USING THE PLAYLIST EDITOR TOOL

The Harbor Audio Manager includes a powerful tool for creating, editing, playing and managing all of your song playlists. The Playlist Editor tool give you one-click access to any or all of your playlist files, no matter where they are located on your system or network.

Unlike many playlist players and “jukeboxes”, the Harbor Playlist Editor gives you access to more than one playlist at once from a single window. Just click on the playlist you desire from the current list and it is right there ready for editing and playing on the same screen.

The Playlist Editor exists in its own window separate from Harbor’s Launcher window. Like the Launcher window, you can drag the Playlist Editor around anywhere on your screen just buy clicking and dragging anywhere on the open surface of the editor’s display, and minimize it separately.

NOTE:  While you can have the Launcher window and the Playlist Editor window in any combination of visible and minimized forms, the Playlist Editor cannot run by itself; i.e. the Launcher window must be running in the Windows task bar for the Playlist Editor to work.

Playlist playback engine
The Playlist Editor runs off of its own audio playback engine, separate from the Launcher’s playback engine. This not only allows you to have separate volume controls for each window’s playback functions, but it also provides the ability to play separate sounds from each window simultaneously; handy for real-time insertion of station IDs and sound effects into strategic points of your playlist playback.

Playlist compatibility
The Harbor Playlist Editor uses the popular “.m3u” playlist file format supported by many popular song list players such as Nullsoft’s Winamp and Real’s RealJukebox. Playlists created with Winamp will play in Harbor, and playlists created or edited in Harbor will play in these both of these players as well. Unlike many other "jukebox" applications, no importing or exporting of playlist files are required for this compatibility; Harbor directly loads and saves the compatible file format without any necessary conversions.

For the audio professional, the Playlist Editor has a major advantage over most of the consumer song list players in that you can create playlists for Harbor using audio files of any of the six major audio file formats supported by Harbor: MP3, WAV, MIDI, AIFF, AU and SND. Most other playlist generators and players limit you to either MP3 only or just one or two other formats.  
 
NOTE:  When generating playlists for use in other players, inclusion of audio file formats other than those supported may cause errors when the player tries to play back those files. Until the others catch up with this technology, it is recommended that you use audio files from these extra file formats only in playlists intended to be played back in Harbor itself.

Launching the Playlist Editor
The Harbor Playlist editor can be launched either from the Data Viewer or by clicking on the “Playlist Editor” button located at the bottom center of the Launcher window.

If there is not already an "instance" or copy of the Playlist Editor running somewhere on your Windows display, Harbor will launch one. If there is already an instance running -- on screen or minimized -- Harbor will simply bring that instance to the front of your display, maximizing it if it was minimized.

The Playlist Editor window
The Playlist Editor tool consists of several key sections: 

Playlist File Listing and File Controls
This section located in the upper-left corner of the Playlist Editor tool is where all of the playlists in your inventory are listed and where your main playlist file controls are located.

Playback Status Display
The upper-right corner of the Playlist Editor tool contains displays illustrating the current playback status of any current playlist. For details on how to control playback of your playlists, see the help section entitled "Playing Back Your Playlists".

The Playlist Detail Editor
This large display in the middle of the Playlist Editor tool is where you actually create, edit and print your custom playlists.

Player Transport and Volume Controls
These controls along the bottom-left and -center of the Playlist Editor are where you control the playlist playback engine (see above).

Playlist Editor Window Controls
These three buttons in the lower-right corner are the main controls for the Playlist Editor window itself.

Closing the Playlist Editor Tool
To close the Playlist Editor tool, click the “Exit” button located in the bottom right hand corner of the Playlist Editor tool.

Closing the Playlist Editor while your playlist is playing will automatically stop the playback.

If you attempt to close the Playlist Editor tool while you have unsaved edits to the playlist, Harbor will pop up a warning box informing you of this situation, and ask you if you wish to continue without saving.  Answer “Yes” to discard the edits and close the tool.  Answer “No” abort the exit and return to the Playlist Editor.