using <path:-n> to rename files

[badger]

Before I start - excellent software! You were recommended from the iAudiophile forum.

I'm using MM to synch my harddrive with my X5 and I can nearly get it to do exactly what I want. But not quite! My music is organised as follows:
e.g.
/music/artist/album/artist - # - title path A: for complete albums
/music/artist/artist - # - title path B: for partial albums

I want to copy them to my X5 to the same paths, but be renamed to
# - title

I thought the filter
\<Path>\<Track#> - <Title>
would do this, but it gives me

/music/artist/album/artist - # - title/# - title
i.e. fine except for an extra "artist - # - title" folder for every song!
(please ignore my inconsistent /s and \s!) So instead I try
\<Path:-1>\<Track#> - <Title>
but this gives me

/album/artist - # - title/# - title for path A
/artist/artist - # - title/# - title for path B

which isn't what it should do according to the help file - :-1 should ignore the 1 directory superior to the file - right? It seems to KEEP only 1 superior directory and then make a new "artist - # - title" directory too.

Can I use the <path> filter to solve my problem? I basically want to prevent MM creating directories called
artist - # - title

I want to avoid renaming the files on my PC because then they'll disappear out of my wifes iTunes and I'll have to put them all back in which is non-trivial because she only has a subset of them all in there which overlaps with the ones I want to rename.

Thanks for any help!

[jiri]

This isn't properly written in the help, it should be:

<path:n> - Path without the first 'n' folders.
<path:-n> - Path with only the last 'n' folders.

For that reason I don't think you can easily achieve what you want. I hope we will add some feature that will help you in future versions.

Jiri

[Guest]

Thanks for the help! Looks like I'll probably have to rename my files on the PC. I just want to clarify one thing though:

Do you know why when I give MM a file like
/music/artist/album/artist - # - title
and tell it I want to synch to
<path>/<# track> - <title>

it creates the file
/music/artist/album/artist - # - title/# - title

because I thought that <path> should be just
/music/artist/album

does <path> include the filename too? I thought that the <file> filter did that.

Thanks again for your time!

[jiri]

Yes <path> includes also filename. I think that adding something like <folder> would make sense for future versions.

Jiri

[badger]

Thanks - keep up the good work!

[badger]

I've got another question on a very similar issue: I renamed all my music files (and fixed my wife's itunes library ) and am now using MM to synch with my iAudio X5.

The problem is that the music on my pc is organised like
/music/artist/album/# - title
and I want to preserve the same structure on my X5 which has a folder in the root directory called /MUSIC/

So if I use the filter in the synch settings
<path>
then on my X5 I get
/MUSIC/music/artist/album/# - title

But if I use the filter
<path:n>
then on the X5 I get
/MUSIC/album/# - title
i.e. the artist folder isn't present.

Is this a problem with MM? Thanks

P.S. i LOVE the tag from Amazon feature!!

[jiri]

<path:1> doesn't work well?

Jiri

[badger]

But if I use the filter
<path:n>
then on the X5 I get
/MUSIC/album/# - title
i.e. the artist folder isn't present.

Sorry, that should have been:

But if I use the filter
/MUSIC/<path:1>
then on the X5 I get
/MUSIC/album/# - title
i.e. the artist folder isn't present.

So <path:1> removes /music/artist/ from the path, not just /music/

I wonder if the fact that I have a /MUSIC/ folder on the X5 already is causing the trouble? I might try deleting the entire folder and synching again - amybe it is a case problem and replacing /MUSIC/ on the X5 with /music/ will fix it.

[jiri]

Strange, no matter what I do <path:1> seems to work as expected, i.e. only the very first path component is removed.

Jiri

[badger]

Thanks for looking into this for me - I'll try more experiments with my X5 and let you know if I can work out what's going on.