Tuesday, December 18, 2007

MusicBridge 3.0

Today I started work on MusicBridge 3.0. The main planned features revolve around export/import functionality. Giving users the ability to take advantage of MusicBridge syncing across disconnected multiple computers. The functionality will offer the opportunity to export from either iTunes or WMP into a format ready to be imported into either iTunes or WMP. MusicBridge will be required to be installed on each machine. The export/import process will be disconnected and the data will be transferred by means of an XML file that the user will move from one machine to the other.

The process will require a 'similar' structure for the music folders on each machine. It will not require matching absolute paths, but will require filenames and 2 levels of containing folders to match.

e.g.

Computer A path:
C:\Users\James\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Bruce Springsteen\Magic\Last to Die.mp3

Computer B path:
D:\My Music\Bruce Springsteen\Magic\Last to Die.mp3

would match.

The level to which paths must match is "Bruce Springsteen\Magic\Last to Die.mp3"

My current plans are for an "All data" sync only, excluding artwork.

I would like feedback regarding this functionality and whether you would like to see more flexibility in the types of sync and whether you would like to see the inclusion of artwork.

I also welcome any other feature requests.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

James- a big fan of your software. Any chance of adding iTunes to Zune Playlist syncing support? How about a scheduler component that syncs all your playlists daily?

Sample here: http://www.topxml.com/rbnews/XML/re-50640_Converting-iTunes-playlists-to-Zune-playlists-using-VB-9-0.aspx

Anonymous said...

looking forward to being able to use music bridge with networked media.... one vote for including album art though!

Tom said...

Brilliant app already, a lifesaver. I use it so that my Xbox 360 can use iTunes playlists.

Is there any chance that v3 would allow us to exclude certain playlists from being synced? I mainly ask because certain ones that get synched (like Music - the whole library! - and also the contents of attached iPods) make the playlist sync process take a long time...

Tom

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see Winamp support - syncing to winamp from itunes or wmp
thanks

Anonymous said...

I've been digging around and have seen source. Will you be releasing it?

Anonymous said...

can you make a button that just does play count because when you click general and it does all that other stuff it's a real waste of time

Stuart Anderton said...

I'm stuck on MusicBridge 1. something because I've found that WMP11 can cause album art to be replaced with black squares - a rather nasty little bug which takes a long time to fix once its happened.

Anyway, a feature request - have MB update the libraries held by MC Extenders as well as the master user account.

I get round this at the moment with a timed script which runs each night copy the main library to the extender accounts, but it would be nice if it did it as part of the main process

jurry said...

I just installed SP1 for Vista. I was hoping that it would perhaps fix the issue where iTunes refuses to import files/folders (without any error message - as documented here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6548231#6548231).
It doesn't however...
But when I started MusicBridge, it crashed for the first time... I aven't repeated the crash yet but wanted to let you know....

jurry said...

Just to let know that the crash I experience under Vista SP1 never replicated.
My suggestion for new functionality: a user-friendly "delta ttol": allowing to quickly see which files/folders are not residing in iTunes vs WMP.
Even better: a working tool to have iTunes 'watch/monitor' the My Music folder and be able to schedule syncing of meta data through MusicBridge....

Anonymous said...

Musicbridge is great. A great feature would be the ability to do record-level sync as opposed to across the board replacement. I'm specifically looking at syncing ratings, if I rate different songs in both WMP and itunes, and I sync for example itunes-> wmp then itunes will overwrite the ones I did in WMP

Anonymous said...

I agree with the above poster it would be cool to merge instead of overwrite.

Also, my directory structure is only one level deep, i.e. "Artist - Album/" vs. "Artist/Album/" so I wouldn't want the 'two levels' thing to be a requirement, just let me point to the "root" on both machines and use relative paths.

lyster said...

Will MusicBridge work with a Windows Home Server Machine?

Unknown said...

Sounds great - I need network path support because my Music is on my NAS and iTunes stores it as M:\Music whereas WMP has it as \\NAS\Music - so the current version doesn't work for me.
Love the idea behind the program tho - I need it!
As someone else mentioned, it would be great to be able to select which playlists to export.. (and have them as a comma seperated list as a command-line parameter)

MurkieSpoons said...

I have the same problem as shawn, my music is on a network drive, so iTunes see's the songs as M:\Artist\ and WMP see's the songs as \\ServerName\Artist\.

Love the application though, keep up the great work fella.

Anonymous said...

Great tool, thanks!

And I want to vote for including album art.

Nice feature would be also to automatically backup the libraries.

Heidi said...

I would also like a button to be able to sync just the play-counts. Currently to update play-counts I have to
1.Under 'Sync from WMP' press 'general data'
2. Have 'Include playcount' checked.

However I don't want to sync all the other data, just the playcount. So a button under each sync column saying 'Playcount' would be a really good feature!

By the way, I don't think you should remove the ability to do different syncs by just having a 'general data' sync.

Unknown said...

Agreed with Heidi. I would love that feature for play counts only. At home I use Vista MCE on my HTPC and while in my car or travelling, I use my iPod. So syncing vs overwrite would be excellent, I base some of my playlist with date last played and play counts...

Any news as to when it would be ready?

cheers!!

Anonymous said...

Hey just wanted to see if MBv3 will be compatible with Windows 7 and WMP 12. Also, is there anyway to sync the metadata with the actual tags that are in the explorer window? Great program, thanks for creating it.