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[Three]

I would like to be able to export playlists on one machine and import them on another. The import process appears to be very tedious. One by One. Hundreds of playlists. Ecch! Is there a way to import the playlists and have MC20 recognize that they are not simply one monster playlist?? If not, that would be a VERY welcome upgrade.

Thanks

[blgentry]

You can export all of your playlists with File > Export All Playlists
All playlists will get put into ~/Library....Playlists/<playlist name>   (it will tell you the exact path with the export happens)

At first I was sorta stumped on how to import them all.  Then I tried File > Library > Import > Import a single folder

If/when you try this and use import a single folder, make sure to check the option to include Playlist type files.  As extra caution I also disabled the Audio section, so it would only try to import playlists.  This seemed to work just fine, and imported all of my playlists, putting them in the "imported playlists" group.

If you have playlists sorted by group, I don't think it will preserve those.  So you might want to manually create those and then drag groups of lists into your playlist groups.  Not a perfect solution, but certainly better than 1 at a time right? 

Brian.

[Three]

Thank you! But, when I export all playlists, it insists on using the m3u format and characters such as ñ export as ?n, so import fails. One by one, I can export as mpl, which preserves the Spanish characters, but I now have a one-by-one export. Any advice?

[blgentry]

Hmm, I'm not sure if that can set controlled or not (export all playlists as MPL).

I have to go back to first principles:  What are you trying to accomplish exactly?  Maybe a different approach would work better.  For example a full library backup and restore.

Brian.

[Three]

I'm a tango DJ and maintain an enormous library on my desktop  - a lot more than just tango - and develop playlists on my desktop. In tango, music is played in 'tandas' of three to four songs, say 12 minutes. This requires 5 tandas in an hour or 15 -20 in an evening of dance. I develop the playlists on my desktop, one per tanda, then export the playlists to my mac air to DJ. I have well over a hundred tandas to choose from, frequently modify them, and pick which to play as I see what the dancers are favoring.

Thus, I would like to export a block of playlists, say 50, copy them to my Air, and import. Since my file structures are identical, and all of my tango music is on both my desktop and my air, everything works fine. Except, many of the paths and file names use characters such as ñ because the file structure is based on artist, album and song.

I've been manually duplicating the playlists on the Air and am tired of it! Aaarg.

[blgentry]

Your requirements 100% make sense.  I can see exactly why you'd want to do that.  I can't think of a way to do it exactly as you've described, since MC doesn't support multiple playlist export *with* options (save as MPL) that I'm aware of.

What would happen if you did a library backup on your desktop machine, and then restored that backup on your MBA (laptop)?  Would you end up with a bunch of song references that don't exist on the laptop's library?  Or does the laptop library have other stuff that's not on the desktop library?

If it's just a matter of the laptop having less files than the desktop, you could restore the backup to the laptop, and then remove all of the files that aren't there.  Or use the option to "fix broken links" so they just won't show at all.

I'm not sure if this approach would work for you, but it's all I could think of.  I hope we can find a workable solution for you.

Brian.

[Three]

Brian - Thanks. Let me try the library backup you suggest. My laptop music is a subset of my desktop, but what is there has the same file structure. Yes, I might end up with a number of broken links for files/playlists not on my laptop, but perhaps the ones I need will all be there in good form. I'll try that when I get up the courage

[blgentry]

Courage. 

But don't fear.  Just make a backup of the Laptop first!  That way if things go sideways you can restore the Laptop backup to the Laptop and it will be exactly where you started from.

I'll outline the procedure I'm thinking of:

1.  Make a Library Backup of the Desktop.
2.  Make a Library Backup of the Laptop.
3.  Restore the Library Backup of the Desktop to the Laptop.
4.  Verify that you have all of the playlists you are looking for on the Laptop.
5.  Deal with the broken links.
6.  Keep the configuration if it's good and working.  Otherwise, restore the Laptop backup to the Laptop.

In #5 above, you might do something like removing *all* of the songs, and then turning off "ignore previously removed files".  Then turn auto import on, or just import your top level music folder manually.  That way it only gets the files that are actually on the laptop.  Or maybe you just turn on "fix broken links" instead.  I'm not sure which one will be better.  The good news is, you can experiment and as long as you don't actually remove any music files, you can just restore backups to get back to square one again.

I'll be very curious to hear how this works out for you.  Good luck!

Brian.