This tip follows a previous tip on how to share your files from your Mac via Samba to Xbox Media Center. As some of you may or may not know, you can create a .m3u playlist (of videos or music) using VideoLan Client (VLC) by loading up all your media, and then exporting it through File -> Save Playlist As... (type Shift-Command-P to view your current list). To save time, you can add the entire contents of a folder at once using File -> Open File... option, and browsing to a folder instead of just a single file.
The problem with this playlist file is that it is specific to your computer. Opening up the .m3u file in your favorite text editor (preferably BBEdit) will reveal every item in your playlist and its link. Changing the link to something relative will allow you to use this playlist on both VLC and the XBox Media Center (XBMC). Take my setup for example...
Using the previous tip, I made a separate "xbox" user on my Mac and made symbolic links in the "xbox" home folder to my Music, Pictures, and Movies folders from my "adam" user. I then turned on Windows File Sharing, and made the appropriate bookmarks in the XboxMediaCenter.xml file:
<bookmark>
<name>Adam Renie's Videos</videos>
<path>smb://xbox:[password]@[Mac's local IP]/xbox/Movies</path>
</bookmark>
etc...
The path to my music video collective is /Users/adam/Movies/Music Videos, and the path to my playlist is /Users/adam/Movies/Music Videos.m3u. An entry for an item in the .m3u file generated by VLC looks like this:
#EXTINF:0,Numb.mpg
/Users/adam/Movies/Music Videos/Linkin Park/Numb.mpg
The problem is that all the links are broken when using XBMC, since I'm not sharing from the root directory of my drive. So I changed all the links to look like the following entry using Find and Replace, and then saved the file:
#EXTINF:0,Numb.mpg
./Music Videos/Linkin Park/Numb.mpg
You can change the #EXTINF entry to a title more specific if you so desire. Following this method, and if all goes well, you can now open up your playlist in XMBC and be able to play all your videos in a row, or shuffle them to your hearts desire.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050324163047299