Author Topic: Imported Playlists - Finding Matching Tracks  (Read 1535 times)

Mauser69

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I asked about this three years ago when I was trying to do it with XSPF formatted playlists (which can support this), but that standard does not seem to be fully implemented in MB.  With the new MB 3.4 I was hoping this capability would be available, but I still cannot find a way.

Here is what I want to do - Import a playlist from another system and then have MB match the Artist/Album/Track to my library.

It is a relatively simple matter to manually open the imported playlist, select a track and manually locate it in the current library, even if the track is stored in a different format (e.g. playlist originally referenced .mp3 file, but manually matching it with a .flac file updates the imported playlist).  Although this is a simple process, it is obviously tedious for hundreds or thousands of tracks.

So is there anyway to automate that re-linking of the playlist track to the current library?  I tried using the "Send To File Rescan" function, which sounded promising, but did not work (maybe because the extensions did not match?).

phred

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From what I can tell, XSPF is not supported by MB. I've actually never heard of it until I read your post. After doing a quick Internet search, it appears that XSPF is recognized by Unix audio players. The one Windows player that supports XSPF is VLC.
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Mauser69

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Actually, XSPF is an option for exporting playlists in MB, it is just not correctly implemented (the is no option available to omit the file name).  MB does also import XSPF playlists, but does not properly process those either.

But I am not expecting that to get fixed now if there was no interest in it back in 2018.  Now I just want to know if there is any way to automate the re-linking of an imported playlist with the current library using the Artist/Album/Track information the same way that you can do it manually.

frankz

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If the files are organized in the same way in the new location as they were in the old location (i.e. it was something like C:\Music\<Artist>\<Album>\<Title> in the original location and is D:\NewMusic\<Artist>\<Album>\<Title> in the new location), then you can relink the paths from old to new in bulk using File->Library->Relink Music File Paths. (In the above case, C:\Music would go at the left and D:\NewMusic would go at the right).

If the way the files are organized is unrelated between old and new, then you cannot.

Either way, each day is a gift!

phred

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Actually, XSPF is an option for exporting playlists in MB
Either that's a relatively new addition (within the past few years) or I just never needed it and hadn't noticed. Sorry for the misleading information.
Last Edit: February 23, 2021, 06:57:16 PM by phred
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

hiccup

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But I am not expecting that to get fixed now if there was no interest in it back in 2018.

Nobody will shoot you if you decide to bump an almost three year old wish.

Mauser69

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If the files are organized in the same way in the new location as they were in the old location (i.e. it was something like C:\Music\<Artist>\<Album>\<Title> in the original location and is D:\NewMusic\<Artist>\<Album>\<Title> in the new location), then you can relink the paths from old to new in bulk using File->Library->Relink Music File Paths. (In the above case, C:\Music would go at the left and D:\NewMusic would go at the right).

If the way the files are organized is unrelated between old and new, then you cannot.

Either way, each day is a gift!
Thanx, my libraries are organized exactly the same, and if the file formats/names are the same on both, then importing a playlist with the base mapping changed works just fine.

But the problem here is that if the file formats are different (e.g. one library is .mp3 and the other one .flac), then the file names are technically different no matter how the library is organized.  However, if I manually locate the file from the playlist (as prompted by the software), then MB has no problem at all substituting the new file name for the old one, so I really hoped that there was an automated way to accomplish the same thing.  It is not a change to the library, just a simple change to the playlist.

Oh well, I guess it's not possible, so I'll just forget about it for another few years.  Thanks for your thoughts anyway.

frankz

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Why not just change the file extension in the playlist (Search / Replace) before importing it?  Isn't it just a text file?
Last Edit: February 23, 2021, 10:31:11 PM by frankz

Mauser69

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Thanks for that suggestion - it might help some.  Unfortunately, although one of my libraries is almost totally MP3, the primary archive library is a mix of multiple types of files.  It is probably more flac than others, so a mass change might help a lot, but there would still be some tedious editing at the end.

I might be better off to just dump the mp3 library all together and rely on the conversions during sync that MB can do.  I guess I'll have to start doing some testing to see how much more time that takes for a large job.  The only other thing I would loose is the extra feeling of security I get by keeping the primary archive on a separate computer away from possible mistakes or other carelessness in day-to-day activities.  I guess my RAID NAS with regularly scheduled backups would give me enough warm fuzzies to replace the two separate libraries.  I hate having to re-think all this stuff after I thought I was just comfortably numb.