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Author Topic: HOW TO... copy playlists to separate folders on a USB stick  (Read 2853 times)

Steef_V.

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HOW TO... copy playlists to separate folders on a USB stick
« on: January 27, 2011, 04:28:38 pm »

For hours I've been looking for a solution to the following question / problem....

For playback in my car I can use my ZEN player, but that works only via the "audio" input. Which means that I have to "control" the playback via the ZEN (= not so safe while driving....). I also have a USB input in my car, but the only thing that works then is a regular USB (memory) stick. BUT....

In that case all files in the same folder play in alphabetical order. If I put hundreds of songs in one folder, I'm getting all songs by 10CC first, then all songs by ABBA, etc.... Albums can simply be copied to separate directories on the USB stick, and I add the track# in front of the file name (works fine).

But for "individual songs" I have a problem.... I created many playlists in MC with around 30 - 40 songs each. Playlists are currently named simply "Oldies1", "Oldies2", etc., and contain only ONE song by any artist. My issue is HOW to get those on my USB stick? To avoid the "10CC > ABBA" issue, I would need them in separate directories on my USB stick. (Having each directory in the same sequence as the playlist is an option, but not strictly required....).

Of course it works fine by copying each playlist manually, and changing the "Files & Paths > Audio Path" parameter before each copy... But I hope anyone has a brighter idea for "automating" this? I may be overlooking a simple solution. On the other hand I'm still not very "deep" into MC's advanced functions, so if the solution is difficult, I may never find it myself....

Thanks in advance!
Steef
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jaynyc

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Re: HOW TO... copy playlists to separate folders on a USB stick
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2011, 11:08:42 pm »

Steef--

Would you say this is the same issue?

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=58411

--Jay
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wig

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Re: HOW TO... copy playlists to separate folders on a USB stick
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2011, 07:13:22 am »

Hey, Steef, are these playlists you have constructed, or are the smartlists? If it's the former, you could add a custom field to MC called 'Playlistfolder', for example. Enter the playlist name for each list into that field, then use it as part of the filepath name when synching to your usb stick, [Playlistfolder]/[Artist]/[Album] or whatever works for you.

It's still a manual process (entering the playlist names) but less work intensive than what you are doing now.

For hours I've been looking for a solution to the following question / problem....

For playback in my car I can use my ZEN player, but that works only via the "audio" input. Which means that I have to "control" the playback via the ZEN (= not so safe while driving....). I also have a USB input in my car, but the only thing that works then is a regular USB (memory) stick. BUT....

In that case all files in the same folder play in alphabetical order. If I put hundreds of songs in one folder, I'm getting all songs by 10CC first, then all songs by ABBA, etc.... Albums can simply be copied to separate directories on the USB stick, and I add the track# in front of the file name (works fine).

But for "individual songs" I have a problem.... I created many playlists in MC with around 30 - 40 songs each. Playlists are currently named simply "Oldies1", "Oldies2", etc., and contain only ONE song by any artist. My issue is HOW to get those on my USB stick? To avoid the "10CC > ABBA" issue, I would need them in separate directories on my USB stick. (Having each directory in the same sequence as the playlist is an option, but not strictly required....).

Of course it works fine by copying each playlist manually, and changing the "Files & Paths > Audio Path" parameter before each copy... But I hope anyone has a brighter idea for "automating" this? I may be overlooking a simple solution. On the other hand I'm still not very "deep" into MC's advanced functions, so if the solution is difficult, I may never find it myself....

Thanks in advance!
Steef
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Steef_V.

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Re: HOW TO... copy playlists to separate folders on a USB stick
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2011, 04:05:00 pm »


Hi Jay,

YES! That's exactly the issue that I'm struggling with.... (I had been searching the forum, but apparently not using the right keywords....). So there seems to be no neat solution (yet..??). Thanks for pointing this out.


Hi Wig,

Mine are playlists indeed. So I just might be following your idea, it seems that it should do what I need!!!!


In the meantime I, too, have found a "workaround":
I have been copying the files inside my playlists to my USB stick using a file string of "Right([Name],2) [Artist] - [Name]". This places them ALL in the same directory (admitted...), but the filenames start with the last 2 characters of the song title, causing a rather arbitrary sequence while playing the 900 songs om my 4GB USB stick.

Either this option OR Wig's idea will make me happy (enough...) for a while!


Thanks, guys!
Cheers, Steef
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