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[Splungeworthy]

I just picked up MC 21 and it's fantastic! I have MC 17 on my old laptop with several hundred playlists. 21 is on my new desktop.  Any way to copy the playlists between the two? I really don't want to rebuild all of these! The folders being monitored have different drive letters between the two computers, but pretty much the exact same songs.

[blgentry]

I've never seen or touched MC17, so I'm not sure about all of it's capabilities.

The normal approach to this kind of question is to do a Library Backup on the original computer.  Then a Library Restore on the new computer.  This should transfer everything from Playlists to Views, all media files etc.

Since they are on different drive letters, you would either let auto import sort it all out, or explicitly change the drive letter on all media files using the Rename, Move, and Copy tool, running the tool in Update Database mode.  Using the Find and Replace section of the RM&C tool makes the most sense for doing a drive letter change.

Brian.

[glynor]

The normal approach to this kind of question is to do a Library Backup on the original computer.  Then a Library Restore on the new computer.  This should transfer everything from Playlists to Views, all media files etc.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Backup

This is what you would want to do. But if your drive letters are different, the links to the files will all be broken. Also, you'll lose anything in your MC21 Library you created.  There is no way to "merge" separate Libraries.

If you're trying to get your manually-created Playlists over, though, don't just let Auto-Import sort it out. I don't think that will work and all of your Playlists will be broken (or missing files, at least).

After restoring the MC17 Library backup into MC21, you'll want to use Rename, Move, and Copy's Find & Replace Template to change the drive letters and fix all those broken links.  There's a description of exactly this in the Rename, Move, and Copy Files article:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Rename,_Move,_and_Copy_Files

Alternatively, if you want to keep information from your current MC21 Library, you could export the Playlists from MC17 and import them. But that will only work if the drive letters and paths all match exactly.  You could, if you were determined, make the exports and then open the exports in a text editor and manually tweak each file path to match your new naming scheme (probably with Find & Replace if you really just changed drive letters).

You might even be able to do it with Relative paths, and not have to tweak anything in the playlist files. You could export the files to the root of the media drive, and then import them on the other machine (the relative paths should then work).

But, if you don't care about the setup you have in MC21 (or can replicate it once done), then I'd say the Library Backup and restore would be simpler and safer.

[glynor]

Something else to consider... If both of these machines point to the exact same files (on a network share or external drive) It would probably be best to:

1. Get your Library (and Playlists) set up the way you want on your Desktop computer.
2. Set MC to run a Library Server, and to auto-load it on Windows Startup.
3. Upgrade the Laptop to MC21 (you do not need to buy a second copy for that machine).
4. Make the drive letters on the laptop match the ones on the desktop by remounting them as needed.
5. Set the Laptop to connect to the desktop machine's Library Server, and use that Library.

The laptop can have its own Library for local files (when you're away from home, for example), but if the files are all on a NAS or something, then it'll be better to use one Library served by the desktop machine, so they don't continually get out of sync.

[~OHM~]

if you have a back up of your files, then you must have some sort of way of syncing the files. I use FreefileSync. I achieved what you want to do by rating the files of each playlist with 5 stars (one playlist at a time) running the sync then make the playlist in MC21 then remove the 5 star rating and well you get the idea. Now I did not have hundreds of playlists so it went quite fast and worked.

I also achevied this using Dr Who but this is not a option for you, or you could rename the file paths on your new pc to match your old pc and then use the backups from 17

on second thought Dr Who could work if you install MC21 on laptop....either way your in for a long haul unless you can change the file paths to match.....good luck

glaynor beat me to the punch

[Splungeworthy]

The Find and Replace tool sounds like the way to go so as not to break all of the broken links.  This doesn't actually change the root metadata, right? It's only for MC's purposes?

[glynor]

The Find and Replace tool sounds like the way to go so as not to break all of the broken links.

Yeah. If you just changed drive letters, or anything for which you can easily "find & replace all" on a particular bit of text, this would be your best bet. Restore the Library Backup, everything will be broken, but that's okay. Select all, and Rename, Move, and Copy Files in Update Database Only mode.

In that mode, you're just fixing the links inside MC's database. The files aren't touched at all. It is just writing a new [Filename] tag to the database entry for each of the files, in fact.

Now, as it says in the article, that tool is powerful and can cause all sorts of havoc (particularly in rename mode) if you aren't paying attention. So:
1. Check through the preview panel before you click OK.
2. Try it with just a handful of files first and make sure you got everything right before you do the whole lot.
3. And, make sure, for this task, you've actually chosen Update database only mode, and not one of the other modes in RMCF (technically, as long as the files you selected are broken links it won't do anything to the files on disk, but the Update database only mode makes sure).

But exactly what you need to do is exactly what that Update Database Only mode is for in the tool. If you mess it up, just restore the Library Backup from the old machine again and try once more.

[w.sachse]

I just picked up MC 21 and it's fantastic! I have MC 17 on my old laptop with several hundred playlists. 21 is on my new desktop.  Any way to copy the playlists between the two? I really don't want to rebuild all of these! The folders being monitored have different drive letters between the two computers, but pretty much the exact same songs.

I just bought MC21 after the trial period of MC19 is ending. And I have the same problem with 96 GBytes of songs. I saw the posts about exporting the Library in the old version of MC and importing it into MC21. But the Playlists are still not there. This is very frustrating. Anybody can help?

[glynor]

A Library Backup definitely includes all Playlists, and you can restore it from MC19 to MC21 to get everything back just how it was before.  So, please explain your situation more fully and someone might be able to help you.