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For Sonos users who wish to choose which of their iTunes playlists are transferred to Sonos or for users who wish to use lossy formats for their ipods and lossless for their Sonos system. It makes a custom XML file on the NAS with unselected playlists removed and/or references adjusted to the lossless files. If you wish to only transfer a subset of playlists the application can be configured to display a playlist selector before the custom XML file is generated. The application can be configured to run and create the custom XML file on your NAS each time iTunes is closed.



http://www.darrenlink.talktalk.net/ituneslibrarymanager



http://www.darrenlink.talktalk.net/ituneslibrarymanager/download



I have written an application that solves two main issues for Sonos and iTunes users. Many people like to use iTunes to catalog their MP3 collection for use with iPods but prefer to store lossless files (perhaps apple lossless) on their NAS for use with Sonos. The "iTunes Music Library.xml" cannot be simply placed on the NAS as all the tracks are pointing to the lower bitrate MP3 files. Also many iTunes users have too many playlists to be imported into the available Sonos memory. (Especially if lots of smart playlists covering your entire library are defined)



My application solves the above two problems by changing the paths of the MP3's (or other lossey file types) within the "iTunes Music Library.xml" to the equivalent paths of the lossless files. It also allows the user to choose which playlists they wish to be imported into their Sonos system from their iTunes library. It also eliminates the need to maintain two separate iTunes libraries (although you are still required to create lossey and lossless copies of each track)



The application caches (and maintains) a one to one mapping between each file in iTunes with the equivalent higher quality file on your NAS. This caching allows the application to run through approximately 10,000 tracks on my PC and write an alternative xml file to my NAS pointing to the lossless files within about 25 seconds.



The application is completely configurable so it can be configured to match your setup.



More information, screenshots and the download link are above.
I would like to play directly from iTunes to a Sonos player. Does anyone know if there is a plugin, or something like that, for iTunes available. (I have tried already to work with the Sonos Queue Tool from SteveEisner. This gives me only errors.
Hi,



Tonight I have uploaded version 2.70.3 (http://www.darrenlink.talktalk.net/ituneslibrarymanager/download)



This version includes the following updates:



1) I have added error handling to the file saving routines. If any of the files fail to save you should now get a meaningful error instead of the application crashing.



2) I have ensured that all file paths are saved with the correct case. This includes any absolute paths specified for source path find or path replace. Remember that the find and replace functionalirty is case sensitive. If your music folder is called C:\Music and you enter c:\music within a find field it will be changed to C:\Music. The same is the case for the replace fields.



3) I have fixed an issue with the find best match functionality when running the transformation rules. The best match is found for the disk number and track number specified within the filename.



Regards



Darren
Jeremy,



It's good to hear that you have my application working. It may not be working with best performance however.



I have taken a look at the error message that you sent me. The error was a system.io.exception (Input/Output) at the time of "saving the track mapping data" (mapping cache file). This file by default is saved to the same location as the source iTunes Library.xml file (at C:\....\ My Music\iTunes (J+R)\iTunes Library - Track Mapping Data.csv in your case)



Please check to see if this file has been created and the modified time of this file? If the file has never been created, there will be no cache so subsequent runs will continue to be slow. With the cache file in place 10,000 tracks are processed in about 20 seconds on my PC instead of several minutes. This greatly improves the useability of the application.



I should add some error handing to the saving of all of the files. This would then give me, more details about the nature of the error. It could be a file permissions issue. Are you able to create a temporary text file within your iTunes folder and do you have plenty of free space on your C drive?.



Unless you also get errors when the status in the bottom left hand corner is "saving destination library" then there is not an issue saving to your NAS.



I tried creating a new version of my app where the find and replace rules ignored the case of the paths. This however greatly reduced the performance of the application. I may just add extra validation so that any absolute paths entered with incorrect case are adjusted upon saving the configuration.



Thanks and regards



Darren
Darren



Your advice worked a treat. I had the drive letters in lower case. I had also set up multiple rules, with the one you cited in your last post as the first one. I deleted them all and started again with just one rule, with the drive letters in upper case, and have had no problems since. I have also successfully added further rules since.



