted then in the 100 files m3u playlist that only like 98 files made it into the player app, and the few missing files have filenames with ë or é or t’ or √ incl in the filename (even though in the Samba file server they have this name).

As example the two files missing were filenames that included e.g. Michael Bublé. But, when I browse to Artist Michael Bublé I can play the files properly.

Since I push the data thru Excel it might be a unicode issue, but suggestions are welcome on why files do not make it into the playlist.
To resolve I could replace é with e and then it would work also.

[MiniMe]

What I hoped to do via MinimServer is compare the playlist m3u created (e.g. 100 items) vs the playlist that's coming into player (e.g. 98 items) so I'd be able to find clues for file renames.

[simoncn]

There are two character encodings used for playlist files. A playlist file with a .m3u extension uses the ISO 8859-1 encoding (effectively the same as Windows-1252) and a playlist file with a .m3u8 extension uses the UTF-8 encoding. Most Windows systems use Windows-1252 by default and most Mac and Linux systems use UTF-8 by default.

As you are using a .m3u file extension, MinimServer expects accented characters to be encoded using Windows-1252. If your playlist file has these characters encoded using UTF-8, changing the file extension to .m3u8 should enable the missing items to be displayed.

[MiniMe]

Thanks for this directions. I'm on MacOs. Spent couple of hours trying to fix this, load it from text file to m3u/m3u8, convert txt to m3u8, load it into Excel Mac, copy paste manually but I'm still where I started. All players skip filenames with strange/unicode characters when I try to open them via a playlist. Even Mac Music app will skip the filenames with strange characters when it plays a m3u8 playlist. I may have invalid/unicode characters in my file names, but a quick Google search shows I'm not alone.
The only robust way would be manually replacing all these unicode char for normal a-z ascii. Or simply live with the fact I'm missing a few files of the whole when a playlist is used.

[simoncn]

If you attach a sample playlist with this problem to a post here, I will look at it to see what encoding it is using for accented characters.

This needs to be a file attachment, not text copied and pasted inline.

[MiniMe]

example attached

[MiniMe]

since the forum did not accept m3u8 I simply removed the 8 in the end of the ext. this needs to be put back in place I guess

[simoncn]

The encodings in this file don't match either Windows-1252 or UTF-8. How exactly did you create the original txt file on your Mac? Can you post this file?

To ensure the file is not changed when you post it to the forum, it is a good idea to compress it using zip or gzip before posting.

[MiniMe]

Mac terminal:
find * > example.m3u8 (this was the file posted)

Alt. copied SMB Synology server folder/file names into txt file.
Everything on screen looks ok, players do not like all filenames.
Note file names were coming from Apple Music app that's taking its info from internet, apparently w lot of strange characters.

[simoncn]

I tried this with some local files on the Mac and it produced a working .m3u8 playlist. However, this playlist can't be moved off the Mac without breaking it. This is because the Mac file system uses the NFD (decomposed) form of UTF-8, unlike all other platforms which use the NFC (composed) form of UTF-8.

When you produced the example.m3u8 file, were the filenames local Mac files or were they filenames on your Synology NAS viewed using SMB?

If they were filenames on your Synology NAS, were the files copied from macOS using SMB or created in some other way?