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[jesseasi]

I have about 17,000 songs in APE Lossless format. 

Here is what I want to do with my collection.

1. Use this collection for playing on my home theater system and at my computer.  All in a original APE Format - MC works perfectly!

2. Share my music with my family and friends.  APE files are too big so I need a copy of everything in MP3 format.

3. Easily update my Ipod with all my latest favorite music quickly and easily.

Here are my problems.
I am always adding new music to my colleciton. 
1. I have found it nearly impossible to try to keep two different databases going - one in all APE and one in all MP3 - after a few months music gets all messed up.
2. I have spend hours setting up different playlists.  But getting the play lists in both the APE and the MP3 libraries has been impossible.
3. My collection is always a work in progress - I will spend hours just making sure all the album covers are right - or setting up genre or ratings.  When I set it in my APE library non of the changes make it over to my MP3 library.
4. If I use my APE collection to sync to my Ipod - converting the music to MP3 with each sync - it can take hours if not days to do the conversion. 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this?  Is there another software I should consider?  Any suggestions?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

[DJ_Hazelwood]

Hi, this is what i do:

I've created a virtual device that points to a certain directory on my computer.
And i've made a smartlist to sync this virtual device.
In the sync options for this device i use the conversion option to convert the files into a smaller mp3-format. After ripping or tagging tasks i resync this device (sure, this can take a long time, but i do this over night).

Then i have a second library. After resyncing from the first library i change to the second one and import all files again. This gives me a copy of my original library, but it points to the new, converted files.

In this new library i have some additional tags and playlist to filter the files and to do the sync on the iPod. As no conversion is needed at this point the sync is very fast :-)

Hope this helps.

[jesseasi]

Thanks for the reply.   That is what my computer is in the process of doing right now.  I created a virtual device and I am currently syncing everything to it.   Based on my calcuations - I have about 5 more days for my computer to complete the task.

Thanks for the feedback.

[KingSparta]

would it not be handy if MC could point to two files one APE and one MP3 and then if there is a tag change both would be updated?

[DJ_Hazelwood]

would it not be handy if MC could point to two files one APE and one MP3 and then if there is a tag change both would be updated?

Yes, this would be great.

MC 'knows' all the relevant files because there is a virtual device and a playlist for sync tasks.
Instead of converting the changed files again if there are tag changes MC could only update the tags.
This would be much much much faster.

[jesseasi]

How do you sync the playlists?

My lossless collection has several playlists.  After I created the virtual device and sync'ed everything over to the virtual device some how the playlists are not making it.

How do I maintain the same playlists that work for both libraries?

[Sir Alan]

4. If I use my APE collection to sync to my Ipod - converting the music to MP3 with each sync - it can take hours if not days to do the conversion. 

I do much the same thing, but I also process the MP3 files with MP3GAIN before uploading to my iPod (for consistent playback level between albums) so I doubt that this could easily be automated.

[Jakester]

Excellent!  I have ~10K ape files and in a couple of months I plan to get a used 3G 30GB iPod to carry all my 3-star and higher music around in my car and boat.  This should work great for me.

One question - when you change to the second library do you need to "import all" again to catch all the changes?  No way to just import new or updated files?  Is this the "File -> Library -> Impoed this, as rt Media" option you're talking about?  I've never usI used MC to rip all my CDs resulting in my current library - I've never added files any other way.  So details here would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[DJ_Hazelwood]

How do you sync the playlists?

I only have smartlists for iPod-Sync, so i don't have to sync them with original playlists.
I have one smartlist with all the files that  should go to the iPod (with a special tag called 'iPod') in general. And i have other smartlists with special filters.

[DJ_Hazelwood]

One question - when you change to the second library do you need to "import all" again to catch all the changes? 

Yes. I use 'Tools - Import Media'. But this is very fast.

[marko]

interesting Q&A

nice one guys.

[jesseasi]

Still need help....

I have created a virtual device - (a drive on my network) and I have the option "Sync Mode - All (Files and Playlists)" selected.

MC seems to sync everything except for my personal playlists.  It even syncs my smartlists but not my personal playlists.

When I open up my MP3 library and import all - none of my playlists are making it.

Any suggestions?  I have upgrated to the latest version of MC11 that just came out yesterday.


Thank you!