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[bspachman]

In prepping for my holiday 2007 travels I have realized that my library now far exceeds what I can tote with me on my laptop and/or iPod.

Let's ignore the reasons why I want to carry my entire library with me....

Currently, I have all of my media stored on a 3.5TB server. In dealing specifically with my music, I have both lossless files (for playback at home) and lossy files (for iPod/laptop usage). They are stored in the following way:

<basepath>/[Album Artist (auto)]/[Album]/

The lossy and the lossless versions of the tracks for each album are stored in the same folder.

I've gotten quite adept at MOVING files around using MC12, but what is the best way to COPY just the lossy files to another drive, while mantaining the same directory structure?

Any ideas?
brad

[bspachman]

Well, my first attempt was not terribly successful...

I used Windows Explorer (Vista) to search for the required filetypes, then copied the files into a folder on the destination drive.

I created a new library with MC12 and imported the newly-copied files, intending to use the "Rename from Properties" function to recreate the directory structure.

HOWEVER, since 90% of my lossy files are AAC-encoded, with a m4a extension, they don't have proper tags (since MC can't write tags to mp4 container formats).... The import into a new library left the library properties quite a mess--not suitable for using "Rename from Properties".

Any other ideas on how to copy a selection of files from within MC and preserve the directory structure?

(Navigating the 'Drives & Devices' part of the MC tree isn't helpful because it only expands as I click down--not showing any files until you click on the final enclosing folder)....

Thanks!
brad

[AoXoMoXoA]

Perhaps you could set the destination folder in MC as a 'Handheld Device', then create a playlist or smartlist of the files you wish to copy and Sync the files to the "Handheld" you created.

[Doof]

You could use MC's Drives and Devices to copy the entire folder structure from one drive to the next, and then use whatever tool you felt comfortable with to find all of the lossy versions and delete them from the copy.

Although I think AoXoMoXoA's method is a little more elegant in the long run.

[bspachman]

Perhaps you could set the destination folder in MC as a 'Handheld Device', then create a playlist or smartlist of the files you wish to copy and Sync the files to the "Handheld" you created.

Genius! This will be the next phase of the attack... Thanks for the great idea!

brad

[johnnyboy]

If that doesn't work then let me know and I'll make you a really quick little program to copy all files of a specific extension to a destination path.

[AndyCircuit]

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

freeware, just set the filter the way you want to include/exclude any filetype

[bspachman]

Following up...

Indeed, setting up a folder as a 'handheld' device and syncing appeared to work fine. I would have had to do a little more fine-tuning with regards to the directory structure to deal with multi-disc sets and my podcasts, but it looks like it would have been a perfectly acceptable solution.

However, I ended up using some built-in iTunes functionality. Because I'm going to be solely on my Macintosh for the next several weeks (away from the HTPC and the media server), I was able to use the "Consolidate Library..." function in iTunes to copy all of my music onto my external drive. If you try this, remember to change the default location of your iTunes music library to your destination folder, make sure that 'Copy files to Music Library' is selected, then use the 'Consolidate Library' command.

I did take the precaution of backing up my Mac's iTunes library BEFORE consolidating.... Everything went great! I can use my new, consolidated library while on the road, then switch back to my original library once I'm back in range of my media server.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Brad