Topic: MC iTunes Synchronizer (using MC with an iPhone or iPod Touch) [v6.0.2] (Read 494857 times)

prod · « **Reply #950 on:** March 01, 2016, 01:53:55 pm »

Hi yeah it only works with a local library

media-mogul · « **Reply #951 on:** March 25, 2016, 07:04:14 pm »

Hi,
I'm trying to use 6.0.2 to sync MC20 to itunes. While it does sync some track it only syncs those that are mp3 (not many). The rest are ape or flac format and aren't synchronized. How do I sync to itunes without destroying the quality of my source library encodings?

Regards,
David

alexandrebrasil · « **Reply #952 on:** March 26, 2016, 11:00:40 am »

Quote from: prod on February 23, 2016, 01:40:22 pm

MCiS is now free to use, and is open source. You can find the source code on GitHub here: https://github.com/prod1/mcis

That's cool. I will try it again. The software is very nice and the only one that works that I could find. Thank you.

jack wallstreet · « **Reply #953 on:** May 03, 2016, 08:34:46 am »

Hi Pete,

Long-time user of MCIS and consider it an essential component of MC. I started having an annoying issue using MCIS and don't know what I have done or what has happened to cause it. Thought you might have an idea.

I use MCIS to "rebuild" my iTunes playlists after I change my music (usually same filenames, but I've edited the file in some way). Recently, a number of playlists get duplicated when I rebuild. For example, were I had, Playlist A, Playlist B, Playlist C, I'll now have in ITunes, Playlist A, Playlist B, Playlist B 1, Playlist C. I am guessing that the duplicated playlist occurs where I have a song file change, but I am not certain. Sometime ago, I had to reinstall MCIS so I may have changed setting unintentionally, but I am not aware that these two situations are linked. Any suggestions as to cause?

BartMan01 · « **Reply #954 on:** July 25, 2016, 11:03:36 am »

Quote from: jack wallstreet on May 03, 2016, 08:34:46 am

Hi Pete,

Long-time user of MCIS and consider it an essential component of MC. I started having an annoying issue using MCIS and don't know what I have done or what has happened to cause it. Thought you might have an idea.

I use MCIS to "rebuild" my iTunes playlists after I change my music (usually same filenames, but I've edited the file in some way). Recently, a number of playlists get duplicated when I rebuild. For example, were I had, Playlist A, Playlist B, Playlist C, I'll now have in ITunes, Playlist A, Playlist B, Playlist B 1, Playlist C. I am guessing that the duplicated playlist occurs where I have a song file change, but I am not certain. Sometime ago, I had to reinstall MCIS so I may have changed setting unintentionally, but I am not aware that these two situations are linked. Any suggestions as to cause?

iTunes Match user? I have seen that behavior caused by iTunes seeing both the 'new' playlist and the old one in the cloud. My fix is to always delete MCIS managed playlists and sync to iTunes Match before running MCIS.

arixey · « **Reply #955 on:** August 29, 2016, 04:57:15 pm »

I've been getting the "An error occurred filling the playlist tree. Try loading MC manually first." I searched the forums and it seems like in the past this has been caused by duplicate playlists, but I've triple-checked and can't find any in my Media Center.

It's been a few months since I last ran MC iTunes Synchronizer, and since then I've upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 10 Anniversary Update, maybe that caused it? Probably an iTunes upgrade in there, too.

I'm on JRMedia Center 21.0.83, iTunes 12.4.3.1, and MC iTunes Synchornizer 6.0.2. Can anybody assist?

prod · « **Reply #956 on:** September 07, 2016, 05:37:57 am »

Quote from: arixey on August 29, 2016, 04:57:15 pm

I've been getting the "An error occurred filling the playlist tree. Try loading MC manually first." I searched the forums and it seems like in the past this has been caused by duplicate playlists, but I've triple-checked and can't find any in my Media Center.

It's been a few months since I last ran MC iTunes Synchronizer, and since then I've upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 10 Anniversary Update, maybe that caused it? Probably an iTunes upgrade in there, too.

I'm on JRMedia Center 21.0.83, iTunes 12.4.3.1, and MC iTunes Synchornizer 6.0.2. Can anybody assist?