Since then, I have also only had one crash. Still can't tell what is causing it. The S: drive is permanently mounted, and the destination library path is as you describe. The fact that it is hit-and-miss suggests to me that there is could be a conflict with some other background software, perhaps? The other possiblility is that it is a timeout on writing the library file - my NAS has a disk spin-down feature which puts it in a lower power mode on idle. It takes about 10-20 seconds to spin back up if there has been no activity for a while. DOes this give you any clues?



I will try to email a screenshot of the error message.



Thanks again, from a happy user,



Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,



Sorry to hear that you are having trouble. I have confirmed tonight that I haven't broken anything in my 2.70 release by deleting the mapping cache file and the non mapped tracks file from my PC. I then processed my configuration and the mapping cache file was completely rebuilt. If you make any substantial changes to your mapping rules I recommend deleting both the mapping cache file and the non mapped tracks file before reprocessing.



Please can you confirm that you have a single mapping rule defined with the following configuration:



Source Media Type: AAC Audio File (m4a)

Source Path Find: C:\My Music (check case)

Path Replace: S:\Music (check case)

Destination Media Type: FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac)



I have just done a test on my PC and I suspect I know the cause of your issues with the mapping rules. If the drive letters are specified in lower case instead of upper case the rules fail. The find and replace operation on the paths is currently case sensitive. If the path of a track in iTunes begins with C:\My Music the find rule of c:\My Music will unfortunately fail. This is something I should probably address in a future release.



If this is the case with your setup I suspect you should be up and running very quickly by changing the drive letters to upper case. As an extra precaution make sure your S drive is succesfully mapped before processing. If the S drive becomes disconnected at the time of processing the mapping rules will fail as the program will not be able to find the tracks you have stored on your S drive.



The fact that the program crashes at the end of the processing suggests that it may be having difficulty saving the destination XML file to your NAS. Please confirm that your Destination Library path is either S:\iTunes Library.xml or S:\iTunes Music Library.xml and that you can create a test text file within S:\. Sonos will pick up the xml file with either of the two filenames. A screenshot showing the application and the error message at the time of the crash will be helpful. Plese move the error message so that it is not obscurring the configuration of the app. You will find my email address on my profile page on these forums. Please attach the screenshots to an email in PNG or JPG format to keep the email size low.



I hope all that helps. It sounds like I may need to do a few user useability tweaks and also improve the error handling. The feedback is very helpful for me improving the application.



Thanks for trying the application. It sounds like you are almost there!!!



One other thing that I should mention is that I have only tested the application with the Microsoft .Net Framework version 3.5. If you have a different version installed there could possibly be a compatibility issue.



I hope to here from you soon.



Regards



Darren
Hi Darren,



Seems I spoke too soon in my last post!



I have just installed v2.70.0 and have two problems:

1. The mapping transforms aren't working for me; and

2. the Library Manager has crashed several times.



In more detail:

1. I am 99% sure I have set up the transformations correctly, but when I process the rules, none of the destination files are found. I say I am 99% sure I have set up the tranformation rules correctly because of a test I did: I went to the csv file of unmapped files and copied one of the track paths into Windows Explorer address bar; I then manually edited the start of the path in identical fashion to the rule I had set up (replacing c:\My Music with s:\Music, and changing the file extension from .m4a (AAC) to .flac . Explorer found the correct lossless file, showing that the transformed path and filename were correct.



Of course, I could be missing something obvious, but I wondered if this might be a problem with the new v2.70?



2. On a number of occasions, the Library Manager has crashed at the end of processing the mapping rules. The program then won't run again until after a reboot. I couldn't detect any pattern to the crashes - sometimes all was OK, sometimes not, about 50:50. I have a screen shot of the error report if that is helpful to you (not sure how to send this to you though).



Sorry to bother you with this when no doubt you have more important things to do, but if you get bored of the job search and have a moment to reply with any suggestions, I'd be very grateful.



Thanks, Jeremy
... and thanks for your work on this so far. I am going to load it up later today, and don't foresee any problems.



All the best
Hi,



I have posted version 2.70.0 tonight which fixes a minor bug within the "Non exact match found" dialog box. Ampersand (&) characters within file paths were previously not displayed.



This is likely to be my last update for a while as I am currently seeking alternative employment.



Please feel free to continue posting questions and comments and I will get back to you as soon as I can.



