Streaming Mt-daapd to Soundbridge – iTunes playlists problem

[Anonymous]

Just hooked up a new Soundbridge M1001 and it’s pulling artist/album/song info down from the NSLU2 running Mt-daapd just fine. Songs are all pretty much playing fine.

I have ALL of my 12,000 song library encoded as ALAC (which is , IIRC). I don’t know if this may be part of my issue.

OK, so I have Firefly (web config) set up to “Process m3u files”. Now, when I go to the Smart Playlists window in the web config, all of my iTunes xml playlists show up. So do the 2 Smart Playlists I made in mt-daapd.

Anyway. All of the Smart Playlists that I make in Firefly (web config) run just fine on the Soundbridge.

BUT: All of my old iTunes playlists that mt-daapd has picked up successfully will not play thru the Soundbridge. They list on the Soundbridge “playlists” menu, but if I select one and play, it gives me a “No songs found” message.

Anyone know of the top of their head what might be the problem? Thanks in advance.

[rpedde]

@alan_birch wrote:

Anyone know of the top of their head what might be the problem? Thanks in advance.

Can’t translate the path from your xml file to the path on the slug.

Either the file structure on the slug is different than the file structure that the xml file was based on, or the xml file isn’t directly above the music files in the path heirarchy.

For example… say your iTunes has an entry for:

c:musicministrypsalm 691 Jesus built my hotrod.mp3

And you copied it to the slug as:

/mnt/hdd/data/public/mp3/ministry/psalm 69/01 Jesus build my hotrod.mp3

Then everything would be okay so long as the xml file was in the mp3 folder. It would know that c:music should be replaced with /mnt/hdd/data/public/mp3

If you made a directory called “playlists” or something, and threw the xml file in there, where it wasn’t directly above the music, it won’t work.

So those are really the two things that have to happen. Same structure. xml above the music.

— Ron

[Anonymous]

OK, that’s starting to make sense. Thanks.
I had my music originally stored on my desktop computer at G:Music Library. So the path to a particular song would be:
G:Music LibraryArtistAlbumSong
and then I had my iTunes folder at:
G:Music LibraryiTunes
So it sounds like I need to rework the Slug filing and then manually edit (find and replace) in the xml file.
I don’t have time to do it right now, but I’ll get into it later and post results.
Thanks again for the clue…

[rpedde]

@alan_birch wrote:

OK, that’s starting to make sense. Thanks.
I had my music originally stored on my desktop computer at G:Music Library. So the path to a particular song would be:
G:Music LibraryArtistAlbumSong
and then I had my iTunes folder at:
G:Music LibraryiTunes
So it sounds like I need to rework the Slug filing and then manually edit (find and replace) in the xml file.
I don’t have time to do it right now, but I’ll get into it later and post results.
Thanks again for the clue…

Okay, so mt-daapd is running on the slug, right? And it’s a nightly build, right?

You copied “g:music library” right across to the slug, as /share/hdd/data/music or something, right? And now its something like:

/share/hdd/data/music/artist/album/song.m4a

Right?

If so, as long as the “Artist/Album/Song” is the same heirarchy as it was on the G drive, then you should be okay. Just copy the .xml file to the “music” folder — the folder right above “Artist”, it should pick it up okay.

— Ron.

Oh. Or is the G drive mapped to your slug?

If so, you could symlink /share/hdd/data/Music Library/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml to /share/hdd/data/Music Library/iTunes Music Library.xml

If that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

OK, I’ll try that instead. Sounds easier. I’ll report back.

[Anonymous]

OK…
I moved my OLD iTunes library XML file that was located at:
/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml

(mind you, when the XML file was here, all of my playlists showed up in the Firefly Web Admin page AND on the Soundbridge, but the Soundbridge wouldn’t pick any songs up off of the playlists)

Anyway, I did a straight cut and paste of this file to here:
/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/iTunes Music Library.xml
So now this file sits on top of where all of the song files are
(they are located like this:
/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/Artist/Album/Song)

BUT
the problem is now the playlists do not show up in the Firefly Web Admin page anymore. This is after I performed a “Start Scan” and a “Start Full Scan”.

I wonder what next.

[rpedde]

@alan_birch wrote:

OK…
I moved my OLD iTunes library XML file that was located at:
/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml

(mind you, when the XML file was here, all of my playlists showed up in the Firefly Web Admin page AND on the Soundbridge, but the Soundbridge wouldn’t pick any songs up off of the playlists)

Anyway, I did a straight cut and paste of this file to here:
/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/iTunes Music Library.xml
So now this file sits on top of where all of the song files are
(they are located like this:
/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/Artist/Album/Song)

BUT
the problem is now the playlists do not show up in the Firefly Web Admin page anymore. This is after I performed a “Start Scan” and a “Start Full Scan”.

I wonder what next.

And the server is actually running on the slug, right?

Can you set up the server with a debug level of 9, truncate logs set to yes, and a logfile specified?

Then make it do a full scan, then shut it down, zip and email me the log file at [email protected]?

I don’t think I understand what’s up, and I might not be able to without being able to see the whole paths and stuff.

Something isn’t right.

— Ron

[Anonymous]

Ron, first I want to thank you for personally helping me out with this.

I think I need to step back and pause. Because…
I fired up the Firefly Web Admin this morning and now all of my playlists show up on the web admin page.
So I fired up the Roku and the playlists also showed up.
So I tried playing on of the playlists and it found all of the songs!
So I guess that’s that, right?

Now a new question:
Theoretically, I should be able to open up iTunes, make a new playlist, and then eventually, that will propagate down to mt-daapd and then down to the Roku, right? Similarly, if I delete a playlist in iTunes, that should also delete from mt-dappd, right?

Anyway, I’m going to play around with iTunes and see if I can get a new playlist down to the Roku.

[rpedde]

@alan_birch wrote:

So I guess that’s that, right?

Sure sounds right to me. 🙂

Now a new question:
Theoretically, I should be able to open up iTunes, make a new playlist, and then eventually, that will propagate down to mt-daapd and then down to the Roku, right? Similarly, if I delete a playlist in iTunes, that should also delete from mt-dappd, right?

I’d think probably not. I’d think that perhaps it’s getting iTunes from the copy/pasted one, so that’s not getting updated. I didn’t ever figure out if you are copying files from your windows box, of if the drive is mapped from your windows box, and your “live” iTunes Music Library.xml is the one at /share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml.

If so, then you are out of luck, as it needs to be in /share/hdd/data/public/Music Library, right? If that’s the case, then you need to symlink the “live” one to the one in Music Library. Something like this:

ln -s “/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml” “/share/hdd/data/public/Music Library”

from a terminal on the slug should do it.

— Ron

Anyway, I’m going to play around with iTunes and see if I can get a new playlist down to the Roku.[/quote]

[Anonymous]

Sorry, Ron, not to clarify.
I’ve copied and pasted all of my songs onto a drive attached to the Slug and going from there. I know so little about LINUX that mapping symlinks is waaaay beyond me. And I’m not really interested in that anyway.

What I am trying to do is get my music from my desktop down onto a lower powered, always-on server and then streaming through the house with the Roku serving as the front end. It’s easy enough to use that the wifey can feel comfortable with it.

I’d like to control detail of the music library with iTunes. I’ve changed my iTunes around to use the library saved on the Slug. So I’m going on faith that as I add new songs, create and change playlists, etc. etc. that mt-daapd will pick it all up and roll it down to the Roku.

If that’s how it all ends up working out, then I will have successfully “digitized” all of my family’s music and implemented a solution that everyone can feel comfortable with. For less than $400. Joy!

[Author]

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