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[xj32]

Like many of us my music collection is quite large. I have 9083 albums (not all complete, some are a song or two) by 1292 artists (112542 Songs). I have spent the last 10 years (or when ever iTunes 1st launched) ripping my cd collection and obsessively organizing each album. In itunes I have well over 100 playlists dedicated to years, genres, record labels and more, both smart lists and otherwise and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to successfully import those   playlists into media center.

What I did first to build my library was simply start with fresh library in media center and point it to my external 4tb drive where my iTunes media files live. This built and populated no problem.

Next when I export a playlist from iTunes as an xml file, use a text editor to remove the local host information, and then import it into Media Center it appears to import correctly, however when I return to the artist or album view under audio view, each song which was imported is now duplicated. Its not a second copy of the file, it just gets pointed to twice and the forward - backward slashes have been reversed.

One is listed as:                 /Volumes/Music Library/iTunes/The Beatles/Rubber Soul [2009 Stereo Remaster]/01 Drive My Car.m4a

The other one is listed as:   \Volumes\Music Library\iTunes\The Beatles\Rubber Soul [2009 Stereo Remaster]\01 Drive My Car.m4a
 
I detailed this in another post back in April and a few others mentioned having the same problem, but no actual response or fix.

What I am asking is that if anyone has got this to work correctly please help. Before I can make the complete switch to MC from iTunes I need this feature to work.

Also I have tried rebuilding my libraries one at a time, but when I try and slide and drag files around into the playing order I want, say ordering albums into chronological order of release (sounds simple until you take into consideration when 2-3 albums plus non album singles are released in the same year back in the 1950's and 1960's), but when I start dragging the tracks around Media Center freezes and crashes.

So at this point playlists are a dicey business on my machine.

Please, I humbly ask for the help or advice of the MC pro's out there.

XJ

[MrC]

Can you show a few playlist entries from your modified XML file?

MC for Mac doesn't yet handle all the cases required to deal with the difference in path separators (backslash on Windows, forward slash on *nix-based systems).  There are probably workarounds that can be applied until the kinks get worked out.

I think Mac work has taken a backseat in general to the recent Linux work currently ongoing.  There is some good sense in this (albeit frustrating for Mac users), as it helps iron out the cross platform issues (which are large since MC is so Windows-centric).

[xj32]

I would be glad to...but what do you mean? A screen shot of the playlist or albums view in Media Center or a copy of my exported xml file from iTunes.

[MrC]

I'm sure the code that imports an iTunes XML playlist file has not yet been modified to not change forward slashes into backslashes. 

And I can't find an easy, reliable way to convert the slashes after the fact.

So you might just have to wait for this to get fixed.

The expression language and tools that deal with forward and backward slashes are a mess right now; hopefully these will get addressed soon.

[MrC]

Just to follow-up.

You'll probably not want to import using iTunes XML playlists at this time.

Use Auto-import or manual import of the iTunes media files folder instead.

Are you using the XML file to import iTunes media so that you get all the iTunes media properties?  If the files have embedded tags, MC should pick these up.  Otherwise, a conversion program to convert the iTunes XML file into an MC MPL file might be the only workaround.

[xj32]

No, I have my whole iTunes library/IE all of my media from iTunes imported fine.

I just have about 100 playlists or so that I have meticulously created in itunes that I am trying to import through xml. As mentioned in my 1st post the smart playlists are a breeze to recreate, but recreating regular playlists has been problematic because when I drag files into a new order in media center often the program crashes or freezes with a spinning beach ball.

[MrC]

You can export into the M3U format and import those in MC.  But you'll have to convert the old Mac style \r line terminator character to \n.  I use the dos2unix utility to do this:

   dos2unix -c mac playlist.m3u

but you probably don't have this on your system (I have mine through macports).  I can write you a quick script to do this if you need one, or you can zip all your playlists together and send them to me for mass conversion, and I'll send them back.  You can them import each.

[xj32]

Ok, since I have no idea what you are talking about the \r line terminator...ha ha

I will export my playlists tonight and tomorrow and will send them to you to see what you can do thanks!!!

More info for the development team, I just tried building a play list and there seams to be a bug where any time of dropping and dragging is crashing the program. In other words when I tray and drag a whole album into a playlist it crashes.

XJ

[xj32]

One more update. I was able to build my first playlist (non smart) by using the send to option.

[MrC]

Here's another way that might help you.

Download the file:

   https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87189402/itunesm3u_2_MC.zip

and place it on your Desktop, and unzip it.  It is an Automator script which will convert iTunes m3u playlists into MC m3u playlists.

Drag one or more iTunes m3u playlists onto the Automator script and they will then be converted into MC-importable m3u playlists.

Edit: I've tested it on Mountain Lion and Mavericks.  Reports indicate it does not work on 10.6.8.

[xj32]

That worked like a charm!!! Thanks so much!

XJ

[Maeghaus]

How about XML files? Can they be modified and imported the same way as in MC 18 Mac?

[Maeghaus]

Wanted to add that the XML modified iTunes files import into MC 18 Mac but not version 19.

[MrC]

Just an update via a related thread:

    http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=87171.msg597270#msg597270