Regards



Darren
You are absolutely right Darren, apologies. I have now turned this option on

Gordon




Thanks for confirming Gordon. It's good to know the cause of the behaviour that you were seeing with the system tray functionality.



I recommend that other users try the system tray functionality once they have set up the application to work with their setup. When enabling the system tray I suggest all of the system tray options are ticked within Edit->Settings



Regards



Darren
I suspect you do not have "Minimize to system tray on close" ticked under Edit->Settings. Darren

You are absolutely right Darren, apologies. I have now turned this option on

Gordon
DarrenLink,



With respect to the new format, I disagree. I would rather have the portable device loaders down convert the files on the fly. Overall, I think that this is a better solution because a new format would imply that all of the rippers and taggers would need to be updated -- again. True, there are probably as many rippers and taggers as there are downloaders, but the optimum download format for the portable is a moving target.



If there are multiple portable units in a household, possibly spanning multiple generations, a single embedded low resolution format is not appropriate either. New devices are sporting more memory and at some point I suspect that lossless downloads will be practical. If the device loader transcodes on the fly, the optimum format can be used for each device. True, the transcoding will require more processor power, but modern computers are so fast that this is not much of an issue.



Another aspect of embedded data is that anything touching the file will have to slog through at least one irrelevant copy of the music data. This will tend to clog the network FOR EVERY TRACK. Even simple tag editing will slow down. I would rather do some special handling every once in a while. I don't mind launching a process that might run for days.





Buzz,



I believe when synching to an iPod shuffle you could down convert tracks to a smaller format. I remember doing this for my iPod shuffle at the time and it was painfully slow for just 100 tracks. It takes my PC about 20 minutes to convert a single album from Apple Lossless to MP3 so it would take weeks to synchronise 10,000 odd tracks with a brand new iPod. I really can't see an on the fly down conversion being practicle for filling a 160 Gb empty iPod Classic with MP3's down converted from Apple Lossless on the fly. My 60 Gb ipod takes about 3 hours to populate fully from empty without doing any conversion. Perhaps I need a new computer but I can't see a new PC being any where near faster enough for this to be practicle.

Extracting a single file from a zip file is a very quick process in comparison to doing a down conversion from one format to another, and that is doing decompression. Without compression it should be practicle I would have thought.



New rippers will be required for the Music DNA format so that issue will need to be tackled at some point. I have no idea if that will take off or when however and have no idea about its spec.



Potable devices will continue to grow in capaciy but so will the demand to populate them with every increasing library sizes. From the following calculation I suspect we will need a 1 terrabyte portable device to be able to populate it with approximately 50,000 Apple Lossless files.



20 Mb approx per track x 50,000 tracks = 1,000,000 Mb = 1 terrabyte approx



According to amazon you can get 40,000 MP3's on a 160 Gb iPod classic but the number of Apple Lossless files would be far less.



My 250 Gb NAS is completely full and the majority of my my 10,000 track library is in Apple Lossless. At the moment I wouldn't be able to get all of the my Apple Lossless files on to a 160 Gb iPod. Capacity may well grow at a larger rate than my collection so maybe at some point in the near future I will be able to populate a portable device with my entire library of Apple Lossless tracks. That is something to look forward to.



If you have lossey and lossless files in separate files in different locations you are always going to need to maintain a relationship between the two files, just like my application currently does. If you can think of a better way of doing this in my appliation please let me know. I'm always open to new suggestions. At the moment I can easily alter the tags in my iTunes MP3 library but I don't have an efficient way of ensuring those changes are also applied to the Apple Lossless tracks. I therefore try to get my tagging perfect just after ripping and before generating the lossey copy.



Hi Darren

Thanks for your latest guidance, particularly on how to ensure that ITunes doesn't reorganise my carefully constructed file structure!





Best of luck with trying my app Jeremy. Any questions you have about configuring my application, let me know and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.



Regards



Darren
DarrenLink,



With respect to the new format, I disagree. I would rather have the portable device loaders down convert the files on the fly. Overall, I think that this is a better solution because a new format would imply that all of the rippers and taggers would need to be updated -- again. True, there are probably as many rippers and taggers as there are downloaders, but the optimum download format for the portable is a moving target.



