I really don't like iTunes
July 28, 2009 6:40 AM Subscribe
Annoying iTunes library question
I've seem to have spent a long time faffing around with getting mutliple copies of iTunes to work with one library file. I still haven;t really got it to work perfectly however: at the moment, I have ended up with this problem:
- My library is now set to my M:/ drive
- Most of my files are located at //server/music/
- The rest, which is a significant proportion of my files, are located at M:/
In reality, M:/ maps to //server/music so all the files are actually in the same place. In practice, if I edit the metadata (or reimport) for a file which is located at //server/music/ it creates a copy of the files "under" M:/ so I end up with two copies of the file. So changing an old album title duplicates everything.
Is there anyway to update the library so that all the files that point to //server/music, now point to M:/ instead?
The two options I can see are:
- the hack of editing the .xml file and deliberately corrupting the .itl file. I don't know whether this still works with the latest iTunes, plus it loses some metadata (and playlists? will they all be broken?)
- moving the iTunes music folder location to somewhere else and then consolidating the library to that folder (and then having to do the same thing again if, for various WHS reasons I want the files in the original directory). I assume this will keep all metadata and playlists but would take I reckon a year for my server to move 100+ GB of music. It takes a minute or two add a single album nowadays.
I guess the second option is the only way, but I just wanted to check if I was missing anything.
I've seem to have spent a long time faffing around with getting mutliple copies of iTunes to work with one library file. I still haven;t really got it to work perfectly however: at the moment, I have ended up with this problem:
- My library is now set to my M:/ drive
- Most of my files are located at //server/music/
- The rest, which is a significant proportion of my files, are located at M:/
In reality, M:/ maps to //server/music so all the files are actually in the same place. In practice, if I edit the metadata (or reimport) for a file which is located at //server/music/ it creates a copy of the files "under" M:/ so I end up with two copies of the file. So changing an old album title duplicates everything.
Is there anyway to update the library so that all the files that point to //server/music, now point to M:/ instead?
The two options I can see are:
- the hack of editing the .xml file and deliberately corrupting the .itl file. I don't know whether this still works with the latest iTunes, plus it loses some metadata (and playlists? will they all be broken?)
- moving the iTunes music folder location to somewhere else and then consolidating the library to that folder (and then having to do the same thing again if, for various WHS reasons I want the files in the original directory). I assume this will keep all metadata and playlists but would take I reckon a year for my server to move 100+ GB of music. It takes a minute or two add a single album nowadays.
I guess the second option is the only way, but I just wanted to check if I was missing anything.
This is off the top of my head, but maybe you could leave the music folder set to m: and consolidate the library.
That will probably duplicate all the stuff that is on //server/music, but it should bring all the metadata along and so forth.
Now, take \\server\music offline temporarily [leaving m: available] and use one of the various tools that strip dead tracks out of your iTunes Library.
posted by chazlarson at 8:33 AM on July 28, 2009
That will probably duplicate all the stuff that is on //server/music, but it should bring all the metadata along and so forth.
Now, take \\server\music offline temporarily [leaving m: available] and use one of the various tools that strip dead tracks out of your iTunes Library.
posted by chazlarson at 8:33 AM on July 28, 2009
When you start Itunes, hold down the shift key. That will allow you to point itunes to a different library. Put the library at //server/music or //server/itunes_library and point all your machines at that. (it seems like you did that, but I'm not sure).
Make sure you tell itunes to not keep your files organized - as it will reorganize them.
Moving 100 GB of stuff across the a 100Mb network should take roughly half an hour, give or take. At 10Mb, it will take awhile though.
