Coping part of of an iTunes library to another library.

[JoseL]

 

Hi,

Is there a painless way to copy/transfer part (say all the jazz albums) of an iTunes library from an external HDD to a folder located in a different HDD?

I tried to do it by creating a smart playlist of all may jazz albums an drag'n dropping them into the folder in the other drive. That approach only works with  50-60 albums at the time (the total is more than 1.3K).

If I select more than that the Mac kind of chokes, freezes and finally rejects the operation.

Please advice and thanks in advance.

[wgscott]

If you are comfortable with a unix environment, it is probably much safer to copy stuff that way.  

 

What I would do is write a shell script that does the following:

 

cd into a directory that contains an album.

select an audio file.

Interogate it with afinfo to evaluate the genre tag.

Have a conditional test in which the directory and its contents are copied only if the genre tag evaluates to jazz.

loop to the next directory and cd into that, and repeat ...

 

I could try writing the shell script if you want.

 

 

[JoseL]

49 minutes ago, wgscott said:

If you are comfortable with a unix environment, it is probably much safer to copy stuff that way.  

 

What I would do is write a shell script that does the following:

 

cd into a directory that contains an album.

select an audio file.

Interogate it with afinfo to evaluate the genre tag.

Have a conditional test in which the directory and its contents are copied only if the genre tag evaluates to jazz.

loop to the next directory and cd into that, and repeat ...

 

I could try writing the shell script if you want.

 

 

Thank wgscott. I couldn't  write a  scripts even if my life depended on it.

Perhaps one of the Doug's scripts can do something similar. 

I will check it and report back.

Thanks again

[DougAdams]

The way you are doing it now should work, no matter how many files you want to copy. It's virtually the same as copying files in the Finder. (You are dragging a pasteboard to a Finder location; the pasteboard contains file paths; the Finder interprets the drag as a copy operation.)

 

The observation that only 50-60 files make it before the activity is balled-up could indicate a file/file system-related issue. Is it possible that the target drive is having trouble accepting so many files at once? Is it possible there are any dead tracks?

 

You may want to try "Export Files From Playlists":

https://dougscripts.com/520

 

But my guess is that a third-party process will run into the same issues you are seeing with your current method. Perhaps not, but I think it likely.

[wgscott]

Sometimes the filenames have weird non-ascii characters that aren't handled as gracefully as they should be.

 

Since you got the recommendation from Doug Himself, try that first!

[wgscott]

12 hours ago, wgscott said:

 

Interogate it with afinfo to evaluate the genre tag.

 

This is wrong.  afinfo won't do what we want.

 

I have mutagen installed, and that works:

 

mutagen-inspect-py27 John\ Coltrane/*/*.m4a | grep -i Jazz

 

[JoseL]

23 hours ago, DougAdams said:

The way you are doing it now should work, no matter how many files you want to copy. It's virtually the same as copying files in the Finder. (You are dragging a pasteboard to a Finder location; the pasteboard contains file paths; the Finder interprets the drag as a copy operation.)

 

The observation that only 50-60 files make it before the activity is balled-up could indicate a file/file system-related issue. Is it possible that the target drive is having trouble accepting so many files at once? Is it possible there are any dead tracks?

 

You may want to try "Export Files From Playlists":

https://dougscripts.com/520

 

But my guess is that a third-party process will run into the same issues you are seeing with your current method. Perhaps not, but I think it likely.

 

Hi Doug,

As I type this your script is working like a charm transferring the playlist's tracks (~16000) to a folder in another drive. I noticed that is doing it track by track without preserving the folder hierarchy (artist>album>track).

Once the transfer has finished, is there a good way (or script) to reorganize the tracks back to their original folder structure?

Thanks again,

[DougAdams]

That's good that there doesn't appear to be issues copying files. I wonder what the initial issue was?

 

I don't have anything for sorting files after copying. That's something to think about, I suppose (this is the sort of thing where the Venn Diagram of audiophiles and DJs has a nice chunk of real estate). But I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing is already available. I'm just not aware of it.

[wgscott]

One simple-minded approach that should work:

 

(1) Copy everything using Doug's script.

 

(2) Open iTunes while holding down the option key.

 

(3) Tell it to create a new library.

 

(4) Go to preferences and make sure you let iTunes organize your library.

 

(5) import all the copied stuff into iTunes.  It will create the directory structure for you.

 

You can then re-open iTunes with the option key again to go back to the original library.

[DougAdams]

1 hour ago, wgscott said:

One simple-minded approach that should work:

 

Yep, that's not a bad idea.

 

And, once you've reverted back to your original library and have extricated the "iTunes Media/Music/" folder from the just-created library, dispose of the other completely unnecessary support files/folders that iTunes will have also created.

[JoseL]

On 10/2/2017 at 2:22 PM, wgscott said:

One simple-minded approach that should work:

 

(1) Copy everything using Doug's script.

 

(2) Open iTunes while holding down the option key.

 

(3) Tell it to create a new library.

 

(4) Go to preferences and make sure you let iTunes organize your library.

 

(5) import all the copied stuff into iTunes.  It will create the directory structure for you.

 

You can then re-open iTunes with the option key again to go back to the original library.

Thanks  wgscott. I have thought about the metod you posted and indeed tried it. It works well by indexing/organizing the library structure within iTunes, however it doesn't "physically" organize the tracks in folders by albums and artists. 

I think that that can be achieved by first selecting "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" and then dropping the tracks in the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder. I will tried that next.

Thanks again,

 

[wgscott]

Sorry, that is what I meant by (4).  I should have looked at iTunes prefs to see the exact wording.