Trying to find .m3u files - No Joy

If the volume has not been indexed by spotlight, then you won't be able to find anything. There are other utilities out there that will just do a flat file search for file names. You can also index the volume by opening the Terminal and typing:

mdimport

Don't hit return, yet, and leave a space after the command and drag your volume to the terminal window. Then, hit return. It will take maybe a minute to index the volume, at which point you will be able to search for those files.
The m3u files are apparently some sort of playlist format created by winamp or some other music player/organization software.

The ._ files are the metadata associated with the file, like Artist, Album, etc. Since the DVD file format is unable to store the metadata with the music file itself, the metadata is split off.

You can use a program like [BlueHarvest|http://zeroonetwenty.com/blueharvest> or the dot_clean utility in the Terminal to strip out the metadata files. I haven't used either on a CD or DVD, but I imagine after moving the files to the burn folder or disk, you would then run either on that volume before you burn. I have to do the same on a USB memory stick that I use in my car.

For dot_clean, open Terminal and type:

dot_clean -m

Make sure you leave a space after the m and don't hit return. Now, drag your disk to the terminal window and the path to the volume will be placed after the command. Hit return and it will clean up your disk.

It's not a separate command, i just thought you were working off of a USB drive or something that wasn't indexed. If it is already indexed, I'm not sure why those files weren't indexed.

I put some dummy files on my USB stick and tried to find them. No joy. However, I indexed the drive and they popped right up as the search window was still open.

Could it be that those files were added while connected to a different system?

Well, I'm not sure why it would exclude those files in an index. It apparently did. Do they appear if you manually import the folder they are located in?

If there is a dot in front of the file name, then the file is invisible. In order to show it in the search results you have to explicitly tell the Find function you want to see invisible files. You do this with a Command-F search, then use two criteria: the first Name Contains m3u (or whatever), add a second by clicking the + button, then from the drop-down menu select "Other" and from the Other list select "File visiblity" which idiotically enough has the default of visible. Click to get the drop-down list and change that to "Visible or Invisible" and the files should now appear in the result list.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Busta999 wrote:
It appears the iMac has put a . in front of every m3u, I am going through each folder for each album removing the m3u files one at a time.

pretty painful.

Ahh, there's the rub. Francine has already provided the answer.