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[AoXoMoXoA]

I am interested in causing MC11 to do something in an automated fashion, either using smartlists or a plugin or combination.  

I am forced to use more than one hard drive, and I would like to keep some semblence of order and logic as to how they are assigned to a drive.

I can do it manually but it is taxing and seems unnecessary. I would like to simply perform the following:

IF [Custom Field X]=2 check [filename Root]= "F:\Music2\[Album Artist]\[Album]"
IF not RENAME F:\Music2\[Album Artist]\[Album]\[Artist] - [Album] - [Track #] - [Name] - [Bitrate]

In such a way that it will keep for example all [Genre]=Classical to Drive E
and {genre]=Rock] to Drive F, or by [Comment]=.  Just some way to have them Always be in the correct place (even if it is a bit late and I am bleary-eyed), and following my stored FIle Naming & Folder Naming parameters.

Is this do-able?



But I do not see how to make a SmartList do an active task like to rename files.

[AoXoMoXoA]

OK, I guess not  

[paulr]

Here's a suggestion, but I am not 100% sure it will work (I think it will though)...

Let's say you have 2 drives:  E: for Classical and F: for Rock.

1.  Create a folder called E:\Music (or any other drive)
2.  Underneath E:\Music, create 2 shortcuts to your Classical and Rock base path folders (E:\My Music and F:\My Music, or whatever)
3.  Rename these shortcuts to Classical and Rock
4.  Under "Rename Files from Properties" set the base path to E:\Music and change the path rule to begin with [Genre]...  So if you wanted an album\artist  structure, use [Genre]\[Album]\[Artist]

At this point, When you rename your files from properties, it *should* put all Classical music on E: and all Rock on F:.

I am pretty sure this should work, but you might want to try it with a few files first.

[AoXoMoXoA]

Hmmm, interesting.  I will have to try that and see what happens.

[AoXoMoXoA]

Paul, I tried this but it was unsucessful.

MC ignores the shortcuts and instead creates a new folder in the same location as the shortcuts.  

[paulr]

Doh!  Well, that's too bad.  Thanks for the update though.

I was thinking about how this could be done with the subst command, but I just don't think it's possible.  =/

[paulr]

Okay, I found a solution, but it's a little more involved.  I assume you are running Windows XP.  If not, this may not work, or may need modification.

Here's what I did...

1.  Created a folder on a drive called "Rock"
2.  Created a folder on another drive called "Classical"
3.  Set up both of them as network shares with the option "Allow network users to change my files" turned ON.
4.  Set my Base Path in "Rename Files from Properties" to \\computername\
5.  Set the directory rule in "Rename Files from Properties" to [Genre]\[Artist]\[Album]
6.  Executing "Rename Files from Properties" will now move files according to their genre onto the appropriate drive

If you have more than 2 genres you need to control, you can make a new field in MC and populate it manually.  In other words, create a field called "Location" (or something similar if this one is used) - for Classical music, put Classical in this field; and for Rock, Country, etc put the word Rock into it (or however you want to split them up).  Then use [Location] instead of [Genre] on the directory rule.

The only problem with this method is that your music folders are shared on the local network and others can delete/modify files (assuming you are using Simple File Sharing).  More security can be obtained by turning off Simple File Sharing and setting up permissions, but that is too complicated for this post.

I tested this and it worked on my system (XP Pro SP2).

Hope this help!  

[Bill Kearney]

Also bear in mind that with XP you can mount a drive inside a subfolder of another.  That is, if you've got an E: drive with something like e:\media\mp3\rock then you could add another hard drive to the machine and mount it as e:\media\mp3\classical.  This is a feature unix folks have had for a while and now it works on windows.