I'm so perplexed of what to do next to get it all in the right structure and how to create the playlists to mirror this structure. And I'm looking to do this without risking my current audio folder.
I'm reluctant to advise because I don't know much about iTunes. But maybe I can clarify a few things...
The first step in learning how MC works is to forget about how iTunes works. They're not at all the same. In particular, MC will manage playlists, but playlists will have nothing to do with how the database is organized and maintained. Any tracks imported to MC will be added to a database that we call a "library." Part of the import process will be to read the physical tags of the files and record whatever meta data it understands to the equivalent fields in the database. That should include Genre, Artist, Album, track number and name, etc. MC will then use
that information to organize your files. It doesn't require any playlists or care about the folder structure of the file system.
I don't see any way your iTunes data would be
directly affected by importing files into MC. If configured to do so, MC will write tag changes (i.e., changes you make to it's database) to the files. So iTunes will be affected if it re-reads those changed tags. MC can also change the path names of files, but that's not going to happen unless you very deliberately use the
Rename, move and copy files tool (see
Library Tools on the
Tools menu or file context menu).
As we've already heard, the information in iTunes may not be fully recognized in MC—perhaps due to differences in tagging standards. Before attempting to import files, ensure iTunes is writing as much as possible to the file tags (I have no idea how much control over that is available in iTunes). If there are any fields that don't seem to have counterparts in MC, add them as custom fields—using exactly the same name as the tag created by iTunes. If the files have already been imported, the tags can be re-read using
Update Library (from tags).
There are other tools available for adding data. I'm not sure how it works or if it works with iTune playlists, but importing a playlist to MC is a means for importing the meta data included in that list to the records of the corresponding files in MC. So that might be the first thing to try. You might be able to import any and all information in iTunes that can't be read from file tags simply by importing the iTunes playlist. You might need to add some custom fields to MC to match data elements in the playlist. And if importing a playlist doesn't work, you can at least extract data from the file path using the
Fill properties from file name tool.
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Topic: Moving from iTunes to Media Player... But How? (Read 3778 times)