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[Podder]

I am finally making the jump from MMJB to MC 9 or 10 (not sure which one I should use).  I rip w/ EAC & I want to jump over to MC to manage my music, but, most importantly use the smart playlists & play count features.
Question:
-Will I lose all my PREFERENCES/RATINGS(excellent, v. good, etc.) I put in MMJB?  If so, that's a lot of re-typing.
-Will I also lose the genre (rock, hip-hop)?
-Should I do the switch?  Is this the way to go?  Smart playlists may outweigh the cons.
Any advice from other switchers or MC experts?
Thanks,
R

[xen-uno]

I would go with V10...but make sure to backup your MJ License & Library (copy them to a very safe, known directory). Assuming a perfect library conversion from MJ to MC (and the odds are very good that it would occur without a hitch), everything you've mentioned will be preserved. I would suggest uninstalling MJ before installing MC. After you've installed MC, run MC>File>Library>Restore Library and point it to your MJ library zip.

10^-27

edit: I hope you don't mean Music Match JukeBox

[Podder]

Ohhhhh yes I meant Musicmatch Jukebox (MMJB).  Now what?  Will I be forced to give a rating for every one of my songs again?
Thanks.

[xen-uno]

D'oh!!!

No library import then...but no need to delete MMJB either (at least til later).

1) MC's number based rating system is 0 thru 5 (though you can drag with mouse to fill the rating stars)
2) You won't lose your genre IF the genre tag were filled in the files
3) Hell yes!

I would print out a condensed list showing file info and rating in some order that could be reproduced in MC, which will make rating them much easier...or open both (MC + MM) and place them side by side (tiled). Same goes for playcount (maybe)...don't know if you can artificially bump up the number. Smartlists?...build an MC equivalent.

You've got a lot of work to do (but it's well worth it), so stop talkin' to me and get busy!

10^-27

[Bryan]

I haven't seen MMJB in awhile but one indirect way around saving ratings, if they don't come across to begin with, would be to save all your rating=1 out as a playlist, same for all your ratings. Create and save a playlist for each rating.  Then just import those playlists and reassign the ratings for each group globally.  Shouldn't take more than 15 minutes total.

Bryan

[cascius]

Nice idea Bryan. I'm gona use that with other softwares as well.

Anyway, MMJB is the biggest piece of nuts i've ever used. So i definitely recommend switching to MC 10. It owns any other music library softwares and is cheap as hell.   Also, updates pretty much come on a weekly basis... When's the last time mmjb was updated? lol

Welcome to MC and enjoy your ride,

-Casicus

[xen-uno]

Bryan...udderly brilliant!

Cascius...did you use Painter or PhotoShop or what on your sig image?

[cascius]

Photoshop of course

[jleerigby]

When I switched from MMJB the preference tag was visible in MC.  I hung on to my old way for a week or so and then realised that using MC's rating was so much nicer and easier so I converted them all.  It's not a long job at all.  Just create a view scheme with Preference as the item in the pane, select each one and apply the appropriate rating.  I use this system:

No stars = Not rated
1 star = rubbish (only keeping 'cos it's part of an album)
2 stars = OK
3 stars = Good
4 Stars = v Good
5 Stars = My all time favourites

[Podder]

Thanks...Great suggestions to transfer my ratings out of MMJB into MC10.  Bryan - were you (or anybody else) successful in saving each rating as a playlist and then transferring them all to MC10?  Just curious if it actually worked.  Jlee- Can you explain "view scheme" in the preference tab?  Is this just a way of viewing the prefs?  

I'm going to try and download MC10 this afternoon and then begin my quest to get all the ratings figured out.  Just want to make sure it goes as smoooooooth as possible.  

Also, I don't want to delete MMJB quite yet, until everything works.  Will MC10 still run fine??

Thanks for all your help.  Onward.....

[Bryan]

Like I said, I haven't had MMJB installed in years so I am behind in knowing it's features.  IF the product allows you to isolate your ratings into a list that you can save out or export as a playlist file (M3u, mpl, ascii delimited, etc) , then you can import that playlist into MC.   Then it's simply a matter of assigning the appropriate rating in MC to that whole playlist of songs.  Repeat for each rating that you have and you're done.    Note, I only suggest this method in case the MMJB ratings don't come across to MC to begin with and in such case you wouldn'd have to do all this.   According to JLee's solution above,  sounds they do get imported so you may not even have to go through my workaround at all.  

