Winamp doing my head in! :mad:

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I listen to a lot of Greek rock, and when ripping CDs with EAC it's easier to just import the id3 tagsfrom CDDB, where they're usually in Greek characters, rather than type them out in Latin characters manually.

But whenever I enqueue a file in Winamp that has any non-Latin characters EITHER in its id3 tags OR in its filename (cause I had EAC automatically generate filenames with Track number - Artist - Track name), all hell breaks loose! They enqueue just fine, and they play just fine, but Winamp just displays the track names as gibberish rather than display a Greek font properly. I don't much care about that though, what I care about is that if I close and relaunch Winamp, or if I've put my PC on Sleep and resume it without having closed Winamp, it can't find those tracks anymore! They're still on Winamp's playlist, but they're highlighted as if the file is missing (it's not), and if I try to play them they're automatically skipped. This happens even if I save the playlist!

100% repeatability! I just tested! I don't care about the Greek font not being displayed properly, but having to re-add them every single time REALLY annoys me! Is there any solution apart from a. switching to a different player (I really like Winamp apart from this!!) or manually re-typing the files and ID3 tags for THOUSANDS OF MP3s? :mad::confused::mad:

Sorry about the incoherent anger, you know how it is when a minor annoyance builds up over time until you explode in Winampcidal rage.
 
Yep, and the last 2 versions I had installed (5.56 and 5.61) both produced runtime errors when closing the application, though I don't think that's relevant to this problem.
 
well, you could try:
A: Switch to foobar2000
B: Use Bulk Rename Utility to automatically rename your files.

choice is yours i guess. i am fairly certain that BRU should be able to accomplish this task.
 
i'm surprised it doesn't support unicode natively? are there not any font options in the preferences?

renaming/retagging files is not something you should have to do to get this working.
 
Nope, I tried playing around with the font preferences, for some reason even choosing a Greek font still has them displaying as gibberish. But that's a minor annoyance really, it's the fact that I have to re-enqueue those files that REALLY does my head in!!

I'm sure not everyone has this problem, as whoever submitted the damned things to CDDB did so in Greek, so presumably other media players don't have the same problem - but I really like Winamp, I've been using it for over a decade, I like how it lets me use my directory structure as a media library and enqueue files from my own file manager rather than browsing its own media library function, I like that it lets you enqueue a file to play next without moving it from its order in the playlist (unlike Windows Media Player and iirc Foobar, which I tried briefly 5 years ago), and I like how lightweight and quick to load it is, so I really don't want to switch!


well, you could try:
A: Switch to foobar2000
B: Use Bulk Rename Utility to automatically rename your files.

choice is yours i guess. i am fairly certain that BRU should be able to accomplish this task.
I'll try BRU, but does it automatically transliterate from Greek to Latin characters? If not I'd still have to type in the name of each individual track manually won't I? It'll only do the Artist and Album fields for me! :(

PS. Minor update: discovered that it "loses" the Greek files not only when the application is shut down or the system is suspended, but also if I load a different playlist and then reload the last one. Yes I'm quite certain I'm saving the playlist properly.
Also worth noting that while I've always had the problem of it not displaying Greek fonts properly, it only started losing files recently, last few months. Might be worth rolling back to an old version if I can't find a reasonable solution.
 
Nope, I tried playing around with the font preferences, for some reason even choosing a Greek font still has them displaying as gibberish. But that's a minor annoyance really, it's the fact that I have to re-enqueue those files that REALLY does my head in!!

I'm sure not everyone has this problem, as whoever submitted the damned things to CDDB did so in Greek, so presumably other media players don't have the same problem - but I really like Winamp, I've been using it for over a decade, I like how it lets me use my directory structure as a media library and enqueue files from my own file manager rather than browsing its own media library function, I like that it lets you enqueue a file to play next without moving it from its order in the playlist (unlike Windows Media Player and iirc Foobar, which I tried briefly 5 years ago), and I like how lightweight and quick to load it is, so I really don't want to switch!