If there are multiple portable units in a household, possibly spanning multiple generations, a single embedded low resolution format is not appropriate either. New devices are sporting more memory and at some point I suspect that lossless downloads will be practical. If the device loader transcodes on the fly, the optimum format can be used for each device. True, the transcoding will require more processor power, but modern computers are so fast that this is not much of an issue.



Another aspect of embedded data is that anything touching the file will have to slog through at least one irrelevant copy of the music data. This will tend to clog the network FOR EVERY TRACK. Even simple tag editing will slow down. I would rather do some special handling every once in a while. I don't mind launching a process that might run for days.
withanee67,

Please see my previous post for a response to your questsions.



All,

Last night I had a thought. For those of us who like to have lossless on their Sonos system but lossey on their ipods wouldn't it be great if the industry could develop a special container file format (almost like a zip say) that could hold both the lossey and lossless data along with all the meta data and cover art. Perhaps this has been considered as part of the specification for the MusicDNA file format (http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/musicdna_music_file_format_unveiled.html) The biggest problem with having the lossey and lossless data in separate files (and locations) is that it makes tagging difficult. If you apply a tagging change to one of the files, you need to apply the same tagging change to the other file also to keep them in sync with each other.



The file format would need to be built in a way where systems like Sonos can easily and efficiently just play the Lossless data but applications like iTunes could efficiently just copy the lossey data and it's meta data over to the portable music player (with little or no performance hit). When listening within iTunes itself the application could simply play the lossless data.



I would love to have an all in one file format that is suitable for both home and portable use and at the same time makes the task of tagging a lot simpler. When ripping to this format, the ripping software would create both the lossless and lossey data in one ripping operation. Perhaps when downloading a MusicDNA file you would get just the lossey data by default but you could pay extra to download the lossless data into your MusicDNA file?



Maybe Sonos could push the industry or the makers of MusicDNA for something along these lines? (Perhaps this should go under the Sound Ideas section of the forum) but I'd like it to stay here also. Will iTunes and Sonos be supporting the MusicDNA format?



Any thoughts?



Regards



Darren
Hi withanee67,



It sounds like you already have a good handle on how to set things up. Firstly it is important to remember to keep only the highest quality copy of each track within the Sonos share that you are indexing. If you have some tracks that you only have in a lossey format I recommend having one copy on your local PC and one copy within your NAS share. At the moment it sounds like you have both FLAC's and AAC files within the same Sonos share so moving your FLAC's to \\NAS\Sonos\Music and only indexing your \\NAS\Sonos share is a very good starting point. Providing you haven't got any duplicate FLAC files, your indexed library within Sonos shouldn't have any duplicates. Remember to remove your \\NAS\Media share from the shares that are indexed by Sonos.



Once you are happy with the way Sonos is indexing your FLAC files within \\NAS\Sonos I recommend mapping that share as an S network drive on your PC. (S for Sonos). You can do this by right clicking "My Computer" and selecting "Map network drive". Select S for your drive letter and specify \\NAS\Sonos as the folder path. You should then be able to view your FLAC files via S:\Music\[Artist]\[Album]



Now on to the trickier part, setting up your iTunes library on your local PC consisting of the lossey equivalents of each track. Firstly you should aim to keep the structures identical. This will be a lot easier if you are creating your lossey files from scratch one album at a time. Firstly I recommend setting up a brand new iTunes library on your local PC and then configure iTunes to not mange the locations of your tracks. Within iTunes under Edit->Preferences->Advanced tab ensure that "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organised" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" are both unticked. With these options ticked iTunes will rename track paths if you update any of the tags. (This will lead to issues with my app as the track mapping data will become out of date and the folder paths may not match the structure on your NAS). Now choose where you wish to store the lossey tracks. If you have a data drive or partion such as a D drive I would recommend storing them in D:\Music and setting your iTunes media folder location to D:\Music. After wripping an album to D:\Music\[Artist]\[AlbumTitle] from a standard Windows file explorer window you should be able to change D:\ within the folder path to S:\ to get to the FLAC files for that album on your NAS. With this simple rule you will be able to keep the transformation rules nice and simple within my application, when you get to that point. You will be able to tell the app to find "D:\Music" within each path and replace it with "S:\Music" to get to the FLAC files.



