Copying playlist to USB ?

iTunes is designed to sync to Apple hardware, not third party devices.

It shouldn't be too hard to process the .m3u file to strip out all the path information leaving just the filenames so that the playlist will work if it is in the same folder as all the files. In fact I'll write up a script for that at some point later today.

tt2

In the end I didn't have time to work on this yesterday but it is ready now.

Download the script LocaliseM3U to your desktop, USB drive or other location of choice.

Drag your files out of iTunes to your USB drive

Export the playlist to the same folder as the files

Drag and drop the playlist onto the script

tt2

An iTunes exported playlist gives the full path including drive letter to each file in the list. Last time I looked Winamp generates paths relative to the root of the drive, but omits the drive letter. The m3u specification allows for a mix of absolute paths and relative paths. The simplest form of relative path is a filename in the same folder as the m3u file, but you can also have tracks in subfolders referenced by <folder>\[<optionally more folders>\]<filename> or even use the ..\ form (optionally repeated) to refer to the parent folders of the one with the mu3 file.

You can't alter the way iTunes generates playlists. Also there isn't a way to change the way iTunes behaves if you drag files out to a folder, it always produces a flat folder rather than creating subfolders for artists & albums. If you're just trying to move some of your music from one of your computers to another, complete with playlists, then a quick search and replace in a decent text editor like Notepad++ is probably all you need to repair things. As it stands iTunes always doesn't import playlists with relative references properly which is why I ended up writing the ImportM3U script in response to an earlier thread.

tt2

ImportM3U takes an existing playlist generated by WMP or Winamp and imports it into iTunes, creating the new playlist and adding the files into it. I wrote it because a recent build of iTunes (10.4) stopped adding the tracks properly. This has been fixed but by that stage I'd included an additional feature to convert & add any .wma files which iTunes would normally ignore.

I've modified the LocaliseM3U script slightly and created a variation called RelativeM3U which preserves the Artist amd Album folders above the Filename. The converted file needs to be placed in the same folder as the Artist folders for it to work.

tt2

iTunes stores all its playlists internally inside the file iTunes Library.itl. iTunes only accesses the M3U files when importing or exporting a playlist, otherwise they are completely ignored. If you edit the playlist in iTunes then you would need to export it again to update the M3U file, then treat it with the script to convert from absolute to relative paths. Offhand I can't recall if iTunes will work properly if your try to import a relatively referenced playlist. If not, ImportM3U should do it.

Note that when importing playlists there may be issues with filenames that contain certain accented characters. Sometimes these are not interpreted correctly in which case that entry in the playlist is ignored.

rr2

To clone the library from one machine to another...

• Backup your library using this User Tip.
• Deauthorise the old computer if you won't be using it for iTunes any more..
• Restore the library into the music folder on the new computer.
• Install iTunes (if needed) and sign in to your account.

tt2

Hi,

I've tried both, the export- and the import script by dragging & dropping the script onto playlist files or vice versa. ufortunately, it does not do any thing.

can you give me a hint on ho to use the scripts exactly.

thank you so much!!

Hello,

I have a similar issue with the export of iTunes playlists e.g. to USB sticks for use in the car. Your script LocaliseM3U is a great help in this respect. But would you be willing to make it even more flexible?

The current version of LocaliseM3U takes the M3U playlist and removes the iTunes paths from the MP3 files. (assuming the M3U file is located in the same folder as the MP3s)

But when you're dealing with a large number of MP3s it makes sense to have the playlists and the music files seperated from each other e.g. to store the MP3s in a separate subfolder. To support this concept could you maybe adapt LocaliseM3U so that it inserts the path of the MP3s in the localized playlist file? (rather than just removing the original iTunes paths)

Maybe the easiest way to do this would be that LocaliseMP3 takes the path of the M3U file that the user drops onto the script and inserts that (without driveletter) into each of the MP3 lines. That would allow the user to move the M3U file into the MP3 music folder at first (temporarily), then drop it onto LocaliseM3U from there, and move the localized version back to the original playlist folder (or root directory) on the device.

Would you be so kind to do this?

In any case, many thanks for your great support!

Sounds like RelativeM3U might already do what you need. See this earlier post. If not it might be easy to adapt. Perhaps if you can outline your scenario in more detail I can see what changes would be necessary.

tt2