Author Topic: Use same music files for mediamonkey & musicbee  (Read 5389 times)

telstar

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Hello & thanks for looking!

I'm a newbie and I am looking to move my music from MediaMonkey to MusicBee.  I realize the applications are different, however, until I am acclimated to MusicBee I would like to use the same .mp3, etc. files that are situated in one folder.

I also realize, that the playlists are not directly importable to MusicBee, so I will need to go into MediaMonkey to capture the playlists.

Do you see any problem of my importing the mp3 songs into MB's library while keeping the same location for the mp3 files as MM?  I would still like to access the songs via MM until I am confident to dump MM.

Note:  I have been a lifetime user of MM for over 12 years and have had it regarding time spent from losing/recovering the database, to losing playlists and inclusion of spurious & incorrect artwork multiple (up to eight) into an mp3 file when all I wanted is one artwork saved,etc,etc.

Thanks for your insights.

frankz

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I did the same thing.  You can absolutely do this.

There is a script for MediaMonkey (read THIS ENTIRE THREAD - NO LIE - THE WHOLE THING if you're going to use it - there are a lot of updates) that will export your MediaMonkey library (your file list, play statistics and, I think, if I remember correctly, your playlists) to an iTunes format XML file.  MusicBee will read in this file to create your new library.

I did this.  It mostly works, but if you have a lot of non-ASCII characters in your file names and paths, it will screw up those file names and paths in the XML file.  There's no way around it unless you're some kind of python text encoding genius.  If most of your library has ASCII type file names, though, you will largely have your library as a whole imported without losing much of the history that you built up over 12 years.

At this point, you will look for dead links in your new MusicBee library and manually match these tracks up to the actual files on your hard drive.  These represent the files the MediaMonkey script was unable to export to the XML list correctly.

Now, you will scan your music folders manually to add any tracks the first two steps may have missed.  For some reason I had a lot of these IIRC.

I don't remember how I handled the playlists, but I think I manually exported these from MediaMonkey in m3u format and then imported them into MusicBee somehow. I think you can just put them into the MusicBee playlists folder?  I don't know.  If you do have to import them from m3u, you'll want to wind up having them in MusicBee's format for added functionality.

The key after this is to get used to using MusicBee as your primary.  Import your new tracks into MusicBee and organize them in MusicBee and, when you want to use MediaMonkey after this (you won't much) you only rescan the folders to add your new things that you handled first in MusicBee and never alter anything in MediaMonkey again.

I wish I had kept better track of what I did so I could make some kind of coherent guide, but this is the meat of it.

captain_paranoia

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Hello & thanks for looking!

I'm a newbie and I am looking to move my music from MediaMonkey to MusicBee.  I realize the applications are different, however, until I am acclimated to MusicBee I would like to use the same .mp3, etc. files that are situated in one folder.

Yes, you can do this quite happily. I have MM and MB installed on multiple PCs and a tablet. They all access the same media files on my NAS. I can make changes to files in either MM or MB, and they can be updated in the other.

This is possible because both applications maintain a database that is independent of the media files themselves. Provided you point both applications to the media files, they can both use them.

I have kept both, because the two applications have different capabilities. I much prefer the way MM handles the physical library, which is much less useful in MB. But MB is much better at finding good artwork and metadata. They both have an auto-DJ function, so I am happy using either to play music.

I have never bothered with exporting or sharing the database between either the individual applications, or the different instances of an application, because I'm really not that concerned about maintaining play counts, rating, etc. I care only about the music, not how many times or when I played it. If that does concern you, then frankz's advice may help you.

frankz

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My auto playlists are all based on the amount of time since I last played a song (to avoid listening to same archive songs over and over again) and date added (so I can weight playlists more heavily toward newer music), so I needed my play history on day one.

If you're into older music repeated over and over again and don't like to experience much music that's new, you may benefit from the flexibility of using multiple programs. I have music going constantly and want to hear newer things with older things that I haven't heard recently sprinkled in.

If I didn't have to sync to an iPod touch I would uninstall Media Monkey.  It's a library destroyer in my experience.

telstar

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Thanks for your insights.

I've started becoming familiar with Frankz first reply and am proceeding with the .XML script action.  This sophistication is, for me, like going through a dark doorway and not knowing whether there is a floor or cliff on the other side; no turning back  :(

Also, thanks captain_paranoia for your comments:)

======================================================

Caveat:  for years, I have used MM with a powered portable (fast) esata drive that I would use between the desktop & laptop using a command shortcut to path to the esata drive (MM's .db, .ini & music files).  Unfortunately, if I forgot to power up the esata drive (or power failure), MM would default to the C: drive & lose all communication to the esata drive; catastrophe.  As a result, after power-up to make a long story short, there were instances where the MM.db & .ini files would get written over by the C: drive's newly created .db & .ini.  Fortunately, in many cases I had recently backed up MM.db & .ini files and was able to recover most of my data.  I'd probably spend a half day trying to recover each failure; over 12 yrs this has been many days.  There were times (most recently) where I made many playlists which were lost & non-recoverable.  This was MM's straw that broke the camel's back.

I never understood why MM never built safeguards into MM to prevent this type of failure??  

Multiplying & spurious artwork infecting all the .mp3 files was another major issue I have.  In cases, up to eight artworks were included into a mp3 file when all I wanted was one album artwork. Nine out of ten times the incorrect artwork showed when a mp3 file would play.  None of MM scripts fixes worked 100%.  Also, there was no way to differentiate the display of good album versus a bogus artwork.  This problem has gone on for years.  (See all the complaints on MM forum.)  The only way for me to correct this was to manually go into each mp3 file and correct it.  This is not practical considering I have over 67,000 songs.

