iTunes to MM5 transition odyssey

Get answers about the current version of MediaMonkey 5

Moderator: Gurus

ekant
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2023 11:46 am

iTunes to MM5 transition odyssey

Post by ekant »

I want to share my experience and way to get rid of iTunes and transfer my library into MM5.

First, it looked quite simple: MM5 offered "Import from iTunes".
To my surprise and consternation, MM5 imported all my >3000 playlist, well-organized (reflecting work of many years) in many nested playlist folders - simply into a flat list of playlists (many with same name) - unmanageable and unusable...
As MM5 provides nested playlists, it should be no problem to use the information in Mediathek.xml from iTunes for creating well-nested playlists?!


It took me a while (days) to find out and getting here the final answer: it is not provided. Am I the first user who needed this?

But I found a way which worked for me:
  1. there is free tool itunesexport from Eric Daugherty: https://github.com/ericdaugherty/itunes ... tag/v1.5.0
    It reads the iTunes library file (xml) and creates m3u playlists nested in folders regarding the structure in iTunes - runs perfectly - thanks to Eric!
  2. I removed (after import in 3. was running for too many hours) the largest of my auto playlists exported from iTunes in 1. (which are converted into static playlists) - I might redefine them in MM5 later as auto playlists
  3. I installed MM4 (portable) together with the addon from Zvezdan: Export/Import Playlists (extended version) http://solair.eunet.rs/~zvezdand/Export ... desNew.htm
    This great addon imported reliably all my playlists (and files), creating the right nested structure of playlists in MM4
  4. I put the MM4 database MM.db into the MM5 directory - it was converted into MM5 database with all my playlists
SUCCESS! Now I have all my playlists from iTunes (except the auto playlists, but this is clear) in MM5, well-ordered as nested playlists exactly as in iTunes before.

Thank you for this great application MM and for all who provided the helpful utilities. I wish, that MM5 grows and provides those "standard" workflows more and more as basic functionalities.

Finally: If you can wait, the developers added on my request the recognition of playlist folders during import of the iTunes library in v5.1 - great!
chrisdukes
Posts: 75
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2013 3:15 pm

Re: iTunes to MM5 transition odyssey

Post by chrisdukes »

Thanks for the tip! I'm going to try copying the MM4 database to get my old Magic Nodes playlists into MM5.
https://soundcloud.com/chris_dukes
------------------------------------------------
MediaMonkey Gold Lifetime v4.1.31.1919
Discogs Tagger 5.8
Magic Nodes 6.0.0.29
Windows 10 Pro
Intel Core i7-3770k 3.5GHz, 16GB RAM
Post Reply