Importing/Exporting Playlists

Iconic

I have my music on a couple of computers and an MP3 player.

I know how to create playlists but when I try to export them they do not work. I know why because the file path is different!

So how do I create a playlist thats accepted by any machine provided the correct music is there already?

ingresman

I presume your talking about a .m3u file (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U) ??
I would think you can't get a universal file as the physical mp3 file will be in differenct locations depending on the player.
However if your a bit of a coder you might be able to come up with a translation program to "massage" the paths ?, althogh if it something like an ipod they have the files in a "secret" structure which isn't thay easy to work with.

Iconic

ingresman wrote: »

I presume your talking about a .m3u file (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U) ??
I would think you can't get a universal file as the physical mp3 file will be in differenct locations depending on the player.
However if your a bit of a coder you might be able to come up with a translation program to "massage" the paths ?, althogh if it something like an ipod they have the files in a "secret" structure which isn't thay easy to work with.

I use Media Monkey and it tells you how to export playlists.However when I exported it to the other computer it didn't work. What am I doing wrong?

'To export specific .m3u files:
Select the Tracks you wish to export from a Playlist
From the File menu click Export to Playlist or right-click Send to .m3u Playlist
Choose a folder and filename (xxxxx.m3u) for the Playlist
The Playlist will be saved as xxxxx.m3u, which can then be opened by another media player.'

ingresman

If you look at the contents of the .mu3 file you'll see it's full of lines like:

#EXTINF:123,Sample title
C:\Documents and Settings\I\My Music\Sample.mp3

The c:\document... etc is a physical location on the computer that create the original file. In this case it was probabbly windows media playey.
No suppose you transfererd all you music file to a device (lets call it a iPud) and it saves its files like this:
music/hiphop/sample3.mp3 - you would need to edit the .m3u file to use this values rather the the c:\documents and settings one.
Now I see that webmonkey allows you to sync up this files but only if it's a device that it supports. Look here http://www.mediamonkey.com/device-plugins.htm
Note that you can can't use gen 6 ipods with it (it encrypts its internal database) which stops you using new ipods like classics.
Final questions: have you actualy copied the .mp3 files to the other
machines ?
What music players and PC players are you trying to use ?

Iconic

Many thanks for your help.
I sync all my mp3's (using MS Synctoy) between each machine so they are all on each machine but in different locations.

The three machines are XP computer/Vista computer and Archos 405.

The music on the XP computer is located \Music\Artist\Sample.mp3

The music on the Vista machine is located C:\Documents and Settings\I\My Music\Artist\Sample.mp3 Media Monkey picks up the music from these locations.

I am not sure of the Archos structure as I have only tried to export a playlist from the XP machine to the Vista machine without success.

ingresman

Ok, lets take the archos out of the picture then!.
On XP stuff goes under documents and settings\username I presume from your example you log in as I
Under Vista it's kept under a folder called c:\users\username e.g. c:\users\I
Can you confirm that the files have actualy moved to the correct directories for WMP to pick up. I wonder of you need to re-sync WMP so it knows where the files are (it has an internal index).
If you look in WMP you can find where it's expecting to see the musica files. Try tools->options->rip tab

Iconic

ingresman wrote: »

However if your a bit of a coder you might be able to come up with a translation program to "massage" the paths ?,

That's what I needed to do!

It's no problem Exporting/Importing the playlists between MM and WMP on the same machine.

For exporting the M3U files to another machine I have found out they can be opened in Word and using the 'replace with' command I have managed to sort it out.

Thanks for your help.