Hi

That usually means MCiS can't find MC because MC has been de-registered internally through an uninstall and for whatever reason not re-registered for the subsequent re-install.

Simply re-running your MC setup exe usually fixes it.

BartMan01 · « **Reply #957 on:** September 22, 2016, 08:31:48 am »

Doesn't look like the Guide to Lossless syncing is included in the GitHub files. Was that intentional?

prod · « **Reply #958 on:** September 25, 2016, 04:35:40 am »

Hi thanks for pointing that out, just an oversight. I've added the guide to the GitHub repo.

lmurawski · « **Reply #959 on:** April 12, 2017, 10:30:22 pm »

Anyone else experiencing 'The playlist has been deleted' errors with iTunes 12.6?

<Result EndDateTime="2017-04-12T23:31:08">The playlist has been deleted.</Result>

spanky1406 · « **Reply #960 on:** April 18, 2017, 10:34:10 am »

Yes, I have the same issue. Seems it won't work anymore with iTunes 12.6.

lmurawski · « **Reply #961 on:** April 18, 2017, 11:29:27 am »

If you synchronize repeatedly, it will eventually complete successfully.

I have been considering rolling back to the previous version of iTunes.

spanky1406 · « **Reply #962 on:** April 27, 2017, 12:20:43 pm »

If I uncheck the option "Fix broken links in iTunes" in the settings the syncs are working again.

lmurawski · « **Reply #963 on:** May 01, 2017, 11:25:05 pm »

That didn't work for me. The issue seems to be every playlist that changes will fail then succeed the next sync. So if 5 playlists changed, you'd have to sync 5 times before they all sync. Probably has something to do with deleting tracks from a playlist. I have tried debugging MCiS, but I've had no luck in identifying the issue.

Rolled back to iTunes 12.5.5.5, no issues syncing now.

TXgary · « **Reply #964 on:** May 09, 2017, 10:47:50 pm »

If you are trying to keep iTunes in sync with JRiver simply to utilize the playlist sync for iPhone, there is an easier solution.
I keep the iTunes and JRiver files in sync by dragging all new imports to JRiver over to iTunes.
Then in iTunes delete all the playlists.
Go to JRiver and export all playlists.
Them move the playlists over to a convenient location.
And import the playlists into iTunes.
If you have a large number of songs and a large number of playlists as I have, this is easier and faster than MCIS.
No songs are duplicated in iTunes and all playlists are added with each playlist in sync with the way the songs are in the JRiver Playlists. Now occasionally I will have a playlist that is missing a song, but mostly this works fine.
I use to use MCIS all the time but it takes forever.
I am not interested in anything but the convenience of having playlists identical to JRiver for my iPhone sync.
Hope this helps.

lmurawski · « **Reply #965 on:** May 22, 2017, 11:44:21 am »

Is this issue resolved with iTunes 12.6.1?

spanky1406 · « **Reply #966 on:** May 23, 2017, 11:12:33 am »

Tried it today with iTunes 12.6.1.25 and had no errors

jack wallstreet · « **Reply #967 on:** May 28, 2017, 08:02:19 pm »

I seemed to have a similar problem and after numerous restarts rolled back to 12.4.3. Had to uninstall various apple apps first. The install of 12.4.3 indicated that the iTunes library could not be used as it had been created by a later version (library format change?). This sounds evolving as to whether the new iTunes is compatible or whether it is fussy or ?

lmurawski · « **Reply #968 on:** May 28, 2017, 10:59:42 pm »

Back using 12.5.5.5 myself.

Latest 12.6 had same issue for me.

jack wallstreet · « **Reply #969 on:** May 31, 2017, 07:59:09 am »

Quote from: TXgary on May 09, 2017, 10:47:50 pm

If you are trying to keep iTunes in sync with JRiver simply to utilize the playlist sync for iPhone, there is an easier solution.
I keep the iTunes and JRiver files in sync by dragging all new imports to JRiver over to iTunes.
Then in iTunes delete all the playlists.
Go to JRiver and export all playlists.
Them move the playlists over to a convenient location.
And import the playlists into iTunes.
If you have a large number of songs and a large number of playlists as I have, this is easier and faster than MCIS.
No songs are duplicated in iTunes and all playlists are added with each playlist in sync with the way the songs are in the JRiver Playlists. Now occasionally I will have a playlist that is missing a song, but mostly this works fine.
I use to use MCIS all the time but it takes forever.
I am not interested in anything but the convenience of having playlists identical to JRiver for my iPhone sync.
Hope this helps.

