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Topic: Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists (Read 5106 times) previous topic - next topic
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Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Hi there,

I'd like to get your help for a very unpleasant problem I'm having. I recently bought a new hard drive, which I partitioned. As such, I reorganized everything, including my music files, which I generally keep in compressed archives to keep it more organized.

This, though, has caused me a problem I didn't realise previously: Since foobar playlists use absolute paths instead of relative, all my playlists are pointing to a directory that is in a different folder (in a different partition as well) than the one my music files are.

Unfortunately, editing the *.fpl files is useless, as they are in hex format as I've learned, and changing the path to each file automatically causes the playlist to be corrupted, thus not working in foobar properly.

As such, I'd like to know if anyone knows of a solution for this problem. I've searched these forums, as well as in Google, and I couldn't find any solution at all. I stumbled across a couple of users with similar problems, but some of the solutions used in their cases didn't work. I've tried editing the playlist files with a hex editor, but that doesn't work. I've also tried converting all playlists to *.m3u format, but since I'm using archives in .ZIP and .RAR format, the playlists in that format come out empty, only actual *.mp3 files are displayed in *.m3u.

I appreciate any help you guys can give me, I really need to get this problem sorted.

Thanks!

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #1
Configure and rescan the media library (see preferences).

Why do you use zip files as organisation units? You could use folders as well. Additionally, hopefully you use a non compression algorithm with your packer, because anything else would be a waste of cpu time.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #2
Configure and rescan the media library (see preferences).

Why do you use zip files as organisation units? You could use folders as well. Additionally, hopefully you use a non compression algorithm with your packer, because anything else would be a waste of cpu time.

Some of those archives where not aqquired in online music stores, they came packed and I like keeping them like that.

Anyway, I'm using v0.8.3, so I don't have that Media Library menu. I installed v0.9.4 though, and I rescanned my music folder, but the problem is that most of the files were tagged by hand, by me, in foobar2000 but the archives weren't updated (and I wouldn't want it to happen either), so basically the tags are all saved in the playlists themselves, not in the actual *.mp3 files. Hence the whole problem of wanting to keep the playlists but change the path to the music files.

It's complicated I know, and I'll probably end up having to put the files in the original folder, but I'd like to give it a try before forcing that unpleasant task.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #3
Maybe export your playlist into .m3u or somthing else text based.. then run it through a text editor and run some find/replace functions.. then import the edited playlist?

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #4
He said he tried the M3U method.

GtAkReYz: What was the path of your files before? And what is it now? Did you just move the whole music directory to another drive/directory? I think you can solve this using a combination of subst commands and re-assigning drive letters, but I need a little more information on your exact paths before and after.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #5
As this is a really rare situation I would suggest copying (or moving) the files to an adequate place (and/or change the drive-letter ('partition-letter')) - otherwise there's much talking and time-wasting on a very stupid situation..   
If this is done you could reorganize your way of organization (proper tagging, no archives, m3u & rechanging locations,..) and start using 0.9.4, which is more worth than a try

edit: expression

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #6
He said he tried the M3U method.

GtAkReYz: What was the path of your files before? And what is it now? Did you just move the whole music directory to another drive/directory? I think you can solve this using a combination of subst commands and re-assigning drive letters, but I need a little more information on your exact paths before and after.

Exactly, the M3U method doesn't work for archives.

About your question: The files were located in "C:\Programas\(...)" and were now relocated to "E:\Aplicações Portáteis\(...)". The rest - "(...)" - is common to both paths. The new path may be changed though. I just Googled for SUBST COMMAND and found out it's purpose, sounds like a neat trick, I'm looking forward to read your solution, seems like you could solve my problem, thanks!

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #7
Well, the other option is to use Disk Management to change the drive letters, but since the original path was C:\... it problably won't let you do that. Or you could take out the HD, put it in another computer and boot using Bart's PE to access it as C:

Anyhow, the goal is to get the new drive detected as C:, at least temporarily and then move the file using foobar's masstager so that the playlists are updated. It's quite a task, but you might be able to find a way to make it work.

Boa sorte.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #8
Even though the files don't exist any more shouldn't foobar still use relative paths when you save the fpls to C:\dirInPath\ ? If it does all you have to do is save the fpls to the highest "common dir" on C: then move them to E:, ie if everything is lower than 'music' on both drives you save them in 'music' on C: and move them to 'music on E:.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #9
Well, the other option is to use Disk Management to change the drive letters, but since the original path was C:\... it problably won't let you do that. Or you could take out the HD, put it in another computer and boot using Bart's PE to access it as C:

Anyhow, the goal is to get the new drive detected as C:, at least temporarily and then move the file using foobar's masstager so that the playlists are updated. It's quite a task, but you might be able to find a way to make it work.

Boa sorte.

Indeed, I don't think I can change the C:\ Drive. The thing about moving the files with the Masstagger is that it doesn't seem to work on archived files. If I try to copy or move the files in the playlists, foobar will attempt to extract the files instead of moving the whole archive. I was going to try a different approach to it, using foobar v0.9, which allows to copy tags from the first half of a playlist to the second half of it, but doing that to all the playlists I have, it just doesn't seem reasonable.

I also tried creating a reproduction of the old directory structure, but instead of using the actual archives, I placed shortcuts in their place, with the same name (and extension) of the original archives, but that didn't work either. I suppose foobar tries to unpack the archives, but since it finds a shortcut instead of an actual archive, it doesn't follow it and fails to unpack.


