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[DONUSA]

I have multiple PC running MC25.  They all share a library I keep in the cloud and sync to each PC's local drive.  This way any change I make to the library on one PC is also changed on the other PC.  This works well, except for Playlists.  If I create or modify a playlist, those changes are not picked up on the other PC.  This leads me to believe that the playlist is not part of the library, but stored somewhere in the local instance of the MC app.  1) Where is the playlist kept and what is the file name?  2) Is it possible to put it somewhere else and direct the local copy of MC to the different location? 

[RoderickGI]

You are using a very non-standard implementation. That will impact the level of support you get. You will need to explain a lot more about what and how you sync, where to, and what tools you use. Plus why you have set up what you have.

Playlists are stored in the Library. You don't need to know which file it is in, because you can't just take one file from a Library and move it to another Library.

In fact, a Playlist doesn't exist at all in a file. Rather than having a Playlist which lists all files in it, MC records against each file which Playlists it belongs to. Sort of the reverse of what you would expect. At least that is my understanding. No-one has corrected me on that so far! 

Anyway, if you set up a Playlist in your source Library and it doesn't appear in the target Libraries, then your Library sync process isn't working. Simple as that.

[BryanC]

I have multiple PC running MC25.  They all share a library I keep in the cloud and sync to each PC's local drive.  This way any change I make to the library on one PC is also changed on the other PC.  This works well, except for Playlists.  If I create or modify a playlist, those changes are not picked up on the other PC.  This leads me to believe that the playlist is not part of the library, but stored somewhere in the local instance of the MC app.  1) Where is the playlist kept and what is the file name?  2) Is it possible to put it somewhere else and direct the local copy of MC to the different location?

I've run into this same issue as well. I've tried to get something working with the MCC/MCWS "Export all playlists" (20004) command, but it is not fully automated because MC will prompt for the output format. It would be nice to be able to specify the output format in the core command so that the playlist export can happen automatically. Then I could at least sync the exported playlist location to my other devices, although I haven't determined yet if Auto-Import can track changes in imported playlist files.

[~OHM~]

I have had success by using a backup to get the playlists to line up....I have a backup computer that runs MC (it is literally one of several backups of my music files) obviously the drives all match for this to work. It can also be the "player" if need be.

[DONUSA]

You are using a very non-standard implementation. That will impact the level of support you get. You will need to explain a lot more about what and how you sync, where to, and what tools you use. Plus why you have set up what you have.

Playlists are stored in the Library. You don't need to know which file it is in, because you can't just take one file from a Library and move it to another Library.

In fact, a Playlist doesn't exist at all in a file. Rather than having a Playlist that lists all files in it, MC records against each file which Playlists it belongs to. Sort of the reverse of what you would expect. At least that is my understanding. No-one has corrected me on that so far! 

Anyway, if you set up a Playlist in your source Library and it doesn't appear in the target Libraries, then your Library sync process isn't working. Simple as that.

OK, this is helpful.  I assumed there was a file with a pointer to the songs in my playlist.  If the songs are "tagged" with a list name and MC plays songs with that tag, the songs library may indeed be syncing.  It is just that the playlist name in the left navigation tree is not syncing. 

Say I create a playlist on one machine and add some songs to it.  The songs get tagged with the list name and perhaps that is syncing.  But, when I go to the other PC there is no list by that name in the navigation tree.  So, what I should be asking is, where is the playlist name kept? 

(Actually, the way MC does this makes perfect sense.  Rather than create a file full of songs and play them, MC just filters the songs with the tag of the playlist name just like it would do by artist name, and it plays what is on the list.  So the playlist is actually just a logic filter that runs when I open the list by clicking on the list name in the navigation tree.  Have I got that right?  If so, I just need to get that little routine to be imported to the other PC as others have suggested). 

To answer the question about how my system is set up, I have an HTPC that only really only plays content in my home theater.  In my home office, I have my super-duper work-horse PC where I do my workflow.  Both PC's used to share a Synology NAS until that broke after just two years.  So I bought a new Synology NAS and that broke after two years also.  That's when I switched to a cloud server.  I use Dropbox, but essentially it is the same.  Dropbox keeps the local copies of the library in sync with the one on the cloud.  I used a sync tool to do this when I had a NAS.  MC would never be running on both PCs at the same time. If I make a lot of changes to the library, I let Dropbox sync the local library copy on the HTPC before I launch MC so all the updates are reflected.   I checked that this would work on this forum before switching to the cloud.  There are at least a few others who do this.  I've had this set up for some time now, but I only just decided to start using playlists and encountered this problem.  If there is a better way to keep multiple instances in sync, please tell me.  These days everyone expects that with many applications, like Apple Music.  The way I do it is relatively cumbersome by comparison.  If I create a playlist on my iPhone I immediately see it on my Mac and v-a-v. 

[RoderickGI]

I can't give definitive answers for why you are seeing what you are, with respect to Playlists not moving between the two installations. Part of the reason for that is that I don't understand exactly what MC does internally to manage Playlists, and I have never seen it properly explained. Maybe the authors of the tools like "Swag of Tools" and "MCUtils" know how it works and could explain.

First, let's get definitions on the table:
Media Files: Means the music, video, and image files that you want to manage. These are not your Library.
MC Library: Means the files that index all your Media Files. The default location for a MC Library is "C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center <version>\Library", and it consists of mostly *.jmd files.