Thanks for the post. This is an interesting alternative

BartMan01 · « **Reply #970 on:** June 07, 2017, 12:18:32 pm »

iTunes Match causes me no end of issues, with playlists particularly. The best solution I have found is to do the following when syncing:

Delete any playlists synced from MC and force update the iTunes Match library to push the deletions to the cloud
Sign out of my account in iTunes
Sync with iTunes Synchronizer
Sign back in to my account in iTunes and if needed add the computer back to iTunes Match and let it sync

I don't sync that often. This would be more of a pain if I was doing this daily or even weekly.

jack wallstreet · « **Reply #971 on:** July 29, 2017, 03:51:50 pm »

Quote from: TXgary on May 09, 2017, 10:47:50 pm

If you are trying to keep iTunes in sync with JRiver simply to utilize the playlist sync for iPhone, there is an easier solution.
I keep the iTunes and JRiver files in sync by dragging all new imports to JRiver over to iTunes.
Then in iTunes delete all the playlists.
Go to JRiver and export all playlists.
Them move the playlists over to a convenient location.
And import the playlists into iTunes.
If you have a large number of songs and a large number of playlists as I have, this is easier and faster than MCIS.
No songs are duplicated in iTunes and all playlists are added with each playlist in sync with the way the songs are in the JRiver Playlists. Now occasionally I will have a playlist that is missing a song, but mostly this works fine.
I use to use MCIS all the time but it takes forever.
I am not interested in anything but the convenience of having playlists identical to JRiver for my iPhone sync.
Hope this helps.

I have tried to import multiple playslist into iTunes per description above and it appears iTunes still only allows a single playlist to be imported. Are you (TXgary) using a third party software to do the import or ?

TXgary · « **Reply #972 on:** August 09, 2017, 05:25:34 pm »

Here is the simple solution.
Make sure iTunes is pointing to the same music as JRiver.
Create a folder on your computer to hold exported playlists from JRiver
Export 1 or all (can export 2 one at a time) from JRiver to folder in .M3U format
Open iTunes -> select Music at the top -> File -> Add Folder to Library
This takes some time. I usually delete playlists from iTunes that have been changed in JRiver, then export those to a folder and add that folder to iTunes. There will be the playlists in order same as JRiver.
Easy to delete all playlists in iTunes and export all in JRiver then add that folder to iTunes and over a period of time all the playlists will show in iTunes in the correct order (meaning the order of each song in each playlist.)
I hope this helps

TXgary · « **Reply #973 on:** August 10, 2017, 09:59:20 am »

I posted the below earlier and it works fine, the problem is deleting the old playlists in iTunes. Cannot multiple delete unless the playlists are under a folder and then you can delete the complete folder.
The the question is "how to import playlists into iTunes into a folder?"
I don't have an answer for that.
My solution below does not work without a way to delete all the playlists easily from iTunes.
Does anyone have a solution for deleting multiple playlists from iTunes?
Below is a rewrite of my solution for exporting playlists from JRiver and importing all into iTunes.

Here is the simple solution.
Make sure iTunes is pointing to the same music as JRiver.
Create a folder on your computer to hold exported playlists from JRiver
Export 1 or all (can export 2 one at a time) from JRiver to folder in .M3U format
Open iTunes -> select Music at the top -> File -> Add Folder to Library
This takes some time. I usually delete playlists from iTunes that have been changed in JRiver, then export those to a folder and add that folder to iTunes. There will be the playlists in order same as JRiver.
Easy to delete all playlists in iTunes and export all in JRiver then add that folder to iTunes and over a period of time all the playlists will show in iTunes in the correct order (meaning the order of each song in each playlist.)
I hope this helps.

Sorry, I don't have the complete solution.