Even though the files don't exist any more shouldn't foobar still use relative paths when you save the fpls to C:\dirInPath\ ? If it does all you have to do is save the fpls to the highest "common dir" on C: then move them to E:, ie if everything is lower than 'music' on both drives you save them in 'music' on C: and move them to 'music on E:.


Now *that* I didn't understand. Could you explain it again, please?

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #10
lol sorry let my try again.

When foobar saves a fpl it checks to see if the music file's path can be set to be relative to the fpl file. i.e. You have a mp3 in:
C:\Some stuff\Music\Artist\Track.mp3

If you then save the fpl to C:\Some stuff\Music then the fpl will remeber that mp3 as:
.\Artist\Track.mp3

The upshot is if your music has the same structure then you can copy fpls with the music.  I did this not too long ago myself (but with only unarchived files). For me my music was in:
C:\Documents and Settings\<name>\My Documents\My music\

I then got a new hd and moved everything to:
G:\music

Afterwards I saved all my playlists (as fpls) to:
C:\Documents and Settings\<name>\My Documents\My music\
And then copied them to:
G:\music
Then loaded them into Foobar and vola! my playlists were fixed.

I presume it will work the same for archived files.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #11
Purple Monkey, that doesn't work for archived files then, because I did the same. I used to have some of my music in C:\Programas\*****\Incoming\ and my playlists in C:\Programas\foobar2000\playlists\, and then I moved them both to E:\Aplicações Portáteis\*****\Incoming\ and E:\Aplicações Portáteis\foobar2000\playlists\ respectively, so not much as changed, and the relative position surely didn't change, yet it didn't work.

I now gave up the idea and I put everything back to the old, less-to-my-taste organization. Maybe someday Peter Pawlowski will update the method used to generate playlists to solve this problem.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #12
Has anyone tried opening these fpl's in notepad++ and doing a regex search and replace to correct the file paths?

I assume this will work, but I will try to do it, regardless, and check back here with my results.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #13
Ok, it's not perfect, but it sure beats recreating the playlist by hand:

First, grab notepad++ if you don't have it already.

Then make a copy of the fpl (just in case).

Open with notepad++, press ctrl+a to select everything.

Go to Plugins > TextFX Characters > Zap all non printable characters to #

You should be able to see the playlist portion; it will be at the top.  copy it to a new tab/file.

Now the tricky, not-so-perfect part.

press ctrl+h to start search and replace, make sure regular expressions is ticked.

in 'find what' text box type #file:
in 'replace with' text box type \r\nfile:

note1: your new tab/file should look something like file://path\filename.ext#taginfo#file://path\filename.ext#taginfo#(etc...) ending with the last filename in your playlist's file extension, so that this step will put each file in it's own line.

note2: if for some stupid reason, you have #file: in one of your filenames this will fuck up that filename, and likewise if #file: is in one of your tags you will probably end up with a blank line in your text

now we want to get rid of the taginfo crap

in 'find what' text box type x#[^\r\n]*$
in 'replace with' text box type x

where x is the last character of each song's file extension (this is to help prevent removing filename parts since # is a perfectly legal filename character in windows)

now you can just use search and replace (w/o reg ex's) to remove 'file://' and change the paths.
when you're done, just save as a .m3u

hope this is helpful.

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #14
scratch that, I didn't know m3u's couldn't handle archives.

if you are interested in tags and keeping your playlist, then this is what I would do:

--put the files back exactly how they are in the playlist so that the playlist will load all correct files.
--load the playlist, press ctrl+a to select all files.
--right-click, go to tagging > manage scripts
--click 'add' select 'format values from other fields..'
--for destination, make up a nonexistant tag such as 'listnumber' (for multiple playlists I would use 'list1number', 'list2number', etc...)
--for pattern, %list_index%
--now you have the order done.
--for the tags, you'll need foo_utils if you don't already have it.
--press ctrl+p to go to preferences, go to tools > text tools.
--this is just some titleformating crap, if you don't know how to do that, I'll help but I'm assuming for now you do
--basically this will copy all the tag info you want and for your use, I would just delete the header and footer text boxes.
--once you have this formatted the way you want, go back to the playlist, select all, right-click, go to text tools > save text...
--once you've saved the text, you may close foobar, and move files according to your taste.
--now add all files, use the sort by feature to sort by each 'listnumber' tag and you can use the 'input data (one line per track)' function of masstagger to tag files

let me know if this works for you.

***EDIT***I just thought of something:  How are you editing your tags through foobar2000 for archives?  When I try to add tags, it fails...which presents a problem with the list_index method I proposed above.  Does this only work in v0.8.3?  I think I should have read your first two posts a bit more carefully.  If the archived files aren't updated with new tag info, then I don't think this is possible.  Sorry.***END EDIT***

Moved my archives, now I can't use my playlists

Reply #15
Jesus.  I just reread your last post and realized that that is NOT the relative path!

Just checked with this setup:
playlists
c:\folder1\folder2\playlist.fpl
music
c:\folder1\folder3\folder4\music.zip
c:\folder1\folder3\folder4\music.mp3

In fact, the fpl created uses the ABSOLUTE path.

the following is an example of a setup where foobar would make relative paths:

playlists
c:\folder1\playlist.fpl
music
c:\folder1\folder2\music.zip
c:\folder1\folder3\music.mp3

notice in the 1st example the playlist has folder1 in common with music, but folder2 is completely alien to music.

whereas in the 2nd example, there are no folders in the playlist path that are not in the music.

soo....
all you have to do is recreate the original setup (which it sounds like you already did) and save your playlists in E:\Aplicações Portáteis\ instead of in E:\Aplicações Portáteis\foobar2000\playlists\

wow, that was so much easier than the above two posts I suggested.