I will now give you another tip that should make things easier. If your track filenames begin with the track number (or in the case of multi-cd albums the disc number and the track number) my application will be able to match up any tracks with slightly different file names easily. I'll give you an example:



If your path in iTunes was:

D:\Music\Beatles\Please Please Me\10 Baby It's You

and the equivalent path to the FLAC was:

S:\Music\Beatles\Please Please Me\10 Baby Its You.flac (note the missing quote)

my program will be able to match up the two tracks and give you the option to rename the FLAC file so that it's filename is identical to the lossy file (but without changing the flac extension). This works if you track filenames are numbered in the format "01", "02", "03" etc or "1-01", "1-02", "1-03" etc. Your flac files could simply be called "01.flac", "02.flac" and my program will suggest renaming them to match the same filenames as the lossey tracks in iTunes. This eliminates the headache of ensuring that your ripped tracks in both formats have the same filename. I hope you find this feature helpful. If you do not choose to include track numbers within filenames you will need to ensure that each version of a track has the same filename manually (excluding the extension).



If you use iTunes to rip your MP3's iTunes will name the tracks automatically. You will find tracks with extra long names are shortened or symbols replaced with underscores. You can manually alter the filenames to your desire and then tell iTunes to find the newly named file by double clicking on the track within iTunes. My program will give you the option to rename the flac equivalent to the same filename as in iTunes, regardless of whether you have stuck to the default iTunes filename or changed it to suit your preference.



I must say, you will be given the option to rename your flacs to the same filenames as your lossey files and that this is not a necessity for correct opertion of the application. I just like to be organised and to ensure all my track files have the same filename but with different extensions.



How you rip your FLAC files and the lossey equivalents is entirely up to you but just remember to keep the structures identical. It is helpful if you can rip in the lossless format, do all your tagging and attaching of cover art and then use the same application to convert those lossless files to you chosen lossey format. If you do this your lossey tracks should have identical cover art and tags as the lossless tracks. Try to get your tagging perfect before you generate the lossey file from the lossless file. Once you have two copies of each track it is very hard to update tags as you will need to make the same changes to both files. Unfortunately this is one of the headaches of maintaining two copies of each track. At least with my application you will not need to create the same playlists for your lossless files as for your lossey files. You can simply have one iTunes library pointing to your lossey tracks and you will be able to create playlists for both your iPod and Sonos all in one place. You can also easily create playlists on your iPod and transfer them to your Sonos system.



Hopefully that has answered all of your questions but if I've missed anything or you have any more, fire away.



I hope that all made sense and best of luck with the setup. Take it in stages and get your FLAC files sorted first. You could then create your brand new lossey iTunes library with a single album and then try my app. Create a single playlist within iTunes that includes you favourite tracks from your test album and use my app to transfer that playlist to your Sonos system. I can give you assistance on how to configure my app once you get to that stage.



Sorry for such a long post. I hope it helps yourself and other users getting started with my app.



Regards



Darren
Hi Darren,



Many thanks for the thoughtful and helpful reply. I appreciate your advice, but don't want to take too much of your time - so please don't feel that you need to guide me all the way through the setup process in detail.



But your initial guidance is helpful, as I want to avoid eg. wasting my time making unnecessary file conversions. So here is my current setup:



Lossless: I ripped my all CD's to FLAC with dbPoweramp, and saved them on my NAS, current path is:

\\NAS\Media\Music\FLACs\[Artist]\[AlbumTitle]. This is my master library.



Lossy: this is a bit of a mess currently. I haven't yet converted any of the FLACs to lossy format. So, what I have is a historical, partial collection of tracks ripped with iTunes into AAC (.m4a) format. These used to be on the PC, but I moved them to my NAS before buying Sonos. Their path is:

\\NAS\Media\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\[Artist]\[Album Title].



Sonos is currently pointed to the \\NAS\Media folder, so it picks up the lot.



Before stumbling across your application, I was planning to do the following:

- convert all the FLACs to ALAC with dbPoweramp (I can't remember why I originally chose to rip into FLAC - I started ripping while I was deciding between Sonos and Logitech systems, and I think I had duff info thatone or other of them does not support Apple Lossless)



- convert the FLACs or ALACs to AAC with dbPoweramp for iTunes/iPod use. I planned to ditch the entire current iTunes library and start again - the lossy library is small and it would take longer to figure out which tracks I already have than to simply batch convert everything.