There is a file called "playlistx.jmd" in the Library, and if that is being synced then I suspect you should be getting Playlists transfer. Matt confirmed that is where the Playlists are being stored, but whether that means just the name, or more, I don't know. Ref: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,121874.msg843171.html#msg843171

So, if you are syncing the *.jmd files from one PC to the other, then playlists should transfer. You can't just copy the "playlistx.jmd" between PCs and expect MC to keep working correctly. A Library is one internally consistent set of files and can't be mixed and matched. Well, not unless you really know what you are doing.

If your home office PC is the only place you do maintenance on the MC Library, then what you should do is backup the Library on that PC and Restore the Library on the HTPC. If you are currently syncing the Library (*.jmd etc.) files, using a Library Backup would be far more reliable. However, both methods have downsides, as the HTPC Library will be updating "Number of Plays", "Bookmarks" and other similar tags, which you will lose if you overwrite the HTPC Library with either a Library Restore or Library sync from the Cloud. But you will get your Playlists to move from the Office PC to the HTPC.


Now, what I have read that other people have done in your situation, and possibly what you are actually doing, is sync the actual Media Files (or perhaps more correctly, the directories in which the Media Files reside, which then includes Sidecar files, Cover Art, and other files in the directories) from one PC to the cloud and back to another PC. In addition, for tags of interest, they make sure that MC on each PC saves tags to the files themselves. In that way and tags created and saved on your office PC would be saved to the media files, which are synced to the cloud and back to the HTPC, and then the HTPC will note the change and update its Library with the new tags. I suspect that is what you are doing. I have seen some threads where people are doing that. It is not a foolproof solution, because not all tags can be saved to files, and if tags are only saved to a Sidecar file, I don't think MC picks up the changes.

When people sync their Media Files the way I have described, they have acknowledged that they need to export their Playlists from the source PC and import those Playlists into the target PC. That is the workaround for the Playlist issue.

Perhaps find references to what other people are doing and share them, to compare to what you are doing.

Note that if you look in the MC Options at Library fields, and display hidden fields, you will see that there are a number of Playlist related fields: [Playlist Name], [Playlist Description], [Playlist Guid], [Playlist Image], and [Playlist Type]. If you try to add any of those fields to a View, which you can only do using an expression because they are hidden, no content shows. However, while there is no [Playlists] field in MC, you can add a "Playlists" column to a View, and it will show the Playlists associated with a file. Neat, but confusing. You can't edit the contents of that column, showing that it is some type of special situation.

The better way to do what you want is to use MC's Client/Server configuration, with your office PC running as a MC Server, and your HTPC running as a MC Client. Then just back up to the Cloud both your Media Files and backups of your MC Library. But I assume that you didn't want to do that, because your office PC would have to be running to enable your HTPC to work.

Finally, MC wasn't built to be a Cloud-based application. Apple Music was. Even products that are supposed to synchronise to external databases, like Microsoft Outlook for example, have had a lot of trouble moving to being a Cloud-based solution. In fact in that case Microsoft pretty much rebuilt Outlook on a Cloud platform, rather than update the existing application. So, you can't really expect MC to do real-time synchronisation of Playlists given its development history. That just isn't what MC is. Of course, you could script regular Playlist exports, syncs, and imports, but that is out of scope for here.

[DONUSA]

RoderickGI, thanks for your follow up.  Yes, your assumptions are correct.  Just to clarify for anyone reading this later, my workaround for the lack of cloud capability in MC is to sync 2 folders. One is \Media and the other is \Library.  It's a bit clumsy, but the current cloud-based media management solutions offer much less capability than MC, so I don't plan to change to something like Apple Music.   

That said, if I was looking for a media management tool today, the lack of cloud capability in MC would be a serious negative.  I think JRiver needs to seriously consider this if they want to attract new customers.  Most people just starting out don't realize the power of MC.  It's only after using it for a while that you realize it.  What most people want is "my music everywhere". 

Thanks for clarifying the terminology.  For non-computer types, it is confusing.  Back in the old days, (I'm 35 years in IT) the library was the whole thing that wasn't application or systems or network.  It was analogous to a library building, that held both books and a card catalog.  It was all in one.  Then it was separated into the catalog and the data (i.e. the books). Together they were a library.  And then people started referring to the catalog as a library even though it actually didn't have any "books" in it.    There are many examples of computer science using analogs to create terms but over the years changing the computer science meaning of the term.  We joked back then that we did it to confuse the Russians.  Young people probably don't even get the joke. 

[alclem@aol.com]

I recently copied my music files to a new PC, loaded MC26 there, and let auto import run.  To my surprise, I ended up with two copies of each old playlist which had various errors in the lists.  File names were correct but track name and author has occasional errors.  How could this happen since I did not move my library to the new computer - only the music files?  I thought that the music files did not get updated?

Could it be that playlist info is also stored in the mp3 file tags?  If yes, does that mean that any playlist change will cause updates to the music files?

[JimH]

The wiki has a topic called Moving Files.

[alclem@aol.com]

Thanks JIMH, I've see the moving discussion.  But I'm still trying to understand how I ended up with any playlists when I copies only my music files.