Ratings, Play Counts and Multiple Machines
Please choose the appropriate forum for this topic. Thank you. Well, I've looked through the forums (new and old) and haven't found a discussion of this, so here goes...
I have a portable harddrive that I use for music at work. Every weekend I bring it home and sync the music on it with the music on my home server. This takes care of added tracks, changed tags ,etc.
Now, how can I sync ratings, play counts, and other things that are only found in the iTunes Music Library.xml?
Does anyone know of a utility app that will allow me to choose a source and destination Music Library and will update ratings, play count, last played date, etc between the two?
[697 byte] By [
shindigo] at [2007-11-9 20:20:18]
# 1 Re: Ratings, Play Counts and Multiple Machines
I don't know of any way to do that.
Unfortunately, iTunes is fairly strict when it comes to managing music-- it wants the library to stay on one computer, and offers very little features for other usage patterns.
azdude at 2007-11-15 16:42:45 >
# 2 Re: Ratings, Play Counts and Multiple Machines
what about a little app that:
rips an xml file from the ipod
looks at that xml file and the itunes xml file
uses keys: artist, album, song, and kind to match songs (instead of song ids which will be different on two different computers) and then adds the play counts the same way itunes does...
i know someone can write an app that does that.
it would need two functions:
add all - for the first time you run it on the non auto-synced computer
update - just to update the plays since the add all or last update.
puck
# 3 Re: Ratings, Play Counts and Multiple Machines
I also suggest an itunes plug-in that would export the existing ratings (into a separate file or using one of the rarely used id3 tags), which can then be re-imported in itunes. This would be great for multiple machines and also occasions when u lose all ur ratings and can restore them from a backup of it.
# 4 Re: Ratings, Play Counts and Multiple Machines
i've also realized that you'd have to have the update and add all only affect the update dates on the second machine - if they are changed on the ipod the update on the main machine won't quite add right...
I know in theory how to do it...
i just don't know the right programming languages to get it done :(
i like the back up idea - that would be invaluable to people if you could do it from the ipod and not just from itunes... in theory you could just render out the xml from itunes now and save it somewhere else and call it your back up...
puck
# 5 Re: Ratings, Play Counts and Multiple Machines
There's been some talk of a similar operation that would enable a user to switch music libraries between a Mac and a PC and maintain play counts and such. You might want to check the discussions here:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?13@190.K9OXakUlmok.33014@.68936cb5
As far as back up is concerned, just save the .ITL and .XML files in your My Music folder every once in awhile.
# 6 Re: Ratings, Play Counts and Multiple Machines
hmm... yah, but that's a switch library, i'm talking about getting two libraries to sync their play counts...
this link looks more like a one time thing...
i'm looking for, say, updating my libraries against eachother once a week...
but thanks for the link!
some interesting stuff...
puck
