Hi Rick.ca,
I am wondering if you have any further news regarding Playlists in Windows 7 and whether yourself or Nostra where able to reproduce the error. I have not notice any replies but notice you reference my problem in another post.
Since you ask, and I'm now on Windows 7, I tested how my system handles this. I found that PVD would play MKV files, but not AVI or MP4. (To be clear, PVD doesn't play anything—I mean it's play command causes the file to be launched in the associated player.) Where there were multiple files (handled by playlist), the result was the same. Comparing file types, I found my MKV files had a "Play in Media Center" context menu action added to them. All my media files are associated with
J River Media Center, but this action used MC's command launcher (i.e., the command was
MC14.exe "/Play" "%1"). I don't know how or why this is so. I guess I did this at some point when I had an problem with MKV files. I remain puzzled because I don't know how to add an action to one file type—without adding to all file types associated with the player. But I digress...
When I added this context menu action to AVI files and made it the default, it was applied to all files associated with
Media Center. As expected, all video types could then be launched from PVD, including multipart items handled by playlist. So, in my case, it's clear the issue is one of Windows file association and has nothing to do with PVD.
This won't necessarily help others in different situations. I haven't tested this using other media players. I'd be surprised if they use a separate command launcher like MC does, and I'm not sure what role that plays in this. Furthermore,
Directory Opus is my file manager. It replaces Windows Explorer and also handles the changing and management of file associations. I haven't a clue how to add or modify a file type action in Windows 7. The commands for doing so are not where they used to be in XP (a tab on the Folder Options dialog)—it looks like they've been removed. If that's the case, using
Creative Element Power Tools' File Type Doctor appears to be an effective tool for such things.
This may not be relevant, but I can across this while trying out
File Type Doctor...
If you see a red (User Choice Override) entry in the Actions list for any given file type, it means Windows may ignore your custom actions until you remove the override. User Choice Override is a mechanism in Windows Vista and Windows 7 that allows you to override your own file type associations by choosing a new program to open all files of a type. (This mechanism is not present in earlier versions of Windows.)
To create a User Choice Override, right-click a file in Windows Explorer and select Open With... (or select Properties and then click the Change button). Then, select an application from the list and click OK. (You can also create User Choice Overrides in the Default Programs page in the Windows Control Panel.) Problem is, once you put an override into effect, other associations for that file type will stop working. To fix the problem and restore your file type, just highlight the (User Choice Override) entry in File Type Doctor, and click the Remove button.
I wonder if this is something different about Windows 7 that's messing up our file associations.
