Transfer playlists between computers

[ZorakXMB]

Hello, I was wondering how you would go about transferring playlists from one computer to another. I tried copying the playlist files from one computer to the other then just editing the directories (opened up the files in notepad and changed the original directory for all songs from "D:\Users\Computer1\Music\MusicBee\" to "C:\Users\Computer2\Music\MusicBee\"), however that did not work. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[donaldb627]

I do not have an answer, but I do have the same problem.  I am a DJ for KAFM 88.1 Grand Junction, CO.  I am currently using Foobar which is great, but lacking in just a few features that would make my job easier.  Then I discovered MusicBee.  I love it, and it is very feature rich, and configurable...BUT I am having a very difficult time trying to get my playlist to copy over with my music files. 
My process in Foobar is to collect all my music files together in a folder, create a playlist, organize my music, then save the playlist in the same folder as my music.  I then copy the folder (including m3u playlist) on a flash drive to the station and load it onto a computer with Foobar.  I then run Foobar, and load the playlist, and I am ready to go.
For some reason this is quite cryptic in MB.  Surely there must be a straight forward way of doing this??  I want to use MB as I like all the features and configurability options, but I still can quite figure out a way to do this consistently.  I will have to stick with Foobar until then.  I tried using the external playlist option, relative paths, etc... but nothing works consistently.  Someone must know a straight forward way of doing this.  I just want to copy a folder with a playlist  to another computer.

Don

[psychoadept]

Hi, welcome to the forum!  Are you running MusicBee portable or regular installation?

[donaldb627]

Regular installation

[psychoadept]

There are multiple approaches to this, but one is to sync the files directly to your flash drive (use the "create a sub-folder for each playlist" option when syncing).  If MB doesn't automatically recognize it as a device, you can set it as one from the computer node.  Or you can create a "virtual device" on your drive to sync your files to, and then copy them to the flash drive.  Also note that you can tell MusicBee to alter the track prefix when the playlist is synced, if you need to.

Another option - this is why I asked about your installation - is that you could just install MB portable on the flash drive, and run it from both computers.  You could have one library for the source computer, to use for syncing, and another library that accessed the synced files on the device when you reached the other computer.

You can also just export playlists, although I think that's harder to do and keep the paths right.  Right click on one and choose "export playlist".  Settings are configured in Preferences > Library, so you can alter the base path if you need to.

[psychoadept]

Hello, I was wondering how you would go about transferring playlists from one computer to another. I tried copying the playlist files from one computer to the other then just editing the directories (opened up the files in notepad and changed the original directory for all songs from "D:\Users\Computer1\Music\MusicBee\" to "C:\Users\Computer2\Music\MusicBee\"), however that did not work. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

For anyone coming across this later, the solution to this problem would be to use "Remap Music Folders" from D:\Users\Computer1\Music to C:\Users\Computer2\Music

[donaldb627]

Thanks psychoadept,  I played with exporting playlists, but the pathing gets confused.  It loads in the list, but doesn't know where the files are and you have to tell MB where the files are.  If I use the same path on one computer as the other, then this might work.  I will need to reset the path in preferences though each time I need to export, as I need use a different folder for each show.

Since I do use a USB for transferring to computers, placing a portable version of MB and working off the USB might be best solution. I'll have to play around with both options and see what happens.  I will report back my experience here for those who may have the same issue in the future.

D 

[donaldb627]

After using it in an actual production environment (on air) I had one problem, to which there was a work around.  First, I was successful using the portable version.  I went out and bought a 128G flash drive, and run my entire show (plus a years worth of music) from it.  All music is imported and playlist building is done on the flash drive.

The problem.  From the directory where I import my music, I build a playlist, and send it to Send To -> Playlist -> New Playlist.  When I do this, the Year (yyyy) that were entered in the Tags tab do not show up in the Playlists entry.  If I Send To -> Playlist -> External Playlist an m3u formatted playlist is saved.  The Year (yyyy) shows up just fine,  But in the Playlists ->nameofmyplaylist, no Year (yyyy) shows up.

So if my external playlist is viewed in MusicBees main window, the Year (yyyy) shows up, but if I use the native Playlist format in MusicBee, the Year (yyyy) doesn't show up in the main window.

[psychoadept]

This may be a dumb question, but have you added Year or YYYY from the columns menu?  (Right click > Set displayed fields)

[donaldb627]

Yes, In Set Displayed Fields Year(yyyy) has been added to the playlist and raw directory listing.
In the column headers of  the Playlist listing (as viewed in the main screen) Year(yyyy) is present, along with Title, Album, etc....  But the Year(yyyy) column is blank.  In all other headers the columns are populated with the correct information.  I have refreshed.

If I go to the directory tree, and view the .m3u file (or original directory data) in the folder, the Year shows up.  If I go to the Playlists directory, and view my playlist, the Year(yyyy) data is missing.  The playlist in the Playlists directory is the MusicBee format.  I just did it again (Send To -> Playlist -> <New Playlist>, and Year(yyyy) data is missing.

Is there a way to attach screen grabs?

[psychoadept]

Is there a way to attach screen grabs?

Upload wherever you prefer and post the URL here with [ img ] and [ /img ] (without the spaces) around it.  (imgur and probably some other sites will let you automatically copy a link in BB format)

[donaldb627]

There are two images, one showing the Years missing from MusicBee's native playlist, and the other, showing an exported m3u playlist with the Years showing.
The program is more than usable, but I just can't see the year in MB's native playlist format.

The img tags with a link to pictures are just above this sentence, but I don't see them in the posting?

[boroda]

did you remove spaces?

[psychoadept]

The img tags with a link to pictures are just above this sentence, but I don't see them in the posting?

You've done it right, you just put a link to the gallery rather than an image.  (The URL you use should end with the image file extension, such as .jpg)

It's a very strange problem.  The only thing I can suggest is try upgrading to the 3.0 beta and see if that helps.  If not, I would report this as a bug.