I've seen some comments about simply moving the files over to the NAS and then referencing the new location. My understanding was that the library structure/referencing was proprietary and would need to be changed to make it generically accessible. That is, my intention is for other players (like sonos) and not just jriver to have access my music files. So i wasn't asking about how to copy files around but rather how to migrate the library format.
David, first off to avoid semantic confusion, each player that can act as a controller will have its own "library" or data base. The file path structure of your physical files, and how you have put them on your devices, is not the "library" -- they are not proprietary, they are your media files. So all players will have acces to them if you allow them to. Whether you use JRiver to push files to other renderers (players) or want the players themselves to have individual libraries is your choice. So no worries.
What can cause complications is if you have allowed a player (such as iTunes
) to do wacko things to your file path structure automatically.
So lets say its more or less normal (if it isn't this might be a good time to get it that way) eg: X:\Music\Album Artist\Album with a couple special folders like X:\Music\Various Artists\Album or X:\Music\Classical\Composer\Album -- these paths can be linked to the real tags in your music and can easily use built-in tools in MC to move around the files.
Lest say you have a medium size library of 2500 cds or more -- it might be faster to just manually transfer or use a speed copy utility to physically move the files. Afterwards you can re-point JRiver "library" to the new location (either a mapped drive or a UNC path is preferable). On the other hand if you have a smaller library of say 500 cds and your tree path structure is sort of like I gavae as an example, it probably would just be simpler to let MC move the files for you. Of course you could also start from scratch and just reimport everything after clearing your library (you would lose some info like playback counts and other tags you have not specified to write to disk in JRiver options).
Now about your other players you want to have accessing this using their library files (database), they might not be as flexible. You might have to reimport or repopulate, but that shouldn't be a big issue if you are using the JRiver tags as the master - the metadata is or could be written to disk. I know that the Sonos player has a significant limit on the number of files (that includes playlists too unfortunately so it can be reached rapidly with a small number of cds). You might have to find a work around for that, but that has nothing to do with JRiver's library files reading your media ones. And nothing to do with files being moved around either
Anyway, you shouldn't worry about proprietary restrictions, even if you restructure your media using a different file folder setup, even iTunes will acknowledge the new filepaths -- just change it in options (and don't allow any "compacting" or whatever they say I forget). Worse case if that you have to reimport to the other players -- I'd probably do that anyway as its sounds like it is just for playback anyways .
