Playlist-Copy and Playlist-Show

[Istirion]

Hello Forum-Users,

first, MusicBee is a great piece of Coding! I really enjoy working with it.

But let's come straight to my questions, maybe someone can help me. Your help is really appreciated. Actually I think I'm only missing a point or two somewhere in the (sync) options.

Status quo: After I tagged my music with MusicBrains, every song is correctly named and is stored away in diverse folders, sub-folders and so on. For example there is a top folder called "Music", in it I will find "ABBA", in this one I'll find the different albums like "The Complete Singles Collection" and in there a file "ABBA - Chiquita.mp3".

As I'm using music mostly to generate a background mood for our regular games evenings I just switch to the playlist I like and let MusicBee do the rest. Works great. But with around 16k songs I have a lot of playlists and a lot of songs which are not in any playlist right now...

1) Is there an option to show only songs in the main menu which are already in any playlist without opening the playlists one by one. And vice versa, so only songs which are in no playlist should be shown. The best solution would be to show all songs in the main menu, but mark those in playlists with a dot/sign/different color/whatever. An option like this would clearly help me working with my big music collection.

2) The second question seems easy to solve and I think it's already implemented. I want to copy parts of my music from my PC to different playing devices, for example a tablet. So I'd like to choose the playlist which I want to copy, press a button and copy all music files in this playlist from A to B. Keeping the exactly same folder structure on the new device. After that I'd like to copy the playlist itself and device B would be a smaller clone of device A concerning the music.

Thanks for your help!
Istirion

   

[phred]

1) Is there an option to show only songs in the main menu which are already in any playlist without opening the playlists one by one. And vice versa, so only songs which are in no playlist should be shown. The best solution would be to show all songs in the main menu, but mark those in playlists with a dot/sign/different color/whatever. An option like this would clearly help me working with my big music collection.

The easiest way to do this would be to set up a 'highlighting rule. See this thread:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=21737.0
and this from the Wiki:
http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Highlighting

Note that this only works for static playlists. If you have auto-playlists, the highlighting rule will not pick them up.

2) The second question seems easy to solve and I think it's already implemented. I want to copy parts of my music from my PC to different playing devices, for example a tablet. So I'd like to choose the playlist which I want to copy, press a button and copy all music files in this playlist from A to B. Keeping the exactly same folder structure on the new device. After that I'd like to copy the playlist itself and device B would be a smaller clone of device A concerning the music.

Do a forum search for 'virtual device' and you should find some hints on how to accomplish this. I don't use virtual devices, but many others do. Perhaps someone will jump in here with suggestions.

[CritterMan]

2) The second question seems easy to solve and I think it's already implemented. I want to copy parts of my music from my PC to different playing devices, for example a tablet. So I'd like to choose the playlist which I want to copy, press a button and copy all music files in this playlist from A to B. Keeping the exactly same folder structure on the new device. After that I'd like to copy the playlist itself and device B would be a smaller clone of device A concerning the music.

Phred is correct, the easiest way to sync to a tablet is to use a virtual device or intermediate device. Then, you just copy the contents of the virtual device to your tablet. But, you might be able to sync straight to it. Check all three options:


Option 1) Use a removable flash drive. This will be an intermediate device, but only used to transport the files to your tablet.
-To set up the sync, press Ctrl+o and click Devices on the left. Select the drive, then click Configure.
-On the Music tab, check Synchronize Playlists and then select Selected Playlists Only.
-Check the box next to the playlist(s) you want to sync.
-Click the Settings tab on the left. Under Media Storage > Storage Path, select Preserve Folders and Filenames.
-Give it a test sync and make sure you're getting the results you expected.
-Copy the contents to your tablet.

Option 2) Use a folder on your computer as a virtual device just like you would using a removable flash drive as above.
-To create the virtual device, press Ctrl+o and click Devices on the left. Click the Add Virtual Device button and create a folder to use as a virtual device to sync to. Then, follow the instructions from Option 1 to set what to sync. You can copy the contents from the folder to your tablet when the sync is complete.

Option 3) If you can mount your tablet's storage to your computer like you would an Android phone, you can just sync like you would for Option 1. Make sure the path you set points to the folder on your tablet where you want the music synced to.

[Istirion]

Not only a great program, but also a great community! Thank you for your fast answers, both of your suggestions worked perfectly!

Thank you!
Istirion

[Istirion]

Hello, it's me again!

I just migrated my music library to a Win10 Home 64 Bit System with the newest patches, installed MusicBee 3.1.6345 (which also should be the newest version) and made it a clone of the old one with exactly the same settings. My highlighting rule is "Playlist is not null", like phred suggested. It worked on my "old" system, but it doesn't show highlighted songs on my new one.

I tried running MB as administrator - fail.
Deleting the "MusicBeeLibrary.pidx" - fail.
Restarting Windows - fail.
No highlighting anymore.

What is my mistake? Can you please help me again?

Thank you very much in advance!
Istirion

[boroda]

have you cloned playlists as well? because mb will check if song belongs to any playlist on *local* system.

[Istirion]

I think I just cloned them, yes. Can you explain your suggestion a little bit and how to fix?

[Istirion]

Aha, I found my mistake. Everything works as intended. Boroda's hint did the trick!

Thank you very much!