# Preferences - m3u Files

The Settings Used When Creating Per Folder m3u Files options are used when creating per folder m3u files from the UI. The Create m3u Statement can use these settings depending on how it is configured. These settings are not used when creating m3u files where the destination is specified. In these cases you can always choose your desired operating mode when specifying a file to be written.

> Always write full paths
>   By default Yate attempts to write relative paths when creating m3u files. You can force the usage of full paths by enabling this setting.
> Type
>   You can choose to write the file encoded in a Standard, Extended or Yate format. More information on the formats can be found in m3u File Formats.
> Filename
>   If the field is not empty its value will be used as the filename. If the field is empty and there is a consistent album name it will be used as the filename, otherwise the name will be Yate.

The m3u File Encoding setting allows you to choose the character encoding which is allowed in m3u files. You can choose ASCII, Latin-1 or UTF-8. If UTF-8 is chosen m3u8 files will never be produced. When ASCII or Latin-1 is selected m3u8 files will be produced whenever the encoding requirement cannot be satisfied.

The base encoding for m3u files is not standardized. Many players only accept m3u files with ASCII characters while some support Latin-1 and others support UTF-8. Some players read m3u8 files while others do not. ASCII is by far the safest encoding to use. However if you want to preserve accented characters in your filenames either choose ASCII and know that Yate may produce m3u8 files or choose UTF-8 if your player can read UTF-8 based m3u files.