TXgary · « **Reply #974 on:** August 13, 2017, 11:47:17 am »

Mr. Wallstreet
Another thought is to create a playlist in JRiver of each of your sub playlists that you want together on your player before importing to iTunes. Then you have the songs in a playlist that you want instead of having to select each playlist.

jack wallstreet · « **Reply #975 on:** August 14, 2017, 08:49:05 pm »

Update on MCIS and latest ITunes (12.6.2.xx). I have not been able to get MCIS to work properly for the latest iTunes versions (it aborts part way through). TxGary has provided an alternative, but its use seems limited by ITunes practical problems such as having to delete playlists by hand and not being able to put a playlist within a folder (in iTunes).

At present here are two apparent work arounds (for those having issues)

1. Go back to 12.5.5 (that or similar version may work) or

2. Delete your entire iTunes playlists before you engage MCIS (doesn't seem to abort if you do that) - time consuming to rebuild however
Having your playlist in MC under a folder makes it easy to delete all playlists in ITunes because the high level folder is created by MCIS in ITunes and that, along with all sub playlists can be deleted in iTunes. Obviously, don't forget to update the music files in ITunes before you do any of that (import in ITunes). There is a free program available on the internet: KillTopLevelPlaylists.vbs that seems to work if you don't have your playlists in a folder

The uncheck the broken link box did not help me. (earlier suggestion)

Hope this helps and people have other suggestions. This is making me think seriously about whether I want the IPhone 8

John

TXgary · « **Reply #976 on:** August 15, 2017, 09:30:05 am »

I agree on the requirement of an iPhone? Maybe not....
Cost of new phone, not able to add storage, change battery, connect and sync with JRiver, etc.
The KillTopLevelPlaylists solution works for me. I delete then rebuild by "adding folder" to iTunes after exporting all from JRiver.
It is much much faster than MCIS and ALL the playlists are in the same sequence they are in JRiver.
iTunes is going to be continually enhanced. MCIS apparently is dead.
Just my thoughts.

glynor · « **Reply #977 on:** August 15, 2017, 12:45:48 pm »

Quote from: lmurawski on April 12, 2017, 10:30:22 pm

Anyone else experiencing 'The playlist has been deleted' errors with iTunes 12.6?

<Result EndDateTime="2017-04-12T23:31:08">The playlist has been deleted.</Result>

Just for the record, I'm having this issue too. Am I reading right that if I script the sync to kill all existing playlists in iTunes first, and then run the MCiS sync, it works correctly?

That isn't a dealbreaker for me, if it works. I have MCiS syncing a bunch of playlists, though, including some in folders (within both MC and iTunes). Will that KillTopLevelPlaylists.vbs script delete everything, or just the top-level ones?

TXgary · « **Reply #978 on:** August 15, 2017, 01:57:57 pm »

Just the top level. If they are all at the same level then it will delete all of them.
I delete all of them then export all playlists from JRiver then store in a folder and Add that folder to iTunes (importing the playlists all at the same level).
Understand that each playlist has all the songs in the exact same sequence as the playlist in JRiver does. To do that in MCIS would require to set a switch for each playlist, otherwise, the playlist contain the songs but not in order by using MCIS.
My problem is that MCIS continues to abort prior to adding the playlists. Now this could be because I have not deleted the playlists in iTunes before running MCIS. MCIS was a great product. I just don't know why it has not been enhanced. Perhaps not enough people saw the value of it. I even bought a key from MisterPete. It has great potential, but appears to be dead now.

glynor · « **Reply #979 on:** August 15, 2017, 02:01:54 pm »

Quote from: TXgary on August 15, 2017, 01:57:57 pm

MCIS was a great product. I just don't know why it has not been enhanced. Perhaps not enough people saw the value of it. I even bought a key from MisterPete. It has great potential, but appears to be dead now.

Yeah. I'm sure prod just doesn't need to use it anymore. I own a key for it too, and have been using it without issue for years.

Quote from: TXgary on August 15, 2017, 01:57:57 pm

My problem is that MCIS continues to abort prior to adding the playlists. Now this could be because I have not deleted the playlists in iTunes before running MCIS.

Yeah. I'm having that same issue. I looked at the KillAllTopLevel script mentioned before, and the logic in it looks quite simple. I'm going to make a version that kills ALL playlists in iTunes (top-level or not) and see if that fixes it.

