How-to: Windows iTunes playlists the easy way

[cornelius]

My scenario is that I backup my iTunes music library folder from my Windows desktop PC to the \music folder on my Disk Station. I wanted to get all my iTunes playlists working in Audio Station without recreating them all via the web interface.

1. Go download the iTunes Export freeware (GUI version): http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/
2. Run the executable. One the first screen select your iTunes library XML file if it's not already populated.
3. On the 2nd screen select which playlists you want to export.
4. On the 3rd screen keep all default settings except for the following settings:

Output Directory: \\your_Disk_Station_name_here\music\playlists
Playlist type: M3U
Override default Prefix: checked
New Prefix: ..\


Open up the Audio Station web interface and all your iTunes playlists should come up.

[parisbyday]

I confirm it works fine. I used format EXT for export.

Jean.

[molchew]

I can not get this to work. file path in M3U file allways points to Mapped drive not Disk station name see below
S:\iTunes\iTunes Music\The Beautiful South\Carry On Up The Charts_ The Best Of The\01 Song For Whoever.mp3
you mention Override default prefix: checked, but I can not find this.
if I replace the default prefix with ..\ it still points the file to the s drive.

Any ideas.

[parisbyday]

In my case :
DiskStation209> pwd
/volume1/music
DiskStation209> ls -l
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 Nov 12 20:11 iTunes -> /volume1/musique/iTunes
lrwxrwxrwx 1 admin users 26 Nov 14 12:59 playlist -> /volume1/musique/playlist/
all music itunes dir is in /volume1/musique/iTunes
all playslist are in /volume1/musique/playlist/
I put my musique in /volume1/music a symlink to volume1/musique.
When i tried to index using command synoindex -a, it does not index properly.
The only way i found, was through the web interface.
to visualize the database :
DiskStation> su admin
$ /usr/syno/pgsql/bin/pg_dumpall >/volume1/public/postgres.sql

Look at /var/log/messages for index failures, i have seen case where mp3 make stop the indexing process.

If reindexing is permently in red, forever :
DiskStation> killall synoindexd
DiskStation> rm /var/spool/syno_indexing_queue.tmp
DiskStation> rm /var/spool/syno_indexing_queue

Jean.

[bagn]

I can not get this to work. file path in M3U file allways points to Mapped drive not Disk station name see below
S:\iTunes\iTunes Music\The Beautiful South\Carry On Up The Charts_ The Best Of The\01 Song For Whoever.mp3
you mention Override default prefix: checked, but I can not find this.
if I replace the default prefix with ..\ it still points the file to the s drive.

Any ideas.

Make sure you use forward slashes: /

Also, I was able to browse to my disk station/music/playlist under Output Directory and that worked (entering the DS name did not work for me). Under Music Folder (Prefix) I entered ../

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[parisbyday]

Hello,

Are u able to index only one folder or one file.
When i try with command synoindex -a, the path added is not good.
i dont want to reindex everything, it takes 3 hours. Just 1 file.
It would be nice if synology could improve this.

Jean.

[MrDNA]

I can not get this to work. file path in M3U file allways points to Mapped drive not Disk station name see below
S:\iTunes\iTunes Music\The Beautiful South\Carry On Up The Charts_ The Best Of The\01 Song For Whoever.mp3
you mention Override default prefix: checked, but I can not find this.
if I replace the default prefix with ..\ it still points the file to the s drive.

Any ideas.

Make sure you use forward slashes: /

Also, I was able to browse to my disk station/music/playlist under Output Directory and that worked (entering the DS name did not work for me). Under Music Folder (Prefix) I entered ../

Hope this helps. Good luck.

hello,

no way for me... I try every thing but I still have the old path... Can someone take a picture of the options ? Because i've got the french version and i can't access the english one... And translation is relatively bad...

Thanks in advance !! I keep on finding a solution !!

[Cobalt19]

Can someone tell me what 'indexing' means in this context of iTunes and Audio Station?

Thanks

[MrDNA]

hello,

no way for me... I try every thing but I still have the old path... Can someone take a picture of the options ? Because i've got the french version and i can't access the english one... And translation is relatively bad...

Thanks in advance !! I keep on finding a solution !!

Hey,

I emailed the creator of iTunes Export. And if your music is not organized by Itunes (in the iTunes music folder), the replacement of the prefix doesn't work... He knows that, maybe a future version can fix this (that's what i asked him !!)... I'll tell you whenever i have another answer !

[DS508_customer]

<...> Can someone take a picture of the options ? <...>

Using 'iTunes Export Version: 2.1.1 (12/7/2009)' on Windows XP:

[MrDNA]

thanks for the pic

but I had the answer contacting Eric Daugherty the creator of the software (see my last post )

[MrBlue]

Hello everybody,

I think I figured it out - at least for me this works: I created a M3U playlists with audiostation and compared it to the list created by itunesexport (I'm working on a leopard mac and the latest 209-diskstation firmware).