Based on what I have read about your app, I would now plan to:



- move FLACs to \\NAS\Sonos\Music\[Artist]\[Album]



- start again with a new library of lossy files on the PC in iTunes (not sure whether to go aac or mp3). File path to match the NAS ...\Music\ etc



Does this sound right?



Two last questions: I assume your application requires the whole path to be identical from \Music\ onwards in both libraries, including the \[Artist]\[Album]\[track] part. I know I can make these paths identical if I use dbPoweramp for converting to lossy. But if I use iTunes for conversion, won't it impose its own different filename convention and artist/album folder structure? Secondly, is it possible for iTunes to mess up the folder structure in the lossy library further down the line even if I made it identical to begin with (I recall some setting in itunes to have it manage the files)? If so, how do I prevent this?



Sorry, I will have already taken more of your time than I intended to! But if you can point in the right direction, I'll give it a whirl and won't blame you if I muck it up!



Thanks,
Darren, Your application sounds like the missing link I need! And it is a shame that you have had so little feedback from users.



As a recent convert to Sonos, I have to say I was disappointed by the total absence of library management features and was surprised that I would need to rely on another program like iTunes for user-friendly creation ofplaylists. (I suppose I didn't read enough of the technical blurb beforehand!) Having found that out, my next sharp intake of breath was when I realised the complications of managing lossless and lossy libraries simultaneously, for Sonos and iPod use. Looks like your Library Manager should sort this out for me.



One question: my lossless files are currently FLACs, and I was intending to convert them to Apple Lossless so that they could be managed by iTunes (to create playlists etc). If I use your app, is this actually necessary? Any disadvantages to having FLAC and mp3 instead of ALAC and mp3 (for Sonos and iPod respectively)?




Hi withannee67,



Thanks for your comments. If you already have an iTunes library consisting of mp3's the iTunes xml file can be modified by my application to point at your FLAC files. FLAC files cannot be added to your iTunes library but the modified xml can quite happily point at your FLAC files and Sonos will correctly import it and all of your playlists. One advantage of using Apple Lossless files instead of FLAC is that the modified XML file pointing to the Apple Lossless files can actually be imported into a second blank iTunes library to create a normal iTunes library that you can browse in iTunes. I don't actually do this (as it takes time to import into iTunes) but if you ever want to generate a fully browsable Lossless library from your Lossey library my application will allow you to do this. All your playlists within your lossey library will then be in your second Lossless library. The other advantage of using Apple Lossless is that you can do all of your ripping within iTunes to create both the Lossey and Lossless copies of each track. I find the easiest way of ripping is to simply import using Apple Lossless into my MP3 library, do all of my tagging and attaching of cover art and then to convert those tracks to MP3 using iTunes. The MP3's that are generated from the Apple Lossless tracks are then guaranteed to have the identical tagging and cover art as the original files. Once you have both versions of each track in your library you can then delete the Apple Lossless tracks without physically deleting the files. The Apple Lossless files can then be moved to your NAS for indexing.



The lack of feedback about my application, may be because it cannot be simply downloaded and used out of the box. Users need to understand how it works and structure their music files in a way that allows the application to function as intended. This is not something that is particularly easy to do in some circumstances. A lot of potential users are probably very wary of changing the setup they are familiar with. Also when I started this thread the main purpose of the application was to do the redirecting from lossey to lossless tracks and this was the main advertised feature. This however is now advanced and optional functionality and a simpler setup can be used to simply choose which playlists are imported into Sonos. For users who only have each track in one format they can simply use the playlist selection functionality.



If you have enough patience and are serious about using my application for a multi bitrate setup I can guide you through the setup. Firstly if you already have all of your tracks in FLAC and MP3 format I personally would stick with the FLAC's and not worry about converting them to Apple Lossless. If you are happy with the way you generate both your FLAC and MP3 copies then stick with the method that you are happy with.



Before I can help you any further I will need to understand how you currently have your FLAC and MP3 files stored and the state of your iTunes library. Do you have your FLAC files on a NAS and your MP3's stored on your local PC? This is my recommended approach. I also recommend having your iTunes library files stored on your local PC pointing to your local MP3's. (This is good for ipod synching and portability of your music if you have a laptop) It may not be easy for you to get to this starting point so be cautious and ask as many questions as necessary before doing anything. I also recommend backing up your current setup if you haven't already done so. My application can take the locally stored XML file pointing to the locally stored MP3's, redirect all of the track paths to the FLAC's on your NAS and then save the modified XML file onto your NAS for indexing.