If not, prod open sourced MCiS. I'm not sure what it is written in, but might be able to figure out how to fix it. I'm sure the API just changed in some way when accessing existing playlists.

TXgary · « **Reply #980 on:** August 15, 2017, 03:44:50 pm »

I would be interested in your rewrite of the kill playlist program to kill all playlists.
I really don't have a problem with all the playlists being in a flat on folder view in iTunes.
It is just hard to find some of the playlists when the folder structure is not present and MCIS certainly offered that.
Good luck and let me hear from you.

glynor · « **Reply #981 on:** August 17, 2017, 09:24:27 am »

I'll post it when I do it. Haven't had a chance yet.

Still a bit tough for me. I have a house now with Internets, but my network isn't all set up at all yet, my MC server is in a temporary spot (and I only just two weeks ago got it running again), and I have an epic amount of projects to do before all of that can be cleared.

However, I think I'll get to this soon. It should only take a couple hours, and I have some music I want to sync over to my phone.

glynor · « **Reply #982 on:** August 17, 2017, 09:27:07 am »

OOOH! MCiS is written in C#, which I know. I thought it was C++ which I kind-of know but also makes me sad.

I'll look at the code and see what I can do. Maybe I can even make MCiS less obnoxious to use for my use cases!

TXgary · « **Reply #983 on:** August 17, 2017, 11:00:02 am »

That would be great. Seems as though MCIS really takes forever when you have large database >150,000 songs.
Is there ways to cut back amount of time.
Also the playlists that get formed on iTunes are not in the same sequence as JRiver unless you tell each playlist to sync. Perhaps most don't have to be in same sequence.

glynor · « **Reply #984 on:** August 24, 2017, 03:28:47 pm »

Well, I have some good news and some less good news.

I made a script which successfully deletes all of the (non-smart) playlists in iTunes, and it works brilliantly. I need to clean it up a bit before I post it publicly at all, but that is done. The other good news is that running this before a MCiS sync does absolutely fix the sync problem in MCiS.

So, now for the less good news...

Using this completely breaks my usage of MCiS. The issue is that when you delete all of these playlists, and then run the MCiS sync, they get recreated as new lists. The issue with that is that if you use any of these lists to sync to an iOS device (which is why I'm using MCiS), the saved sync profile in iTunes for your devices "loses" all of the lists (they all become unchecked throughout the Device Sync UI in iTunes).

For me, this is an absolute dealbreaker. I have a whole set of lists used for various purposes, for 6 different iOS devices, and so I'd have to go back through the iTunes UI and re-enable the lists in all of the various areas where they're used for device sync (Music, Audiobooks, Video, etc).

So... That's no good. I'll still post my script since it is almost all done. But... Boy that's a bummer. I guess I'm going to fire up Visual Studio and see if I can get the issue fixed in prod's code!

What will REALLY tick me off is if I do this, and then Apple releases iTunes 12.7 or whatever that either: (A) completely removes the COM API and breaks this once and for all, or (B) they fix the issue themselves and the whole thing was pointless.

Sigh. Can't prevent that, though, really. Hopefully it is something dumb and easily fixed.

glynor · « **Reply #985 on:** August 24, 2017, 09:41:24 pm »

I would just like to point out that I rage-hate all of this.

If JRemote or something like it would just let me sync a handful of playlists to my iOS devices and be scriptable, I'd be happy. I do not care about using the cruddy built in Music App (which is awful). I'll use some other 3rd party app which uses its own storage (or my 1TB of Dropbox if you must). I do not want to keep iTunes installed on my main Windows machines at all (because it is awful).

But I live in Maine, and I have a few Wifi only devices (including my daughter's iPad). I use JRemote for lots of music playback. But I need offline access way too often, so I need some kind of local storage option.

How I wish JRemote could be updated with some kind of local storage solution that syncs to MC. But they're trying to do things with Web apps which, while cool, are really only useful for connected playback...
</rant>

TXgary · « **Reply #986 on:** August 24, 2017, 10:43:42 pm »

I totally support your assessment.....
iPhone is not a good option if you want to use JRiver.
And yet there are so many iPhones, that JRiver needs to support a way to get playlist over to iTunes (terrible product) or a way to sync (side load if need be) from JRiver to iPhone....
There are currently no good options that I have discovered.