In iTunesexport I set the "output directory" to: "/Volumes/music/playlists" (I had to take "Volumes" instead of the name of my diskstation)
and the "music folder Prefix" to: "../iTunes/" (watch closely if in your path to iTunes if it is written with a capital letter "T" in the middle, in my case this was the whole deal!!!)

The result was in the M3U-playlist that the path was (you can open the M3U-list with the regulare apple texteditor to check yourself): "../iTunes/Music/Air/Moon Safari/05 Talisman.mp3" which worked then for me - it's then the same path logic as audiostation uses natively.

Btw, the regular path to my iTunes music directory on my diskstation is: "/name_of_my_diskstation/music/iTunes/music/" after I changed in iTunes the path under settings of the music location to my diskstation and consolidated it afterwards.

It even worked as a "M3UExt" Playlist format and "All Types" as File Types in the iTunesExport tool!

Good luck everybody!!!
Cheers!

PS: Now the diskstation is really awesome and the next thing I want to get is the PlugPlayer for iPhone so that I can control remotely the music of one iphone/iPod Touch (of my wife which is connected to my hifi system with my other iPhone! Anyone any experience? Worth the money for the PlugPlayer software?

[MrDNA]

that's good news but I know that eric Daugherty is currently working to fix this problem !!

[speter]

Hello everybody,

I know this is about "Windows iTunes playlist", but I followed the instructions above on my Mac and everything seems to work fine...

BUT: as soon as I do have any international characters in my filenames within the playlist, neither "Audio Station" nor my Streaming Client will find the song.
Other songs will work pefectly.

I checked the file type of my playlist:

Code: Select all

file -I 2001_\ a\ space\ odyssey.m3u
2001_ a space odyssey.m3u: text/plain; charset=utf-8


The file looks like this:

Code: Select all

/volume1/music/iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/01 Also sprach Zarathustra, Op.30_ Prelude ... Der Genesende.m4a
/volume1/music/iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/02 Requiem (1963_65)_ 2. Kyrie.m4a
/volume1/music/iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/03 Modern chorusmusic_ Lux aeterna (1966).m4a
/volume1/music/iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/04 An der schönen blauen Donau, Op.314.m4a
/volume1/music/iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/05 Gayaneh_ Gayaneh's Adagio.m4a
/volume1/music/iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/06 Atmosphères.m4a
/volume1/music/iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/07 Also sprach Zarathustra, Op.30_ Prelude (Sonnenaufgang).m4a


It's tracks 04 and 06 that will not work due to international characters.

What's confusing: Audio Station shows the correct file path but tells me that this link is broken and it can't play the song.

Code: Select all

iTunes Music/Compilations/2001 - A Space Odyssey (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)/04 An der schönen blauen Donau, Op.314.m4a


Any ideas?
Thanx!

[speter]

Hi,

I solved the problem on OS X. Now I am able to use the playlist with international characters.

The issues seems to be that, UTF8 on OS X is different from "normal" UTF8.
I solved this by converting the playlist using "iconv" on my Mac-Notebook after it has been exported with iTunesExport.
This code did the trick:

Code: Select all

iconv -f UTF8-MAC -t UTF8 "2001_ a space odyssey.m3u" > "2001_ a space odyssey_utf8.m3u"


Now, the new playlist "2001_ a space odyssey_utf8.m3u" plays the songs with international characters in the filenames of my songs.

To make live more easy I wrote a shell-script to run on my Mac-Notebook, that does the following tasks for me:

1.) Delete the old playlists on my DS
2.) Export all playlists from iTunes to my DS playlist-folder
3.) Do the UTF8-MAC to UTF8 conversion

Here is the code of the shell-script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

#delete old playlists from my playlist-directory on the DS
#my "music" folder is mountd on my Mac on "/Volumes/music/"
rm /Volumes/music/playlists/*

#export latest playlists from iTunes and write it directly into the playlist directory of the DS
#iTunesExport replaces my iTunes path with the music-path on the DS "/volume1/music/iTunes/iTunes Music/"
java -jar /Applications/iTunesExportScala-2.2.2/itunesexport.jar -outputDir=/Volumes/music/playlists/ -musicPath="/volume1/music/iTunes/iTunes Music/" -fileTypes=ALL

#convert all m3u-files from MAC UTF8 to UTF8
for x in /Volumes/music/playlists/*.m3u
do
        iconv -f UTF8-MAC -t UTF8 "$x" > "$x".utf8
        rm "$x"
        mv "$x".utf8 "$x"
done