Try importing a small sample of files first and see what happens.

BTW, I got that idea from someone on here once before so I don't deserve the credit for coming up with it..  

Bryan

[jleerigby]

Podder - A view scheme is just a way of viewing your files and being able to filter them in whichever way you want.  For this purpose you are just going to set up a temporary view scheme that lets you easily filter your library based on Preference.

Import your files into MC
Right Click on Audio (under Media Library) and select Add View Scheme
In the View Scheme Window Click Add and look for Preference.
Ok, OK.

Use this to find all your files that need a rating applied.  E.g. select Very Good, then in the action window select File Properties, Tag Info and apply your rating.  MC will apply it to all tracks (matching Very Good in this case) by default if you haven't selected a specific track in the list.

[Podder]

JLEE,
You said when you switched from MMJB that the preference tab was visible in MC.  Can you tell me how you exported your music library then?  Did you just click FILE>LIBRARY>IMPORT MEDIA in MC and all the info transferred from MMJB??  I tried fiddling with a number of things based on the above suggestions and it didn't work.  Bryan's idea of saving the playlist by preference was a good theory, but, once it's in the playlist the preference is gone.  So far I've printed my music library & I will retype the preference into MC,  UNLESS, your suggestion works.  Please do explain........
Thanks.

[jleerigby]

All my tags from MMJB were stored inside the files so I just imported all the files from my hard drive into MC and everything was sweet.

Are you saying that you don't see a Preference tag when you look in the Action window under File Properties> Tag Info?

[Podder]

JLee,
Again can you be a little more specific in HOW you imported all your files over to MC?
Did you use the "import media" feature in MC or drag & drop your files, or did you save it somewhere then open it in MC.
I gotta make sure....I appreciate your assistance.

[JimH]

It wouldn't make any difference.  An import is an import no matter how it's done.

[jleerigby]

Podder - I can't add anything to what JimH said above except that if you want me to help you need to answer my questions too:

Are you saying that you don't see a Preference tag when you look in the Action window under File Properties> Tag Info?

[Podder]

Jlee,
No I don't see a preference tab.  I don't even see file properties.....maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.  I'm using v9.1.317.
I just imported an Aimee Mann music file to MC and "preference" & "genre" are both blank.  I take it that MC is searching "my music" files, which do not have ratings & genre, and MC is not taking any of the info from MMJB, which obviously does have prefs & genre.  I'm back to the beginning of this post.  
Any advice?
Thanks.

[jleerigby]

Ratings and genre do not come from MMJB they come from the tags inside the MP3 files.  Check your settings in MMJB to ensure you had it set to update ID3v2 tags inside the files.  If you didn't change the setting then try and force a change to the file tags in MMJB to get it to store the data inside the MP3.  Then import the file into MC and right click> Library tools> update library from tags.

Did you create the view scheme like I told you?  
In this post I told you how to find the tag info section and I also told you how to create a view scheme.  Did you do it?  Were you able to find preference in the list after selecting Add when creating the view scheme?

Podder - A view scheme is just a way of viewing your files and being able to filter them in whichever way you want.  For this purpose you are just going to set up a temporary view scheme that lets you easily filter your library based on Preference.

Import your files into MC
Right Click on Audio (under Media Library) and select Add View Scheme
In the View Scheme Window Click Add and look for Preference.
Ok, OK.

Use this to find all your files that need a rating applied.  E.g. select Very Good, then in the action window select File Properties, Tag Info and apply your rating.  MC will apply it to all tracks (matching Very Good in this case) by default if you haven't selected a specific track in the list.

[Podder]

Jlee-
It worked...you are the master of your music domain.  I could not find that specific scheme when I was in v.9 for some reason.  I uninstalled it and downloaded v10.  Whola!  Now I need to finish applying the ratings using the tag info.  Back to work.

Thanks so much.

[jleerigby]

Great.

Once you've tagged averything with ratings you'll not bother with the preference field.  You'll also discover that with MC you can create as many custom fields as you like unlike MMJB which restricted you to things like Mood, tempo etc.  E.g. I have a field for 'Live' and set it to a Y if it's a live track.  Then I can make a view scheme just for live music.

MC is way better than MMJB.

Have fun.