INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: rogerh on January 06, 2005, 05:49:48 pm

Title: Copying part of a library
Post by: rogerh on January 06, 2005, 05:49:48 pm
How do I export / copy the MP3 files that make up a playlist to another directory?

I am using MC 10.0.155.

All my MP3 files are stored on a file server on my home network.  My Media Center library (all the .jmd files) are stored in a separate directory on the same file server.

I am going on a trip and I want to copy some of my library to my laptop to take with me.  Unfortunately I can only spare about 10GB of space on my laptop hard drive and my MP3 collection is bigger than this (about 30GB).

I have created a Favorites playlist containing 4/5* rated tracks and this is about the right size.

I now want to copy the MP3 files that make up this playlist to a directory on my laptop.  Unfortunately I can't see how to do this.

If I use Library Tools | Move/Copy all the files end up in the same directory and the Artist / Album folder structure is lost.

I also looked on Send To, but drives and devices only allows you to send to a burner and External didn't seem to have what I was looking for either.

Any suggestions on how I achieve this would be appreciated.

Happy New Year

Roger
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: Alex B on January 06, 2005, 06:47:53 pm
There are several ways. This might be the easiest:

- Copy the files to another folder on your server. (Library Tools > Copy Disk File)

- Import them to an empty MC library with your laptop.

- Let MC move them to local HD. Use the "Rename Files From Properties..." tool.
Write the base path and e.g. [Artist]\[Album] rule. It creates the directories from the file tags. Untick the filename rule if not needed.
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: rogerh on January 06, 2005, 07:30:04 pm
Thanks for the advice.

This looks like it will work, except where I have two files with the same name, e.g. two versions of a song that are by the same artist but on different albums.

Thanks

Roger
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: Alex B on January 06, 2005, 07:58:22 pm
MC gives a warning if that happens, but it interrupts the copying. You could first search for duplicates in your playlist and handle them separately. Use this search expression: ~dup=[Filename (name)]
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: Alex B on January 06, 2005, 08:28:31 pm
You could also temporally move the selected files (and folders) to a different base folder on your server.

Use the Find and Replace tool. Replace in [Filename (path)] e.g. "C:\Music" with "C:\Music2". It is fast because it just rewrites the directory structure without actually reading and writing the files.
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: rogerh on January 06, 2005, 10:11:45 pm
Thanks for the advice, but both of these suggestions seem a bit cumbersome - I have more duplicate songs than I realised.

I will probably try and work out some other way to do this using an exported playlist and a batch file (or robocopy).

However, it seems like a normal thing to want to do and I wish that I could just go Send To | Folder on Disk and specify the new root.

Thanks

Roger
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: GHammer on January 07, 2005, 12:31:52 am
You can setup the laptop as a portable device and send playlists to it.

It will keep the directory structure, etc.

You can even transcode if you want.
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: Alex B on January 07, 2005, 08:34:25 am
You can setup the laptop as a portable device and send playlists to it.

It will keep the directory structure, etc.

You can even transcode if you want.


Is that possible with MC10? (rogerh uses it.)

I tried it once with MC11, but I had a problem. The files went to my "C:\Documents and Settings\current user name\NetHood\" folder instead of the network path. Perhaps I just didn't try hard enough.
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: dduvall on January 07, 2005, 11:19:23 am


Is that possible with MC10? (rogerh uses it.)

I tried it once with MC11, but I had a problem. The files went to my "C:\Documents and Settings\current user name\NetHood\" folder instead of the network path. Perhaps I just didn't try hard enough.

You can setup the laptop as a portable device and send playlists to it.

It will keep the directory structure, etc.

You can even transcode if you want.


I tried this with MC11 as well and got the same results as Alex (no folder structure retained, all listed in docs&settings/.../...). 

I move a subset of all my tracks to the laptop every few weeks for business trips and it'd be great to have this functionality.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: rogerh on January 08, 2005, 11:18:17 am
I'm willing to try MC 11 and upgrade (even though it is in alpha/beta) if I can get it do this.

Please can someone point me in the right direction?  How do I get MC11 to see the laptop as a Portable?

Thanks

Roger
Title: Re: Copying part of a library
Post by: Jaguu on January 08, 2005, 03:40:11 pm
I'm willing to try MC 11 and upgrade (even though it is in alpha/beta) if I can get it do this.

Please can someone point me in the right direction?  How do I get MC11 to see the laptop as a Portable?

Thanks

Roger

You can do it with MC11 by treating your notebook as a portable device. The last time I tried it out some releases ago it worked, but the handling seemed to be a little rough, especially the configuration options were not easy to handle - and it was also quite slow.
It may work better by now.