Many apologies for such a long reply. It's a complicated subject that requires a lot of explanation and patience. My application is far from being easy to support because there are so many different starting setups!!! If I haven't put you off, describe your current setup in detail and we can take it from there.



I hope that all made sense, but any questions just ask.



Regards



Darren
Hi Darren

Yes I knew about the up arrow feature of the system tray, but I found that it kept disappearing from there as well. I have now changed the icon to always show on the system tray rather than only show notifications (which is when you have to click the up arrow). I ran the program and exited and it disappeared from the system tray.



I am finding it disappears from the Task Manager application and the running processes tab though!




Gordon,



If you use the File->Exit menu the application will completely end. If the application is ending as soon as you click on the close icon I suspect you do not have "Minimize to system tray on close" ticked under Edit->Settings. I recommend having all of the following ticked:



Minimize to system tray

Minimize to system tray on startup

Minimize to system tray on close



If you do not have the third option ticked it will only minimize to the system tray when you click on the minimize icon. If you click on the close icon the application will exit. With the third option ticked the close icon has the same affect as minimize.



I hope the above solves your issue but if it doesn't let me know and I will continue to help.



Regards



Darren
Darren, Your application sounds like the missing link I need! And it is a shame that you have had so little feedback from users.



As a recent convert to Sonos, I have to say I was disappointed by the total absence of library management features and was surprised that I would need to rely on another program like iTunes for user-friendly creation ofplaylists. (I suppose I didn't read enough of the technical blurb beforehand!) Having found that out, my next sharp intake of breath was when I realised the complications of managing lossless and lossy libraries simultaneously, for Sonos and iPod use. Looks like your Library Manager should sort this out for me.



One question: my lossless files are currently FLACs, and I was intending to convert them to Apple Lossless so that they could be managed by iTunes (to create playlists etc). If I use your app, is this actually necessary? Any disadvantages to having FLAC and mp3 instead of ALAC and mp3 (for Sonos and iPod respectively)?
Hi Darren

Yes I knew about the up arrow feature of the system tray, but I found that it kept disappearing from there as well. I have now changed the icon to always show on the system tray rather than only show notifications (which is when you have to click the up arrow). I ran the program and exited and it disappeared from the system tray.



I am finding it disappears from the Task Manager application and the running processes tab though!
I'm also now using 2.60.9 with Win7.



I'm using it purely to copy the library with iTunes playlists onto the NAS. I started using it in early January 2010 and have installed each upgrade. It's working perfectly for me and has solved my issue with imported playlists so I'm very happy.




Many thanks for feedback Rephlex. Presumably you have all your music files on your NAS with your library files on your local PC and you were manually copying the iTunes XML file over to your NAS before you started using my app? This is exactly what I was doing before I created lossless copies of most tracks on my NAS and before I started writing the app. I found that the indexer does some educated guess work if the tracks within iTunes are referenced by drive letter or mapped network drive letter. If you have your music in C:\Music on your local PC and the same structure mirrored (perhaps using robocopy) to your NAS at \\nas\Music for example you can simply copy the local copy of your iTunes XML to your NAS and the indexer automatically interprets the C drive letter as being the root of the NAS instead. Having your music locally as well as mirrored to your NAS gives you 5 major advantages: 1) You can listen to music when you are away from home (if you have a laptop) 2) The performance when synching an iPod will be better if the files are stored locally rather than being fetched across the network from your NAS to your ipod + you can synch/add tracks on the go 3) You have a backup of all of your music (music stored on your PC as well as your NAS). 4) When using my app to do the 'copy' you can chosse the playlists you want to transfer to Sonos 5) Tagging will be a lot quicker when tagging files stored locally, especially when adding album artwork. I think this setup is likely to benefit more people than the lossey to lossless path transformation feature. I recommend having your local tracks as your master copy with the NAS as a robocopy mirror for Sonos useage.



