An organizational nightmare

[Andres]

Hello there everyone! I recently got a hold of my dad's music collection and was horrified... he was using iTunes for his music collection but after much effort I've convinced him to switch to MediaMonkey.

To show you where I'm stuck I'm going to describe my dad's audio collection and the steps I've taken.


I thought all my father's music was allocated under one directory. To be fair this directory is a mishmash of unorganized and mistagged pieces of work but he did have a dedicated music folder. I imported all his mucic and quickly realized something. I needed to import all his playlists from iTunes. I grabbed iPlaylist importer and let that run for a few hours. Upon my return however, I was horrified to discover that his library had doubled in size. It turns out his music was not located in a central spot like I previously thought.

After analyzing where the files came from I have determined my father's music lies in 3 places.

- F:\My Music\
- C:\Users\Name\Music\iTunes Media\Music
- F:\iTunes Media\Music

To the best of my knowledge his My Music folder in the F drive contains his original music and the other two locations are iTunes duplicates that his playlists are based off of.

This means that the two other locations just contain duplicates of things already in his library. I'd delete them but upon deleting them they would also be deleted from his (many) playlists. I need to find a solution to get the playlists to point towards the files in his My Music folder instead of the iTunes ones. Would anyone have any ideas?

[Lowlander]

Once you export Playlists you can use any Text editor (like Notepad) to modify the paths on Playlists (use the Replace function to do this in one fell swoop). This of course works best when only the first part of the Path needs modification.

[Andres]

Due to the unorganized nature of my father's files that won't work for me

[Andres]

I'm still in need of some form of a solution...

Is there any way I could implement the "Recreate M3U 2.4" script? I was thinking if I could get the flat M3U files I could use that script to populate them...


Would this be the correct process?

1. Export playlists from MediaMonkey as M3U
2. Delete all files associated with the iTunes directory (the playlist files) from my library
3. Re-import the M3U files (how would I do this???)
4. Run the script to add the files based what's already in the library

[Andres]

My second idea involves the Advanced Duplicate Find & Fix script.

In the description of this script it mentions that "the script allows you to merge their PlayStat so your PlayHistory, PlayCount, DateAdded and Playlist Entries are intact."

Would anyone be able to explain if I'm on the right track with this? How could I get the script to do the following:

Delete all files (from the library only) from a certain directory and to add the "original" files into the playlists where the duplicates lie?

[Guest]

Just bite the bullet and rescan the HD . let mm find the music. Then use the manual auto organizer under the tools menu to move all music to the one folder you set up for it. ONLY after the tags are fixed by trixmoto's script or you retyping them. Then use auto Playlists to make them again.

[Andres]

How would I go about using auto-playlists to rebuild my father's playlists?

[rovingcowboy]

Auto Playlist are just basic in the free mmw but you can get fairly good rules made in it. The gold version has full advanced auto play lists with tons of combinations of rules to make them. You can use the information contained in the songs tags or use the custom fields of the songs tags to place a code made up of any characters you want to use. Then make sure to use the same code in the same field in all the songs that you want in the list. Make the rule look for the code if not in the field then it won't put the song in the list. I have over 400 Playlists if they were all the normal static kind the size of my mm dB would be 3 gb's the same lists in auto lists take about 250 to 300 mbs. But like the guest said make sure that the songs property tags to all the songs are correct before use of the auto organizer. The mess of not having them correct is one that you do not want.

[Andres]

Auto Playlist are just basic in the free mmw but you can get fairly good rules made in it. The gold version has full advanced auto play lists with tons of combinations of rules to make them. You can use the information contained in the songs tags or use the custom fields of the songs tags to place a code made up of any characters you want to use. Then make sure to use the same code in the same field in all the songs that you want in the list. Make the rule look for the code if not in the field then it won't put the song in the list. I have over 400 Playlists if they were all the normal static kind the size of my mm dB would be 3 gb's the same lists in auto lists take about 250 to 300 mbs. But like the guest said make sure that the songs property tags to all the songs are correct before use of the auto organizer. The mess of not having them correct is one that you do not want.

I do happen to have MM Gold. However it still isn't clear to me, how would autoplaylists help me point our current playlists to the right files?

[rovingcowboy]

You remake the list with the use of orders/rules that control the loading of songs into the list at the time that you click on in it in the directory.

these rules are controlled by the tags of the individual songs which are able to have you add in any type of code that you want. this will only be useful if all the tags are correct in all of the songs in your library.

[Andres]

Okay so what I'm trying to do is to use the autoplaylist to list all of the songs?

I'm starting to understand the idea but I'd appreciate it if you could be more specific on what I have to do

[rovingcowboy]

Find out what his Playlist consists of as all rock or all Glenn miller. After you got what his lists are you then figure out how each song is conected to each other. If nothing is common to each song that's where you will need to add some code into one of the custom fields in each of the songs tags that is a song that is to be in the list, add the code to the same custom field of all the songs so it is used to make them all common to each other. Then the rule you make to look at that custom field for the code. No code or a different code then the rule does not add the song.

the above is easy if you are making a list of a single artist or a single genre that way you can just use that to be the common conection of the songs for the list.

I use multiple rules and codes to be really exact in my lists like a song that goes into 3 or more lists I use 3 custom codes in one custom field and I separate them with the ; symbol like a song that is comedy but also country and fit for kids I add the codes of the names of the playlists like ( comedy ; country ; kids ) the ( ) are used in this post to show the code I am talking about. Then the rule for each play list only looks for the name of the list. If the code is rock then the country list wont load it.

[Andres]

Great idea!

I'll just make a playlist field and when I'm done I'll clear it!

Thanks so much!

[imagehopper]

Don't clear the code from the field. The rule always looks for the code.
the auto play lists are not made until you click on the list to view the songs.
auto lists are just a set of rules looking for the item in the song properties that you told it to look for.
Cowboy forgot to tell you that. And about the magic nodes script that you can also use for more advanced rules.

[rovingcowboy]

thanks imagehopper i did forget to say that stuff.