Individual m3u playlists show incorrect pathing; how about batch apps?

[telstar]

Hello & thanks for looking,

Through a series of mishaps & attempting to move my music to a new portable drive F:\ (previous drive was also portable) somehow, I screwed things up big time mm.db & music files. I think it was caused by changing the directory of the music files when I ported over to the new. Over the course of the last 9-months I've hobbled along to fix my playlists. Time has erased the the method of how I, or maybe not, screwed up & with the various unsuccessful fixes I attempted to repair the problem. So I can't speak to the specifics. I've used MM for many years & attempted to follow MM practices but it looks like this time I unknowingly messed up. This is water over the dam & I've moved on.

You can see below the format of exampled playlists below (exported from from MM as backups); showing pathing; these don't work. It was suggested that I strip out the pathing of the m3u's & drop them into the folder holding all my music files; now at F:\MediaMonkey\mp3library.

A fix for Exhibit 1. or Exhibit 2. would be "Chris Isaak - Always Got Tonight.mp3 or Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is - Chicago .mp3", etc. This does work. No pathing is necessary because these playlists (m3u) are in the F:\MediaMonkey\mp3library.

Exhibit 1. Chris Isaak.m3u is broken.
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:230,Chris Isaak - Always Got Tonight
?:\mp3library\Always Got Tonight - Chris Isaak.mp3
#EXTINF:171,Chris Isaak - American Boy
?:\mp3library\American Boy - Chris Isaak.mp3

Exhibit 2. Classic Rock.m3u is broken.
..\mp3library\Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is - Chicago .mp3
..\mp3library\Arc Of A Diver - Steve Winwood (Vbr172).mp3
..\mp3library\Drive - Cars (216bpm).mp3

When I make the corrections, shown above, MM recognizes the corrected playlists in a playlist folder called "Imported Playlists" with all the repaired playlists in it. Note: all the original playlists still show in the original "Playlists" folder but, unfortunately, do not have data/songs in them.

Roadblocks & Solutions

I have over 150+ playlists to individually fix. This presents 2-BIG problems to overcome; both requiring a lot of time to fix. I'm looking for shortcuts to accomplish this.

1. Fixing 150+ playlists to path properly.
2. Overcoming the moving of a Individual repaired playlist from Imported Playlists".

Possible Solutions???

1. Is there any way (an app??) to batch the incorrectly pathed playlists (m3u) to a correct non-pathed playlists? (I'm not a programmer so I am unable to write an app to do this.).

2. Is there a way to move together all the playlists in the "Imported Playlists" folder in one fell swoop?? Why, MM only lets me move one playlist at a time.

Thanks for your insights. JimK

[Lowlander]

1) A multi-tab text editor (like Notepad++ and TextPad) can do a Find & Replace on multiple files at one.
2) No, unless you delve into the database file itself. MediaMonkey only can operate on 1 Playlist at a time.

[telstar]

Thanks Lowlander.

I'll try it out. Best regards..

[telstar]

Greetings Lowlander,

Thanks for for directing me to Notepad++. REGX took a little while to understand & get working. I know enough to be dangerous and fix the pathing of the music files in a playlist; Awesome ;^)

It was taking me a little time to move the "Imported Playlists" into the "Playlists" folder. Every time I would drag a playlist into "Playlists" the cursor position would pop down & off the screen. I would then have to scroll back up to "Imported Playlists" and repeat the process. Hmm, gotta be a better way?

I renamed "Imported playlists" to "___Imported playlists", so that this folder would now be alphabetized & move next to "Playlists." I could then easily drag the imported playlist into "Playlists." Yes, the cursor would pop off the screen, however, on the keyboard, I clicked the <Home> key which moved the cursor to the top near "Playlists." I got the process down & was able to move the rest of the playlists into the main "Playlist folder." Maybe this technique could help others in the same situation.

I fear you are going to say "No" but I'll ask anyway. Since many of my playlists were in sub-folders like:
Example Playlist with subs:

• Party
  sub: Adult Contemporary
  sub: Billboard's Top 100

When exporting/importing the playlists the sub-folder structure broke down and the above example playlist Folder now looks like

Party - Adult Contemporary - Billboard's Top 100.

Is there another method of recreating folder & subs structure other than doing it manually? OUCH! Just thought I'd ask.

A more important question is: In the past, I believe, all my playlists were incorporated into MM.DB (probably still the same), however, at that time none of my playlists (.m3u) playlists resided in text form in my music (mp3library). Now there are hundreds of .m3u files taking up my music library. Since I have moved my playlists from "Imported playlists" in MM, can the .m3u files be moved into a backup folder for they have served their purpose and are not the playlists used in MM?

Lastly, because I lost a lot of playlists when MM.DB got corrupted & my backup program failed to capture recent MM.DB's, do you (anyone) have an automated method to backup the playlists in .m3u form? My current knowledge is to "File --> Export to Playlist..." often & manually, but being human nature.... Since my now working backup application is running, MM.DB should regularly backup MM.DB which has the playlists, however, software backup can be temperamental. Any ideas?

As always thanks for all the help I get here on the Forum.

Cheers & Best regards,

JimK

[Lowlander]

1) No, no automated way to move or import Playlists in a nested structure.

2) Yes, once the Playlists file are imported they no longer serve a purpose in MediaMonkey (it's all database). So you can move/delete them as you wish, just make sure they're not moved to a folder you're scanning as they would be added again.

3) Yes, this Addon can auto-export: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34512&hilit=export+child+playlist There is also an Addon for backing up the database: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7746&hilit=backup

[telstar]

Thanks Lowlander for the quick response and recommendations. The Addons will be implemented right away ;^)

Cheers!