Gordon,



I think I have worked out what you are seeing. When the application is minimized to the system tray the application disappears from the Applications tab of the task manager but remains running and can be found as "iTunes Library Manager.exe" under the processes tab. (Order the processes by image name if you have trouble finding it)



In Windows 7 I find that when the application is minimized to the system tray it is often hidden "behind" the up arrow. The screenshots at the following url show this on my PC:



http://www.darrenlink.talktalk.net/ituneslibrarymanager/images/minimized_hidden.png



In order to get the application back when it is minimized to the system tray and hidden I have to click on the up arrow and then click on the little house icon. I have found that if the application is not minimized but hidden behind other windows, clicking on the system tray icon does not bring it to the front. I think it would be a helpful feature to ensure it always comes to the front.



On some occasions I find that when it is minimized and the application window is not visible, clicking on the house icon does not make the application visible, and no matter what I do I cannot get it back without killing the process within task manager (Processes tab) and restarting the application. This is the bug I really need to fix.



If you use the mizimize all window / show desktop feature, clicking on the system tray icon does not show the application. I find I can get it back by doing Alt -> Tab to cycle through the open windows.



I hope that helps. Please let me know if I have misinterpreted the issue you have been experiencing.



I'm hoping I can greatly improve the user experience just by doing a few very minor tweaks.



Thanks



Darren
I'm also now using 2.60.9 with Win7.



I'm using it purely to copy the library with iTunes playlists onto the NAS. I started using it in early January 2010 and have installed each upgrade. It's working perfectly for me and has solved my issue with imported playlists so I'm very happy.
Hi Darren

I am using the latest version 2.60.9.

I have just tested it again. I click on the icon in the system tray and open the program up. I then close it - I did nothing in the app and the icon disappears from the system tray. It has also disappeared from task manager!

I am using Windows 7



G
Gordon,



In version 2.60.9 I changed some code relating to the way the application exits with the minimize to system tray functionality enabled. I noticed that in earlier versions if you chose File -> Exit the application process was still running. This is fixed in version 2.60.9 but there are still some 'system tray' related issues. Thanks for you continued help and reporting issues.



I have tried replicating the issue on my work laptop under Windows XP but everything (generally) appears to be working as expected with version 2.60.9. I opened and closed iTunes several times and my application kicked in each time without the application disappearing from the Processes list (under Task Manager).

Please can you confirm if you are using version 2.60.9 and if not, what version you are using?



Ocassionally I find that the system tray icon stops responding to mouse clicks and that I am unable to restore the main window without killing the "iTunes Library Manager.exe" and restarting. Hopefully I will locate the source of these problems very soon. I am interested in your observation about the application removing itself from memory. Do you mean that the application disappears from the system tray or do you mean it disappears from the task manager?



If any new users wish to try my application I recommend giving it a go without using the minimize to system tray functionality until I have fully rectified the system tray issues.



I will endeavour to not post a new version of the application until I have ironed out all of the system tray issues.



Thanks



Darren
Hi Darren

Just found another problem. When the application launches itself after you quit iTunes to give you the opportunity to rerun the transformation process, it seems to remove itself from memory

So if you choose to run the process (or not run the process) and close iTunes Library Manager it dissapears from the system tray. So next time I go into iTunes and do something and then close it it does not seem to pop up again. I have to relaunch it from my startup folder and then open it manually.



I think this also happens if I launch it manually from the system tray (ie not the auto iTunes closure launch). So basically it seems it can only be run once when its in the system tray and then it disappears.

G
Hi,



Tonight I have posted version 2.60.9 on my website at http://www.darrenlink.talktalk.net/ituneslibrarymanager/download



Since my previous post I have succesfully helped Gordon (gsa999) with his issues and have fixed several bugs reported by Gordon. :)



This thread has now had over 4000 views but I'm not sure just how many people are using my application or have tried using it. I wish I had a download counter on my website!!! Please post feedback whether good or bad. I'm also happy to answer any questions under this thread or via email.



The application now has an about menu so I can track any reported issues by version number. If you find a bug please let me know the details and the version number and I will do my best to fix the problem.



Unfortunately I still have not fixed the issues with kicking off the Sonos indexer, so in the meantime please continue to Kick off the Sonos indexer manually via a Sonos controller and do not enable the Sonos indexer under the application settings.



Darren