MkPlayList : Create WMP Compatible Playlists Easily

A playlist contains a list of all the media files stored locally or online. When a media player such as Windows Media Player (WMP) opens a playlist, it starts playing the media files from the list in sequential order one by one. But how do we create this playlist in the first place?

As far as Windows Media Player is concerned, it uses the WPL list format which is the playlist of all the media files in the XML format. For creating this list we can either open all the media files in Windows Media Player and then save the list somewhere on our computer.

But the second method, using a freeware tool called MkPlayList, is both faster and easier. MkPlayList is a small portable application for Windows. It has only one purpose – create a WPL playlist containing your media files. We begin by launching MkPlayList and specifying the output folder in its options. This is the folder where your WPL playlists will be saved

MkPlayList

In the options window we can also choose the music files location, the default playlist name and the valid music files extensions (MP3 and WMA by default).

In the MkPlayList window, we pull the create list option from the menubar to create a new list. This shows two columns in the window populated with the media files. The left side list contains all discovered media files from the selected folder. You can double-click on any item to add it to the list on the right-side which is where the actual playlist contents are displayed. If you want to remove an item from the right-side, you can simply double-click on it.

MkPlayList

Whenever you are ready with your playlist, you can save it anywhere on your computer. This program saves the playlist only in the WPL file format. Other common formats such as M3U, PLS or M3U8 are not supported.

You can download MkPlayList from http://www.danhinsley.com/mkplaylist.html.