Migrating iTunes playlists

[mpuckett]

First off THANKS Ron for all the work you have done. Awesome job. I’ve been trying to get free of iTunes for some time now and this is the first implementation of daap that works well enough to do so that I have found thus far.

Now my question… is it possible to migrate my playlists from iTunes? My Library is about 5000 songs and 25GB and I have about 100 playlists, about half of which are smart. I plan to now migrate my entire library from my Mac running iTunes to my Linux box running Firefly and I want to retain my playlists. I put the .xml file in my mp3 directory and it found it and put it into the db and exported the playlists, but due to path name changes of course no songs were found. What is the recommended way to fix this? Run the .xml file through a sed script and replace the pathnames? Replicate the Mac path on the Linux box? How are the smart lists handled, will I need to toss these and re-implement on Firefly? If I correct the song pathnames, will the playlists be imported correctly?

My setup is a Linux box running FC1 with Apple’s mDNS responder. I also have Ubuntu 6.06 with Avahi that I am migrating over to. I first brought up the stable version and transferred some .mp3’s and .aac’s and these worked perfectly serving to a Windows iTunes, the Mac iTunes, and my Roku M1000. I then pulled down the latest nightly and rebuilt and and was able to do .ogg transcoding and web streaming to all three clients perfectly. I haven’t yet tested .flac transcoding but I’m confident that will work just as well.

Once again, kudos to you on some great software!

-mikep

[rpedde]

@mpuckett wrote:

First off THANKS Ron for all the work you have done. Awesome job. I’ve been trying to get free of iTunes for some time now and this is the first implementation of daap that works well enough to do so that I have found thus far.

Now my question… is it possible to migrate my playlists from iTunes? My Library is about 5000 songs and 25GB and I have about 100 playlists, about half of which are smart. I plan to now migrate my entire library from my Mac running iTunes to my Linux box running Firefly and I want to retain my playlists. I put the .xml file in my mp3 directory and it found it and put it into the db and exported the playlists, but due to path name changes of course no songs were found. What is the recommended way to fix this? Run the .xml file through a sed script and replace the pathnames? Replicate the Mac path on the Linux box? How are the smart lists handled, will I need to toss these and re-implement on Firefly? If I correct the song pathnames, will the playlists be imported correctly?

My setup is a Linux box running FC1 with Apple’s mDNS responder. I also have Ubuntu 6.06 with Avahi that I am migrating over to. I first brought up the stable version and transferred some .mp3’s and .aac’s and these worked perfectly serving to a Windows iTunes, the Mac iTunes, and my Roku M1000. I then pulled down the latest nightly and rebuilt and and was able to do .ogg transcoding and web streaming to all three clients perfectly. I haven’t yet tested .flac transcoding but I’m confident that will work just as well.

Once again, kudos to you on some great software!

-mikep

The path stuff it should find on its own, so long as:

1. The file names are stored as UTF-8 on the hard drive. This should be the default if you are using samba 3 or better (which I imagine you are).

2. The file system is a mirror of the existing layout.

Once you have that, put the “iTunes Music Library.xml” file in the directory directly above the music. So, for example, if you have a layout like:

Music

+- Ministry

+- The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste

+- Metallica

+- Motorhead

then the “Music” folder is a good place to put it, as it is above all the music. Don’t put it off to the side or anything, but it right above all the music, but still inside the music directory.

It searches from the point of the playlist down.

So if your file path was:

c:someplace elsemusicministrythe mind is a terrible thing to taste1 – thieves.mp3

And you put the xml file in the Music share on your server (which might correspond to /mnt/mp3/music, then the server will try:

/mnt/mp3/music/01 – thieves.mp3
and
/mnt/mp3/music/the mind is a terrible thing to taste/01 – thieves.mp3
and
/mnt/mp3/music/ministry/the mind is a terrible thing to taste/01 – thieves.mp3

and finally find it. See, it keeps walking backwards on the “old” path (converting slashes) and looks for that under the directory where the xml file is.

So it tries pretty hard to find it.

So that’s the long explanation.

🙂

— Ron

[mpuckett]

@rpedde wrote:

The path stuff it should find on its own, so long as:

1. The file names are stored as UTF-8 on the hard drive. This should be the default if you are using samba 3 or better (which I imagine you are).

2. The file system is a mirror of the existing layout.

Once you have that, put the “iTunes Music Library.xml” file in the directory directly above the music. So, for example, if you have a layout like:

Music

+- Ministry

+- The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste

+- Metallica

+- Motorhead

then the “Music” folder is a good place to put it, as it is above all the music. Don’t put it off to the side or anything, but it right above all the music, but still inside the music directory.

It searches from the point of the playlist down.

So if your file path was:

c:someplace elsemusicministrythe mind is a terrible thing to taste1 – thieves.mp3

And you put the xml file in the Music share on your server (which might correspond to /mnt/mp3/music, then the server will try:

/mnt/mp3/music/01 – thieves.mp3
and
/mnt/mp3/music/the mind is a terrible thing to taste/01 – thieves.mp3
and
/mnt/mp3/music/ministry/the mind is a terrible thing to taste/01 – thieves.mp3

and finally find it. See, it keeps walking backwards on the “old” path (converting slashes) and looks for that under the directory where the xml file is.

So it tries pretty hard to find it.

So that’s the long explanation.

🙂

— Ron

Ron,

Ok, a couple of points then…. 1. I am not sharing this particular filesystem with Samba. This is a journaled ext3 filesystem if that makes any difference. 2. So the pathname is a backwalking algorithm then? There will be a point in the Library which will be replicated as I copy the files over as things are stored in Artist/Album/Songs I believe but the mount points will most certainly be very different. 3. What about the smart playlists? Must those be manually recreated?

-mikep

[rpedde]

@mpuckett wrote:

Ok, a couple of points then…. 1. I am not sharing this particular filesystem with Samba. This is a journaled ext3 filesystem if that makes any difference.

Just so long as the filenames get created as utf-8, you’ll be fine — however you do that.

2. So the pathname is a backwalking algorithm then? There will be a point in the Library which will be replicated as I copy the files over as things are stored in Artist/Album/Songs I believe but the mount points will most certainly be very different.

Should be fine. Just dump the .xml file in the topmost common directory.

3. What about the smart playlists? Must those be manually recreated?

Nope, they come over as well, although they are no longer smart — they are “staticized” at the time of the transfer. If you want to make them smart again, you’ll have to recreate those using the web interface and the new playlist language and all.

The xml file has a list of the files covered by the smart playlist, but the actual playlist itself is some kind of binary blob that I don’t think anyone has decoded, so it isn’t (afaik) yet possible to convert the playlist in a smart way.

— Ron

[mpuckett]

3. What about the smart playlists? Must those be manually recreated?

Nope, they come over as well, although they are no longer smart — they are “staticized” at the time of the transfer. If you want to make them smart again, you’ll have to recreate those using the web interface and the new playlist language and all.

Ok, got it, thanks.

The xml file has a list of the files covered by the smart playlist, but the actual playlist itself is some kind of binary blob that I don’t think anyone has decoded, so it isn’t (afaik) yet possible to convert the playlist in a smart way.

🙂 Yeah, I noticed these binary blobs when I was looking at the .xml file myself and wondered if anyone had made any sense of them yet!

My smart playlists are pretty simple in any case and though a little tedious shouldn’t be a big problem. It was all the hand created ones that I would have hated to lose.

Thanks so much.

-mikep

[Author]

Posts