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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 24 for Windows => Topic started by: chris13 on February 28, 2019, 12:17:33 pm

Title: Handheld Sync - Playlist groups
Post by: chris13 on February 28, 2019, 12:17:33 pm
Hello Forum,

My car has a SD card reader for media and I’m syncing my music via JRiver Handheld sync to an SD card.

Via the user interface of my cars infotainment system I can browse the file system of the SD card and select music files or playlists.
All playlists are stored in the folder Playlist as defined in the handheld sync dialogue. Due to the fact I have so many playlists it’s a real pain to scroll through the whole list and select the right one.

In JRiver the playlists are grouped e.g. by Genre or Mood.
Example:
Metal:
   Metal 2010s Top 100
   Metal 2000s Top 100
   ….
Rock
   Rock 2010 Top 10
   ….

Mood
   Sunday morning
   …


Is it possible to mirror the structure of the playlist groups of Jiver to the handheld (SD Card) instead just syncing Playlists to one specified folder.

Maybe by an expression?

Any help would be appreciated.
Title: Re: Handheld Sync - Playlist groups
Post by: RoderickGI on February 28, 2019, 02:21:31 pm
The biggest constraint is what your car's system will support, and what it won't. Obviously it isn't going to support MC's internal Playlist Groups.

If you can browse multiple levels of folders to find Playlists, you could just change the "playlist Path" rules in the Handheld options to something like;
[Genre]\Playlists\

That wouldn't match the Playlist Groups you have set up, but it might be a good start. Alternately you could pick any other MC field that is populated with appropriate data, or add a custom field in MC that you use for grouping Playlists in your car.
Title: Re: Handheld Sync - Playlist groups
Post by: chris13 on March 01, 2019, 01:04:09 pm
Thank you for your quick reply. I'm not sure if i understand you correctly.

Is it possible to relate a MC field to playlists? If not, how can MC determine where to put the m3u files?
For sure, i could add a custom field like "Playlist-Group", but to my understanding it is not possible to tag a playlist.
Title: Re: Handheld Sync - Playlist groups
Post by: BryanC on March 01, 2019, 01:36:29 pm
Thank you for your quick reply. I'm not sure if i understand you correctly.

Is it possible to relate a MC field to playlists? If not, how can MC determine where to put the m3u files?
For sure, i could add a custom field like "Playlist-Group", but to my understanding it is not possible to tag a playlist.

It's currently not possible. I would imagine that this change would take a lot of development time for the benefit of a very small (possibly only one) number of users, so I wouldn't hold out much hope.

However, you should be able to sort your playlists on your external drive relatively easily using a scripting language like bash, powershell, or python.
Title: Re: Handheld Sync - Playlist groups
Post by: RoderickGI on March 01, 2019, 03:52:17 pm
Is it possible to relate a MC field to playlists?

Oops. My bad again. I didn't think that through did I!?

It might be interesting to understand how Playlist Groups are stored in MC, and that may open up a way to do this without scripting. Any scripting or movement of the Playlist files outside MC's control would have to take into account the absolute or relative paths of audio tracks referenced in the Playlists. I guess you would have to use absolute path all the time if you moved the Playlist files.
Title: Re: Handheld Sync - Playlist groups
Post by: BryanC on March 01, 2019, 10:34:49 pm
Oops. My bad again. I didn't think that through did I!?

It might be interesting to understand how Playlist Groups are stored in MC, and that may open up a way to do this without scripting. Any scripting or movement of the Playlist files outside MC's control would have to take into account the absolute or relative paths of audio tracks referenced in the Playlists. I guess you would have to use absolute path all the time if you moved the Playlist files.

Not necessarily. You would just need to compare the final playlist location relative to the original location and append that information to each track in the playlist file.
Title: Re: Handheld Sync - Playlist groups
Post by: chris13 on March 02, 2019, 06:51:44 am
I agree, it would be really interesting how Playlist Groups are stored in MC.
First i thought the playlist groups in MC are just folders somewhere in the file system behind the library. Then i could maybe make use of a File Path function. But i'm not an expert on this.

It would be really great to be able to sync the playlist groups as folders to the handheld. But this is not a big issue.

Thanks again for all your feedback.