TXgary · « **Reply #987 on:** August 25, 2017, 05:14:27 pm »

Glynor
So we trade our iPhones for Android Devices.....
Can we sync our playlists directly with JRiver

jack wallstreet · « **Reply #988 on:** September 10, 2017, 07:00:57 pm »

I decided to move back to ITunes 12.5.5 (since it isn't useful for anything but transfer to IPhone); MCIS works with that. Hopefully we will get Glynor's update and hopefully 12.xx.xx/IOS 11 doesn't screw anything up. I am at least thinking about dropping the new IPhone from my new purchase list

JimH · « **Reply #989 on:** September 10, 2017, 07:07:30 pm »

Quote from: jack wallstreet on September 10, 2017, 07:00:57 pm

I decided to move back to ITunes 12.5.5 (since it isn't useful for anything but transfer to IPhone); MCIS works with that. Hopefully we will get Glynor's update and hopefully 12.xx.xx/IOS 11 doesn't screw anything up. I am at least thinking about dropping the new IPhone from my new purchase list

Consider a Note 8. Or an S8+. I've used both. They're great.

TXgary · « **Reply #990 on:** September 11, 2017, 08:14:46 am »

JimH
Are you saying I can sync direct from JRiver Media Center to the Note 8 or the S8+?
I am looking for a phone that is recognized by JRiver and will sync from the program to the phone.

JimH · « **Reply #991 on:** September 11, 2017, 08:15:58 am »

Any Android phone will work.

TXgary · « **Reply #992 on:** September 11, 2017, 08:20:33 am »

Interesting to note.
I have tried several old androids to use as music player and have not been able to sync direct and then play back.
I must be doing something wrong.

JimH · « **Reply #993 on:** September 11, 2017, 08:23:57 am »

On some Androids, you have to set the phone in a mode that allows transferring media files. You will usually see a USB icon in the notifications. Pull it down and click on it.

TXgary · « **Reply #994 on:** September 11, 2017, 09:21:12 am »

Works like a champ.... Thanks
iPhone ---- bye bye

TXgary · « **Reply #995 on:** September 11, 2017, 10:28:30 am »

Not exactly
The music gets synced and the album data, etc, but the playlists all show up in the playlist directory as xxxx.pla with 0 records in each playlist.

TXgary · « **Reply #996 on:** September 11, 2017, 10:41:50 am »

It appears to be the app on the phone that is the problem. PowerAmp is the problem.
The rest appears to work as advertised when using the "play music" app.

glynor · « **Reply #997 on:** September 15, 2017, 04:40:55 pm »

Has anyone tried iTunes 12.7 yet? I'm downloading it now to try, but I don't have a lot of hope.

By the way, I never bothered cleaning up and posting my script, since it doesn't work for my needs at all (see above). If anyone wants it, if you are just going to keep the "sync everything" box checked for example, then yell and I'll post it. It works, it just makes the phone sync thing forget the playlist checkmarks.

I'm also downloading an old installer for iTunes 12.5.5 to try rolling back when 12.7 still doesn't work... but I wonder if I need 12.6+ for iOS 11 support. At some point I'll probably get annoyed and fix MCiS (if it is possible to fix at all). Unfortunately, Apple seems to have removed the COM plugin API documentation from their site, so I don't think they care much about maintaining it... My script works using it though, so some of it certainly still works. I bet it is just returning a value MCiS doesn't expect...

glynor · « **Reply #998 on:** September 16, 2017, 02:25:38 pm »

Just to confirm, 12.7 has the same issue.

glynor · « **Reply #999 on:** September 17, 2017, 10:37:23 am »

To get it working, I had to roll back to 12.5.3.16. That was the latest download I've found thus far that still works with MCiS, anyway. I haven't tested syncing that version of iTunes with my iOS 11 devices yet though...

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Author Topic: MC iTunes Synchronizer (using MC with an iPhone or iPod Touch) [v6.0.2] (Read 494857 times)