Package christophedelory.playlist.m3u

The Winamp M3U / M4U playlist format, together with the Real Audio Metadata file format.

See:
Description

Class Summary

M3U	A M3U, M4U, or Real Audio Metadata playlist.
M3UProvider	A simple text-based list of the locations of the items, with each item on a new line.
Resource	A M3U or PLS playlist resource definition.

Package christophedelory.playlist.m3u Description

The Winamp M3U / M4U playlist format, together with the Real Audio Metadata file format.

M3U

Developed by Nullsoft.
From http://gonze.com/playlists/playlist-format-survey.html#M3U:
Every line in an M3U file is either a comment, a blank, or a resource to render. A comment line begins with the pound sign, #. Blanks are ignored. A resource is the address of a media file.
A resource address can be anything the M3U reader is capable of understanding. These include absolute filesystem paths, relative filesystem paths (with the base undefined by the file format), and URLs.
A resource can be anything the M3U reader is capable of rendering. To my knowledge these are always audio files, but there is no set reason for that to be true. However, it may not be wise to point to proprietary media formats like Real streaming audio in an M3U file, since many players will throw a user-visible error for media they cannot render.
The design philosophy of M3U is to let resource data types do the work. Players that don't understand an address or resource type usually skip the entry. The ability to reference URLs, in addition to filesystem paths, was added this way; some players (Winamp and XMMS, notably) simply added the ability to handle URLs to their M3U readers.
Support for M3U features varies wildly. iTunes, for example, will only render the first entry in an M3U file.
M3U is by far the most popular playlist format, probably due to its simplicity. It is an ad-hoc standard with no formal definition, no canonical source, and no owner.
Before ID3 tags were widely supported by MP3 players, a flavor of M3U called Extended M3U was used to indicate audio metadata. Extended M3U is now obsolete.
The first line, "#EXTM3U" is the format descriptor, in this case M3U (or Extended M3U as it can be called). It does not change, it's always this.
The second and third operate in a pair. The second begins "#EXTINF:" which serves as the record marker. The "#EXTINF" is unchanging. After the colon is a number: this number is the length of the track in whole seconds (not minutes:seconds or anything else). Then comes a comma and the name of the tune (not the FILE NAME). A good list generator will suck this data from the ID3 tag if there is one, and if not it will take the file name with the extension chopped off.
The second line of this pair (the third line) is the actual file name of the media in question.

RAM

From http://gonze.com/playlists/playlist-format-survey.html#RAM:
A RAM file is a flat file containing a list of media URLs, with one URL per line. It is almost identical to an M3U playlist, except that it may contain URLs of proprietary RealAudio media types, and URLs can be tweaked to affect the Real player startup mode.
Notice that this difference between M3U and RAM is similar to the way that Microsoft playlist formats like ASX, WMV and WAX have the same syntax but are constrained to point towards different kinds of remote resources.
Startup mode of the Real client can be specified by adding a query string after the resource. RAM embeds parameters for the local player in URLs of remote resources; this practice can be described as bizarre.
RAM is a loosely defined proprietary format whose purpose can be summed up as launching one of the various Real clients and having it figure out what to do.
Metadata in RAM files is appended to URIs.
If the URI in the RAM file points to a RealMedia file (i.e. not an MP3, etc.) you can overwrite the title, author, copyright and abstract information in the RealPlayer by adding parameters with these four names (all in lower case) at the end of the line, separated by a ? for the first parameter, and &'s for the rest.
It's not necessary to use all these parameters. Simply adding ?abstract=Info after the filename leaves title, author and copyright unchanged, and only adds "Abstract: Info" in the player's Clip information window.