I have about 20,000 songs in my main library. I use this as the source library, holding any music file I have. It includes several encoding formats but heavily weighted toward lossless formats like APE.
I have an iPOD that I use as my portable database; integrated into my car (very cool integration by the way; aftermarket integration of iPOD and Satellite Radio onto my Nav Screen showing all playlists and all other iPOD functions on the Nav screen. Don't have to see or touch the Sat Radio or iPOD). Of course, the portable database in the iPOD requires different songs, database size, different playlists and, of course, different encoding format.
So I created a second library: "Portable Library". I did so by cloning the source library, culling it to the right files, making the right playlists for the car, and then re-encoding the whole library to MP3; then porting all of this onto my iPOD. All worked well.
My questions are from that point on; additons, maintenance, changes.
1. What is the best way to add new music. Sometimes I just rip a CD twice, once for each library; obviously not ideal. Also I find I can copy from the source libary to a folder and scan that to move the music in to portable library but this creates a lot of complications.
Is there a "Move to xxx Library funtion? Can anyone suggest a better process?
2. Can playlists be copied or imported between Libraries?
3. In the early days I encoded from my source library to the portable library into MP3-128. Now I want to make those MP3-320 or VBR. What is the best process for doing this I really don't want to start over culling down a new portable library from my 20K source library.
Any advice is appreciated.
Media Center is the best! I have recommended to may friends. Keep up the good work.
Ken