iTunes XML library (nslu2/roku[Pinnacle] soundbridge)

[falling_in2_infinity]

I’ve been browsing around the forum and I can see a few people making brief mentions of the fact that they successfully use the iTunes library xml with firefly so that when using WAV files, clients can see the ‘meta data’.

I want to copy WAV’s to my nslu2, but keep a coherant hierarchy: mp3dir/Artist/Album/Songs.wav (pretty much as iTunes does it).

I’ve tried ripping cds to the music folder on my nslu2 with iTunes and then copying the library xml to the music folder, but viewing the newly scanned and restarted firefly server with an iTunes or soundbridge client doesn’t reveal any meta data… only a list of files.

I moved the individual .wav files to the music directory, so now I get ‘mp3dir/Songs.wav’. In this hierarchy configuration, firefly seems to pass the xml data to the client correctly… I can see all the files and album names, artists, etc.

Only trouble is, I’d rather not have all my audio files in one long list – I’d like to keep to my original hierarchy. I guess I could type the xml manually, but that’s a bit of a pain.

I’m wondering if anyone has implemented this kind of thing successfully – and if so, which methods people judge to be the best?

[rpedde]

@falling_in2_infinity wrote:

Only trouble is, I’d rather not have all my audio files in one long list – I’d like to keep to my original hierarchy. I guess I could type the xml manually, but that’s a bit of a pain.

If you copy *exactly* the way it is in iTunes, it should work. iTunes keep it as artist/album/song:

music/morrissey/bona drag/01 piccadilly palare.wav

That might *really* be:

/share/hdd/public/mp3/morrissey/bona drag/01 picadilly palare.wav

and the info in the iTunes XML is:

\slugpublicmp3morrisseybona drag1 piccadilly palare.wav

It tries to match those together by trimming off directories on the front until it finds a file.

So if the iTunes xml was in /share/hdd/public/mp3, and it was looking for that file, it would look in:

/share/hdd/public/mp3/slug/public/mp3/morrissey…
/share/hdd/public/mp3/public/mp3/morrissey…
/share/hdd/public/mp3/mp3/morrissey…
/share/hdd/public/mp3/morrissey… (and should find it here).

So as long as the files are in the same “structure” they were when they were ripped in iTunes (or copied from iTunes), and as long as the xml file is “above” the music… like in the forlder with all the artists, or the folder above that, then it should work.

If not, that’s a bug.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a gzipped -d10 log if that’s the case.

— Ron

[falling_in2_infinity]

Thanks Ron – I’m pretty sure that’s how I had it configured, but I’ll double-check it when I get home. If it still doesn’t seem to work, I’ll do that log for you.

Interestingly, firefly installed on my Mac (this is not a nightly) works perfectly well with wavs in my itunes directory… pointing to either a difference in my hierarchy on the nslu2, or a difference between 1417 nightly and the stable build.

Time will tell.

[falling_in2_infinity]

Ok, whatever I tried yesterday was clearly done in a dumb moment – I’ve copied my itunes xml to the slug again and now it works just fine.

Just to verify, this is the preferred method for managing a slug with iTunes:

Slug shared music file: /public/mp3
iTunes music library location: //slug/public/mp3

Then: Rip cds using iTunes, directly to the slug music folder.
Then: Copy the xml from pc/mac to relevant slug folder.

This method seems to work perfectly well for me, but I just wanted to know if anyone had any alternatives (I’m always open to new suggestions).

[rpedde]

@falling_in2_infinity wrote:

This method seems to work perfectly well for me, but I just wanted to know if anyone had any alternatives (I’m always open to new suggestions).

I don’t have anything better, just different. Personally, I manage my “master” library on iTunes/mac and rsync the iTunes tree to my slug for soundbridge/daap listening.

Kind of redundant, but it serves both to act as a music server and also as a backup for my music library.

— Ron

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