Exporting playlists to USB disk?

[moggyman]

Is there a way to either create playlists/import iTunes playlists and then export them to a USB disk? I want to plug a USB disk in to my hi-fi and be able to use playlists where all the albums for an artist are in one long playlist sorted by album. All I've been able to do is copy music over with each album in its own folder, not in a playlist. Can this be done?

[redwing]

Read through this thread. Kind of old, but you will get the idea: http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=10730.0

[moggyman]

Cheers - I'll give it a go.

[moggyman]

The Edit/Preferences/Devices isn't showing my USB disk as a device?

[redwing]

If that's displayed as a fixed drive from computer node, then probably you could use "Add virtual device" feature under Edit> Preferences> Devices.

[moggyman]

I discovered that about 2 minutes after I last posted - doh! Thanks anyway.

Is there any form of extended logging available? I did a sync and there are a lot of failures whereby MB claims it couldn't find the file specified but the files are there. I'm wondering if it doesn't like prefixes/suffixes or unusual characters? Some of the failures are on songs that are listed as things like 'Heroes - David Bowie' or '01-Heroes' or 'Heaven & Hell'. Other failures I have no idea about.

[redwing]

Make sure you're using the latest version. Lots of bugs have been fixed.

http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V2_5/MusicBee_Exe_Patched.zip

If the problem persists, report it to Bug Reports board.

[moggyman]

I'm pretty sure it's the latest version as I downloaded and updated from the website yesterday.  I wondered about extended or debug logging because it might be easier for me to find what the skipped files have in common. I checked the entries in the report shown after sync but didn't have time to check them all. It certainly appeared that those I checked had prefixes/suffixes or characters like ()!& and the like. For albums with such things in their title e.g. 'The Wall (Deluxe Edition)' then the whole album got skipped. I can't be 100% sure without further testing.

[psychoadept]

I'm pretty sure it's the latest version as I downloaded and updated from the website yesterday.

Unless you overwrote the version from the website with the files in the link redwing provided, it's not the latest version.

[moggyman]

Done - version is reported now as 2.5.5524

[moggyman]

It was down to user error as explained in the update I added to the bug report.

Now, back to testing the sync process.............

[moggyman]

I'll try the suggestions given in the link kindly provided which I believe are -

To get what you want:

<auto-sync settings>
- Untick Music Library.
- Tick the playlist you want to sync only.

<device settings>
- Storage path: H:\
- Playlist path: Music\
- Tick the "Create a sub-folder..." option.

Now click on "Synchronize" button.

Just to recap, what I would like to get (if possible) is the same sort of structure I see when I browse Playlists in iTunes which is

Playlist1 (Artist's name)
  Song1 Title
  Song2 Title......For album #1
  Song1 Title
  Song2 Title.....For album #2
Playlist2
....and so on

Will the above settings achieve that or is a tweak needed?

One further question, is the Sync process 'incremental'? In other words, suppose in the above example I add another album to the playlist for Playlist1 in iTunes. With the USB disk attached, what steps need to be taken to get this new album in to the playlist stored on the USB disk? Import the Library again and do another Sync? Apologies if that's a dumb question!

Many thanks

[redwing]

The sync dialog has "Preview" button with which you can see how the filenames will look. If the order is not what you want, you can reorder the playlist in MB with "#" field added.
And the sync process should be incremental: it adds only new or newly modified files. But it might not work as intended for some devices.

[moggyman]

Thanks.

OK, I've managed to get myself totally confused - it's been that kind of day. Time for dumb questions. 

1. Which parts of that Device/Settings dialog defines how the source and the target files will look? I've tried editing various fields but when going to Preview I see no difference.
2. Given the above, is there another step involved to make edits stick? Or am I going at this in completely the wrong way? 
3. Can I save/reload the default settings in the Settings dialog if I want to start over?

Be gentle with me.

[redwing]

Not sure what you're trying to achieve. If playlist folder option is ticked, you won't be able to change filenaming format. If that's what you want, try tweaking Music files path with playlist folder option unticked. To reset, you could delete the device name from Edit> Preferences> Devices with that device disconnected.