It's worth saying that I have three machines using a remote shared directory like above and it's been largely trouble free. It might pay for you to back up everything and set it up from scratch.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:40 AM on July 28, 2009
Once upon a time ago I needed to move my entire iTunes library from my PC to my new Mac and absolutely had to keep my ratings, playlists, and everything else. If I remember correctly, this was all done with v6 though I accomplished the same thing on another PC running v8 so it should still work fine. Back up your .itl file beforehand. You should also try to make sure that you don't have any duplicates in the sense that two separate entries in iTunes point to the same file but different paths. I'm not sure how this would affect it, but it's best to be safe (or at least be aware that you're experimenting).
I wasn't aware that you had to corrupt the itl file.. I know that I never did. iTunes just seemed to recognize that lots of stuff changed and then corrected the .itl for me.
and playlists? will they all be broken?)
Nope. All of that remained in tact when I did it, though for some reason I seem to remember files with apostrophies not working right. It could be that they need to be urlified.. I don't remember though.
It would be best to scroll through a bunch of the songs to make sure they play alright, if too many fail, you can always just replace your hacked up XML and .itl with your backup copies and everything should be the just as it was. Good luck!
posted by vmrob at 2:28 PM on July 28, 2009
- If you have iTunes set to organize your music, disable that feature for now. You may renable it after everything is working again
- Close iTunes
- Backup the iTunes library files
- Assuming you're using a PC here, open up your itunes.xml file in wordpad (notepad won't do a find/replace all) and do a find/replace for all instances of " //server/music/" with " M:/" or whatever path you so desire. Make sure you include that last backslash with both of those. You don't want a filepath that looks like "M:iTunes%20Music/Anberlin/" nor do you want a filepath that looks like "M://iTunes%20Music/Anberlin/" If your new path has spaces in the file path, you should replace those with %20 (urlify it) otherwise you're going to get a lot of broken links.
- Do one last search for any instances of //server/music you have left in the XML file and correct them as needed (you shouldn't have any left... but that's why we created backups here, right?)
- Save and overwite the original XML
- Open up iTunes and iTunes should stall for a little while while it updates the .itl file with your new links.
I wasn't aware that you had to corrupt the itl file.. I know that I never did. iTunes just seemed to recognize that lots of stuff changed and then corrected the .itl for me.
and playlists? will they all be broken?)
Nope. All of that remained in tact when I did it, though for some reason I seem to remember files with apostrophies not working right. It could be that they need to be urlified.. I don't remember though.
It would be best to scroll through a bunch of the songs to make sure they play alright, if too many fail, you can always just replace your hacked up XML and .itl with your backup copies and everything should be the just as it was. Good luck!
posted by vmrob at 2:28 PM on July 28, 2009
Response by poster: Quick update for future reference/anybody else interested: I tried the method of just updating the xml file. This didn't work as the file just got overwritten again (presumably) by the itl file. In the end, I did a variant of vmrob's advice but (after backing up) deleted both the itl file and the xml file and then imported the backed up xml file as a playlist. [As, I have just found, is advised by Apple here]
This worked near perfectly with the exception for some reason that my playlists were empty and my podcasts were all marked as new. The latter was pretty easy for me to handle. The former I dealt with by editing the original backed up xml file to make a smaller one just with the playlist info in and then reimported that.
The only thing then is the "Date Added" is changed to the current date. However as "Date Modified" is untouched and this is generally loosely the same as "Date Added" i can live with that. Play counts and ratings are fine.
posted by Hartster at 1:57 AM on July 29, 2009
This worked near perfectly with the exception for some reason that my playlists were empty and my podcasts were all marked as new. The latter was pretty easy for me to handle. The former I dealt with by editing the original backed up xml file to make a smaller one just with the playlist info in and then reimported that.
The only thing then is the "Date Added" is changed to the current date. However as "Date Modified" is untouched and this is generally loosely the same as "Date Added" i can live with that. Play counts and ratings are fine.
posted by Hartster at 1:57 AM on July 29, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
I realize that you're exaggerating here but, for the record, I moved roughly 25 GB from one external drive to another recently. Took around 3 hours.
I use a Mac.
posted by philip-random at 7:26 AM on July 28, 2009