==================================================================

Would anyone know whether MusicBee's configuration would get trashed, like MM, if power failure or experiencing an un-powered esata drive?  I don't have USB3 ports on my PC's to take advantage of WD's Passports USB3 capability :(

Have you experience with placing the mp3 files & MusicBee configuration files on an external drive?  My preference is to not replace the esata, BUT I have a WD MY PASSPORT drive which does not require power.  (My only negative with this is the Passport will be slower.)

Again, thanks for your insights.  Awesome!

captain_paranoia

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My auto playlists are all based on the amount of time since I last played a song

I don't use playlists. Ever. I cannot be bothered, and I have too much music, and I am too indecisive.

That's why I use auto-DJ. The MM and MB versions both do a pretty good job of not playing repeats too often in any one sitting. IIRC, I have enough music to play non-stop for 18 months...

I don't recall ever having problems with my MM library. I keep the database on my local drive, with the media on my NAS. Even when I had the media on an externally-powered USB HDD, I never encountered problems; MM just greyed out the tracks it couldn't find on the missing disk. They re-appeared when I restarted with the disk in place/powered.

I also have a portable installation and library for my mp3 versions, that I can take, plug in to any PC, and run/play. That hasn't given me problems, either.

Maybe I've been lucky. Or maybe I set the option not to automatically delete media it couldn't find/automatically scan for changes; all my library updates are initiated manually, and all new media added in a particular folder 'NewlyRipped', and then moved to my main library when I'd finished 'processing' it.

I have never had issues with 'multiplying artwork'; I don't embed artwork in files (I don't need to; all my media playing options are happy to use folder artwork), but point to front and back cover art in the album folder. I scan all my own artwork, and have a script to arrange all that tidily, which I run after a ripping/scanning session.

I have run a number of the options in the AlbumArtTagger add-on (which has always worked flawlessly for me), to remove or extract all embedded artwork. Re-scanning the library then does a clean import of 'folder.jpg' and 'back_cover.jpg', which are the two images I use. MM knows to present folder.jpg as the primary image.

I started using MB when MM and my library database proved too big to run on a 1GB RAM win8.1 tablet; MB seems to manage a smaller footprint. As above, there are pros and cons (for me) to both programs. I still haven't really got to grips with how MB 'thinks'.

Freddy Barker

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My auto playlists are all based on the amount of time since I last played a song
I don't use playlists. Ever. I cannot be bothered, and I have too much music, and I am too indecisive.
That's why I use auto-DJ....
S
Don't right-off playlists out of hand if you've not experimented with them.
They can provide a powerful way of surprising you with a forgotten favorite track not heard for ages, also adding any 5 star rated gems, much more frequenly..... ;)
I like a good eclectic mix of genres, and play music, often all day, but not played a whole album all through since vinyl in the 80's.
MB, auto-playlist and auto-dj do a great job!

Best regards: Fred
Last Edit: January 09, 2018, 08:53:23 PM by Fred Barker [DIVERSITY FM]

frankz

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I use playlists because I mostly have full albums in my library but don't want to listen to every song off of an album pretty much ever.  So I weed out the dogs and add the gems to a giant playlist, which is actually a tacit library. Then I base auto playlists off of that "All" playlist using date added and date last played and listen on shuffle.  My total library time is 70 days. The pared-down playlist "All" is 23 days and grows by about 5 hours worth of music a week.

I basically want to only hear songs that were either added to the "All" playlist in the last three months or, if they're older than three months in the library, haven't been played in 6 months or more. If I'm in the mood for a particular genre or decade at that moment, I can drill down further.

I'm perfectly happy with MusicBee for these purposes and for library management purposes and wouldn't touch MediaMonkey with a pole if MusicBee could two-way sync to devices properly.  As it is MediaMonkey is a dedicated sync program for me with playlists I export from MB and into MM and then off to my various devices, adjusting the number of months since last played date for space available on the device.

captain_paranoia

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I have been using a media library for about ten years, and have complete albums; I do not download music, so I don't have any 'single track' items. I have never used a playlist, and, with Auto-DJ, have no desire to. I rarely play full albums, and, if I chose to, I'd just add the album to the 'Now Playing' list; no playlist needed. As I said, I simply cannot be bothered to create playlists, and that isn't going to change. I never use ratings, either; if auto-DJ pops up a track I don't like, I just hit >>.

I'm not saying this approach is suitable for everyone, or that anyone is 'wrong', and I know some people love to spend hours creating playlists, and rating tracks, and analysing play stats. That's just not my thing. It's one reason why I don't really use DLNA DMCs much, as none of them seem able to provide an auto-DJ function (I guess because they don't hold the database; the DMS does).

All this shows is that different people have different approaches to playing music, and a media player needs to support those different approaches. MM and MB both support my approach, to differing extents.
Last Edit: January 09, 2018, 07:45:05 PM by captain_paranoia

Freddy Barker

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All this shows is that different people have different approaches to playing music, and a media player needs to support those different approaches. MM and MB both support my approach, to differing extents.

Concur 100% - whatever floats your boat!
I must admit I like to tinker and try different options, but it's always about the music!
Best regards: Fred  ;)
P.S. Only 9 auto-playlist keep the whole show running with no intervention.