I'll try BRU, but does it automatically transliterate from Greek to Latin characters? If not I'd still have to type in the name of each individual track manually won't I? It'll only do the Artist and Album fields for me! :(

PS. Minor update: discovered that it "loses" the Greek files not only when the application is shut down or the system is suspended, but also if I load a different playlist and then reload the last one. Yes I'm quite certain I'm saving the playlist properly.
Also worth noting that while I've always had the problem of it not displaying Greek fonts properly, it only started losing files recently, last few months. Might be worth rolling back to an old version if I can't find a reasonable solution.

Foobar2k is the slimmest, lightest and fastest music-playing App available i believe.

BRU doesn't automatically do it, but it should allow you to set character-alternatives, allowing you to specify the equivalent latin for greek letter.
 
can you give an example of an artist/album/track you are having trouble with?
Well, here's a sample file (full path and filename in Windows Explorer above, full path and filename as Winamp displays it below):

D:\My Music\Ypogeia Revmata\ΥΠΟΓΕΙΑ ΡΕΥΜΑΤΑ - Best Of (192k)\ΥΠΟΓΕΙΑ ΡΕΥΜΑΤΑ - 08-Μαρια.mp3
D:\My Music\Ypogeia Revmata\???G??? ??????? - Best Of (192k)\???G??? ??????? - 08-?a??a.mp3
I enqueued it last night, played it, put the computer on Sleep, and when I resumed (without having changed anything else in Winamp), it was highlighted blue in the playlist window, like it does for files that it can't find cause they've been moved or deleted since being enqueued.


Foobar2k is the slimmest, lightest and fastest music-playing App available i believe.

BRU doesn't automatically do it, but it should allow you to set character-alternatives, allowing you to specify the equivalent latin for greek letter.
BRU definitely seems worth trying, and if that doesn't work I probably will finally join the freeware revolution and switch to foobar. I assume there's plugins for it to support ogg files right? Cause they're not listed on its page and I can't find a component for them.
 
Foobar2000 plays Ogg files natively in my experience...

ly2fv.png
 
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i can't reproduce this error in winamp at all. :p it works fine for me, even after restarting. i even browsed the appdata folder and saw that it saves the default queue as a .m3u8 file which supports unicode. (m3u files don't and it displays gibberish if you open it)

winamp.png


but as mentioned above, foobar plays pretty much everything out of the box. it does not bundle any encoders though. if you want to rip CDs/convert files, you have to download those manually. rarewares.org has encoders for lame mp3 and vorbis.
 
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Not sure what's stranger, that it doesn't have the same problem for you or that there's another fan of that band on here! :p Weird and unexpected! Which version of Winamp and Windows are you using? Can you post the file's metadata to make sure it's the same as mine?

The weird thing is I'm fairly sure it's not a playlist issue, as it not only happens with files with non-ASCII metadata, but also with files with non-ASCII filenames! But just in case, I'll try converting all my playlists to m3u8 and see if it helps with the "missing file" issue. It doesn't help with the gibberish issue though, this is what it looks like to me even on an m3u8 playlist:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
LOL no. i've never heard of them. it's why i asked for an example so i could tag one of my own files to test with. now i did actually tag the file with foobar. i'll try wiping the tags and doing it with winamp. also, any chance you can email just one dodgy file to my username @ gmail.com

btw, loading m3u playlists and resaving as m3u8 won't work because the paths are already broken. you'd need to create them from fresh and then save as.
 
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Dude you're a genius! resaving all my playlists as m3u8 worked! :)

It makes absolutely no sense that it would, because I'm pretty sure the problem was with the non-ANSI characters in the filename rather than in the tags (I tested by re-tagging some files with Latin characters, and they still disappeared off the playlist), but, weird though it is, it worked! :P
 
Yeah but check out my screenshot as well: it was displaying the non-ANSI characters in thepath just fine, it's only the tags that were displayed as gibberish! NM though, as long as it worked I don't much care why! :p
 
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