To get MC to do that, try right clicking on the playlist file directly in explorer and choose media center > import
Exact same behavior as if I were using the Import wizard. (dupes + path length restriction)
And why is it a big problem to have the files themselves imported too?
I actually think this is a good feature that should be on by default. However, you need to either (1) offer an option to turn it off, and/or (2) improve checking for duplicates.
Please keep posting.
You asked for it
I suspect robust playlist handling will be useful to a lot of people, but here's what I in particular am
really trying to do:
This is (to me) the most logical way to sort the bulk of my classical music. (Classical CDs that feature, say, a soloist performing random short works are easy to categorize just like any other "various artists" album if tagged correctly.) I have a couple other handy Classical view schemes, but thus far I haven't been able to duplicate what I've done here with Explorer, M3U files, and lots of time. The problem arises because the unit of measure here -- "major work" -- is usually longer than a track but shorter than an album. Thus, after ripping an album to its usual directory like so...
(notice deliberately truncated filenames so as not to break the m3us
-- at least the tags are correct)
...I make 3 corresponding directories (each holds an appropriately abbreviated m3u + txt, the latter being my transcription of the liner notes), e.g. ..\Classical (major works by composer)\Bartók, Béla\1926 - Village Scenes, Sz 79 - Boulez. Thus, by relatively simple usage of the filesystem & m3us, I've come up with the following sorting: composer -> date composed [or occasionally, opus number] -> work name -> performer [or conductor, if orchestral] -> proper track order within the work.
Needless to say, I'd rather use a database than a filesystem. (Advanced -> HD Location doesn't count.) Someday I will create a bunch of new fields and go nuts with a masstagger: split/clarify artist & album artist into Composer, Performer(s), Arranger, and Ensemble; split/clarify Date into Date Composed, Opus, and Date Recorded; add a boolean Part_Of_Something_Bigger, then split/clarify Track Name into a field to hold the larger Work Name, the individual Track Name, and a secondary Track Number field to hold its position within the work. Very large works might even benefit from a 3rd level of tag resolution (e.g. Long Opera -> Act 2 -> Track Name), including yet another field to indicate the singer(s) of that aria, but that makes my head hurt
Until then, here is my incomplete yet hopelessly idealistic wish list of playlist features:
- Ability to turn off re-importing the files an imported playlist happens to point to.
- Investigate the path-length limit and get back to us.
- Internally, store the entries with canonical path names. Keeps the filename field in the library view sane, and will help a lot if problems with dupes persist.
- Be able to select (and therefore drag around) more than one playlist at a time!!
- When importing playlist(s), let me choose where to file it instead of automatically going to Imported Playlists.
- Tools similar to the Library Tools for single files. So if the playlist on the disk changes, provide methods to cleanly re-import the playlist, or conversely to overwrite the disk file with the info from the DB.
- Grand vision: make playlists first-class objects, i.e. records in the database with the same status as songs or photos (though they should probably have their own table). Then I can attach metadata to them, re-sort them at will, nest them inside each other, etc. as if they were simply very long songs...because for some people, they are. (Not just classical geeks; I can see this sort of thing being enormously useful to DJs, for instance.) Import/export of these new structures via XML or similar.
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Topic: Importing m3u's sanely (Read 1683 times)