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[drgreenlove]

This has frustrated me and took awhile but here is the method I used.  I tried using xml2m3u, but the m3u were not able to be read by media center.  As a background, I had 5300 songs rated in itunes and not media center.
Steve- you may want to sticky this?


Here is my method of converting ratings from Itunes to Media Center

1) In itunes create a smart playlist for each rating (one star, two star, etc...)
2) On your desktop, create a folder for each rating (a folder named one starm two star, etc.)
3) In itunes open the playlist for one star
3)Highlight all songs (control A)
4) Drag the contents into the corresponding folder on the desktop (this will COPY all of the songs from the music directory to the new one)... Only transfer one smart playlist/rating at a time
5) In media center, import that folder.
6) In media center, create a smart playlist for tasks.. Audio- possible duplictaes
7) Edit the smart playlist to say [artist],[name],[duration]  (add duraiton to the string)
 Click on the smart playlist in MC to open it
You should see many duplicate entries
9) Click song name to sort by song name (if you had previous duplicates in your library, don't select them if you dont want to change the rating... by adding the duration string, you will decrease the chances of having duplicates that you dont want to find)
10) Highlight everything that is a duplicate that you want to change the rating
11) change the rating to whatever you want it to be
12) Now on the desktop delete the new folder you created (your music should still be in the original folder, this was a copy)
13) In media center, import another new folder and go again (and make sure the box is checked to remove broken links so the old folder is removed... if you dont the duplicate list wuill be tainted

This takes a long time.  Most of the slowdown occurs copying the music from itunes to a new folder (it took 45 minutes for one fodler which had 2500 songs)

Also, make sure you have space on your hard drive to copy music to a new folder.  

[SteveG]

drgreenlove,

Thanks for the post.

Another option for users with an iPod and version MC 11.0.112 or later.....

1) Sync a small playlist with iPod from MC.

2) Click 'Synchronize' in the Action WIndow and select 'Synchronize all files'.  Close the AW and MC. Click options and select 'Sync data to MC'. Do not sync.

3) Transfer all your iTunes rated songs to iPod from iTunes. No Playlists.

4) Open MC and select iPod in the AW. Click 'Synchronize'. Do not sync.

Ratings should update in MC and then you should reset any of the sync options to whatever you normally use.  I tested this with a sample of 200 files. Please test futher before trying with many GBs of files.

Steve

[weston]

I downloaded 11.1.81 yesterday and it picks up the ratings no problem.  (thumbs up)

I still haven't been able to figure out if I can use MC only, and never touch iTunes again unless I buy music.  There seems to be no way of updating ratings the other way from MC back to iTunes.  And similarly for any other file attribute unless you wipe your iTunes library and/or iTunes library database files and rebuild them.

?

I want to use MC as the master because it's so much easier to use and has features iTunes does not (I'm an old MJ user from 2001).

Thanks in advance for any help!
Wes

[Galley]

I found a much easier way using Excel, but it requires a clean library.

1. Create new smart playlists in iTunes, one for each rating.

2. Export the iTunes smart playlists in text only format  by right-clicking the playlist name and selecting "Export Song List... " Save as type: Text files.

3. Open the first list in Excel using the default settings.  Remove all other columns except the column labeled "Location" that contains the filename paths, and also remove the header row.

4. Save the file in text only format and then locate the file in Windows Explorer and change the .txt extension to .m3u.

5. Drag and drop the m3u file to an empty MC library. 

6. Once the files have been imported, open the Tag Info panel and rate the tracks accordingly.

7. Repeat for the other playlists.