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[kevind]

Greetings

Scenario: 1 central house MC and 1 music management MC
Central House MC is in mechanical room and feed distributed audio and controlled via touchscreens. it auto imports and updates for changes from a central NAS
Music Management MC is on a laptop in home office and is used to manage the central library including playlists

Since MC does not have a default external playlist location for the Central House MC to monitor,  I export playlists from the Music Management MC to a designated playlist folder on the NAS which the Central House MC monitors for any changes via the auto-update feature. This part works fine.

The problem:
To delete an exported playlist from the Music Management MC  I created a destop folder shortcut to the exported playlist folder. Delete the playlist from that folder and expect the Central House MC to pick up the changes...IE that the playlist file no longer exists so therefore remove from the "imported playlist" folder. It does not seem to. Why is that?

 

[Alex B]

Why is that?

MC does not synchronize external playlists with internal playlists. Another question is, should MC have an option for that?

Personally, I copy complete libraries between the PCs so I don't have that problem.

[kevind]

let me re-phrase this. MC streams music to the distributed audio system from one location and management of the library (ripping,deletions,edits, playlist exports) is done from another. We'll call the Mech Rm MC and Main Floor MC.  The Mech Rm MC is physically down in a mechanical room making it unpractical to manage locally. All management is done from the Main Floor PC. Both MC's are set to upate for changes and auto import from a shared music NAS (both music and playlists). Changes made from the main floor PC are automaically picked up by MC in the mechanical room.

I make playlists on the mainfloor PC and export them to the NAS "playlist folder". The Mech Rm MC automatically sees that there is a new playlist file and imports the playlist. This works very well. However when an exported->imported playlist file is physically deleted from the NAS "playlist folder", The Mech Rm MC does not pick up this "change" and delete the (no longer existing playlist file) playlist from it's own imported playlist folder.  So now the Mech Rm MC has a playlist showing under "imported playlists" that does not actually exist.

This is really important to find a solution to. This works for music files why not for playlist files?

[Alex B]

I understand how you would like to it to work. Unfortunately MC cannot do that. It can only import playlist files. If an identically named older playlist already exists in the Imported Playlists group MC blindly replaces the existing playlist.

What you ask is a feature request - and not a bad one. In my opinion, Auto-Importer could remove a playlist from the Imported Playlists group if the disk file does not exist anymore.

If the user wants to keep the internal playlists intact it is already possible to move lists to a new tree location and thus broke the connection with the external files.

[kevind]

Wow....with all the features of MC I am amazed this one is not there. This layout applies to all of our client system configurations. I feel like an idiot having to tell them they have to physically go down to the mechanical room to delete playlists on the house system.

Not good at all. This is a real problem.  So what's the solution?

[Eccles]

Not good at all. This is a real problem.  So what's the solution?

Sounds like the ultimate solution is to raise an enhancement request and wait.  In the meantime perhaps you could install VNC on the inaccessible machine.

[kevind]

VNC won't work for client.

OK, is there anyway to remotely delete playlists with core commands that I could run to check if a playlist file exists...if not exists delete that playlist name?

[Alex B]

I think static playlists and especially external playlist files have always been of little importance to many MC users. Smartlists and view scheme configurations are for most users possibly more or at least as important. This may be a surprise to someone who has previously used programs that are very playlist file related like old Winamp versions etc.

Instead of copying playlist files from a library to another many users transfer complete libraries with all the goodies (including view schemes, all playlists, database info for untaggable file formats (like video), import dates, CD/DVD database, etc).

We have had several threads about sharing and transferring libraries between the PCs on a LAN. A very usable solution is to share the actual library folder if it is enough to use only one MC instance at a time for updating the library.

That said, and as I already said, I agree that Auto-importer could automatically check the presence of the source playlist files and remove the deleted files from the Imported Playlists group too.