Workaround for large music collection!

[bbcrusher]

Anders,

Apparently my post count is too low for to send a PM so...

Thanks a ton for taking a look at this. I did find a work around to do what your utility does but it is EXTREMELY laborious. I zipped up the mp3 files, the log and the ini file. Let me know if you need anything else. Thanks again!!!

Jeff

http://www.bbcrusher.com/pics/Misc/files.zip

Let me know when you have the zip file and I'll remove it from my Web host.

[Ramses800]

@Jeff
You can remove the file from your web host now.

I have examined your files and can conclude that your folders had the "Ready for Archive"-flag set upon them. It is probably your backup software that have made this change to the folders.
When I removed the flag, M3U4U worked, meaning that the program did not recognized folders with that flag...

But now however, I have updated it so it does allow it, download the updated version from www.anderware.org and try again.
Cheers,
Anders

[bbcrusher]

Excellent! Works perfectly. Thank you so much, Anders.

Jeff

[cutter74]

Hi, thanks for your excellent utility which has saved me days of manual effort!

I'm creating a small subset of my structure locally on my PC to see how it works. My actual music files are on d:\music while the mirrored structure containing the m3u files are located on c:\test1. The procedure works flawlessly and when when I open the m3u file with VLC the files play without problems. However, when I import the same folder (C:\test1) to the sonos software and try to play the same music files within sonos, I get an error message "unable to play <song_name>. the share //<hostname>/test1 does not exist.

Permisssions seem to be fine on the folder level (sonos read permisssion enabled on folder test1) and I've even checked the check box in the advanced settings of sonos to allow sonos to change permissions on music files in order to always be able to play them, but no luck.

When i delete the music library c:\test1 and add the folder where the actual music files actually reside d:\music, all files play without problems.

I would appreciate any ideas what I'm doing wrong. Thank you for your time.

[ratty]

VLC is able to see the files in d:\music directly and play them because they're local to your machine.

For Sonos to be able to access the folder containing the M3Us and the folder containing the actual music files (d:\music) both need to be shared onto the network. Sonos is only asked to index the folder containing the M3Us. Each M3U entry then directs Sonos to the other (unindexed) share in order to fetch the appropriate file.

[cutter74]

Good point ratty, thanks! I enabled sharing on the actual music folder but now I'm getting a similar error permission message on the file level instead of the directory. Unable to play <song>. The file //<hostname>/test/<song> cannot be found.

[ratty]

Each line of the M3U file must point directly to an absolute address on the share containing your music. I'm not a user of the M3U4U tool, but it looks like the 'location shift' option is what you need to use.

You can verify that the M3U file has the correct absolute network addresses by testing with VLC.

[janusj]

I'm having a similar problem..

Shifted Path to the file is correct - Verified this by sticking it into the browser, and it played..

there must be a network-share type setting somewhere we haven't enabled or something, cause when I try to access the share from another machine on my system - sure enough, it's not there..Despite me having setup the share, and enabled access to everyone.. for some reason I can see it when I browse the network locally on my server, but not when I browser the network from other machines.

My twonky install is working perfectly..across the entire network.. (well as much as much as twonky can anyways)..so there is "network access", but probably not at the level required by sonos..

Any thoughts?

(what an awesome tool btw..)

[ratty]

Originally Posted by janusj

Despite me having setup the share, and enabled access to everyone.. for some reason I can see it when I browse the network locally on my server, but not when I browser the network from other machines.

Have you tried a reboot of that machine?

[Ramses800]

Originally Posted by janusj

...but probably not at the level required by sonos..

I am not sure what you mean but Sonos is rather picky when it comes to shares, they have to be true shares(basically means that the share needs to be the actual share and not a folder below(which should not be a problem in my opinion but is for Sonos).
Example.
One adds a share(lets call it MUSIC) on a server(192.168.0.1). Then we add it to Sonos Index as \\192.168.0.1\MUSIC.
This works.
However, instead, lets say that the music folder is in a folder named DATA and is shared as DATA. If we try to add it to the index as
\\192.168.0.1\DATA\MUSIC, the indexing will not work.