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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player Apps
Did you know you can play your mp3 playlists in the Finder window? Well, you can! I was making m3u files [robg adds: See this hint for more on .m3u files], one per every mp3 CD I have, so I could play them in `mpg123' via Terminal or X11. Then I decided to make a m3u file for the two songs I have on hard drive.
 % find . -regex '.*.[Mm][Pp]3$' > VEGAN.m3u
The "new" thing I noticed was that if I selected the "VEGAN.m3u" in the Finder.app and clicked on the preview, I could play the songs! In the right hand side you can choose the number of the song in the playlist. If a song ends, the next song is started. So, Finder.app is a "poor man's MP3 player"!

For some reason this only worked with mp3s on the hard drive, i.e., ~/Music/; the MP3 CDs didn't work through Finder. If someone can solve this final mystery...

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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player | 12 comments | Create New Account
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You can also play them through column view
Authored by: Jadey on Feb 17, '03 10:40:43AM

If you have your finder set to column view, you can play mp3s, even off CD in column view. Also handy if you just want to quickly preview instead of launching iTunes.



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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player
Authored by: VEGx on Feb 17, '03 12:32:08PM
You probably DID NOT actually try this hint... or you would at least pretend to make somewhat more sense...

The point of this hint is that YOU CAN PLAY ALL MP3s STEAMED AS A RADIO STATION WITH ONE CLICK.

I'm not talking about silly one song preview in the Finder. I'm talking making a list of files and this list being played in full!

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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player
Authored by: Accura on Feb 17, '03 09:59:11PM

The guy wasn't taking a shot at you man, he was just making a comment

Accura

---
"The time has come," the walrus said. "To talk of many things..."



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regex tweak
Authored by: cynikal on Feb 17, '03 05:09:41PM

shouldn't that regex be '.*\.[Mm][Pp]3', with the difference being the period in the filename should be escaped, otherwise the period in the regex matches any character, not only a period. with the other regex it could match a file named: something.else.other.than.anmp3

it probably isn't a problem as there probably aren't any files actually named that but just for the same of correctness :)

oh and while we're on the low probability of misleading/tricky filenames, this would probably work just fine:

find . -name '*.??3'

matching all files w/ 3 letter extensions ending with the number 3.

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regex tweak
Authored by: Pi_ on Feb 17, '03 06:20:21PM

That's not a regex there, son. It's a shell Glob. That's perfectly fine the way it is.



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regex tweak
Authored by: Pi_ on Feb 17, '03 06:42:31PM

Woops. If it were the -name parameter it would be fine as is.. :-|

Pi



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regex tweak
Authored by: Ralf Canis on Feb 18, '03 07:31:01AM

How about:
find . -iname '*.mp3'



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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player
Authored by: simX on Feb 17, '03 10:08:55PM

Um, in my Finder.app clicking on the Playlist file while in Column view (the only possible way to get a "preview") simply shows a full 128x128 version of the .m3u icon, but I can't actually get it to play any songs. I wonder what I'm doing wrong... or if the author forgot to add that he installed some software or some such to enable this. (I'm using OS X 10.2.4, BTW.)

Anyway, I kind of don't see the point because iTunes is just as much a "poor man's MP3 player", because it's free, too. :shrug: Whatever.



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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player
Authored by: Spartacus on Feb 18, '03 05:40:32AM

If you have too many MP3's in your playlist (maybe > 255), the hint won't work.



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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player
Authored by: ssevenup on Feb 18, '03 03:39:51AM

This shell script (make_m3u.sh) will decend one level and create a playlist in each specified directory.

<code>
#!/bin/sh
# make_m3u.sh

set -o errexit

for s in "$@"; do
cd "${s}"
if [ -f playlist.m3u ]; then
echo "skipping "$s"; already done"
else
find . -name '*.[Mm][Pp]3' >playlist.m3u
fi
cd ../
done
</code>

So for my situation I "cd" to the "artist" directory and "make_m3u.sh *" will do the trick. This makes this tip a bit more useful. Eventually I would like to make it just work on the whole iTunes directory.

---
Mark Moorcroft
ELORET Corp. - NASA/Ames RC
Sys. Admin.



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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player
Authored by: gcianci on Nov 21, '04 02:26:31PM

Thanks for the nice shellscript. Might I suggest changing the string

playlist.m3u

to

"${s}"

This way the playlists have the same name as the album they describe...



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Finder.app, the multi-song MP3 player
Authored by: khanrahan on Mar 06, '07 09:54:20PM

find . -name '*.[Mm][Pp4][3a]' >"${s}"

that just gives an error...
-bash: : No such file or directory



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