The iTunes ratings are only stored in the library, not in the files themselves which is why I added the export/import ratings for iTunes. The library files are "iTunes 4 Music Library.itl" and "iTunes Music Library.xml".

As for the deletion of your ratings when running the sync from itunes to WMP. I cannot replicate it. I also inspected the code and couldn't see any situation that would lead to iTunes ratings (or any other iTunes info) being changed in any action that is a sync from iTunes function...

If you can reproduce it I would be very interested.

what code? after a song was sync'd it removed my itune rating. how do i find this code you speak of?

---

My MCE PC www.geocities.com/cigga24

When I say code, I mean the .net code that makes up the program. Are you certain you didn't sync to iTunes. That would have resulted in your ratings being overwritten by the WMP ratings and if you had no WMP ratings then all your iTunes ratings would become blank. When performing a sync FROM iTunes there is no modification made to the iTunes libraries.

Are your files MP3 or AAC?

i'm using all AAC,...actually less than 10 may be mp3. yes im certain i didnt sync to itunes and i dont know how to send you the code.

---

My MCE PC www.geocities.com/cigga24

No the code is what I write to create MusicBridge. I was saying that I looked back over my code and couldn't figure out a codepath that would result in what you are seeing. If you try it again I suggest saving those 2 iTunes library files I mentioned earlier and maybe also using the ratings export function of MusicBridge to save your iTunes ratings out in case it happens again...

Were you using any date criteria?

no date criteria, i'll try it again over the weekend.

---

My MCE PC www.geocities.com/cigga24

I'm finally getting around to checking out Music Bridge. I like its simplicity, first of all, but I think I'm dealing with a slightly different situation than it was originally designed for. I basically have two copies of all the music for which I actually own the original cds, and I suspect this will cause music bridge to not sync those files. I wish there was a good way around this situation, but I haven't found one. I'll explain:

- I have my music library ripped to WMA lossless on my windows 2003 server. This is shared to the rest of my network. Storing lossless files ensures I will never have to rip these discs again.

- My HTPC, running MCE 2005, is the primary consumer of this lossless library, pumping it directly to my best sound system, for which I want the best source. It obviously maintains a WMP10 library.

- I also own an iPod, mainly because it is still just the best hard drive player out there in terms of usability. There is no beating the click-wheel, but I could NOT find a decent software package that would automatically sync lossless files (no matter the format) to the iPod and keep the ratings (which I'm a huge fan of using) synced between the two different formats. Ideally iTunes would allow me to keep WMA files in its library, but just transcode them when syncing to the iPod. It doesn't do that, and no one else does either. Even if it did, it wouldn't write the ratings to the WMA file, which is what I need in order to the HTPC to pick them up.

- So my desktop uses iTunes and contains a second copy of all my WMA files in Mp3 format.

I want to sync the ratings from the iTunes library to my WMA lossless files. The only difference between these files should be the filename and the format, all the tags should be exactly the same. So I was hoping Music Bridge would be able to sync based on tags, but I'm guessing it's going on filename?

Also, I would actually like to be able to export the iTunes ratings (which MB can already do) and import them into WMP on the HTPC (which MB can't do yet).

Got all that? Suggestions? I know this is just a pesonal utitlity, so if this is hard stuff, then don't worry about it. Also, if you're interested in help, or if you wouldn't mind sharing the source code, I could probably implement this stuff myself. I just never have time normally to start from scratch on projects like this.

Thanks.

Anyone have a good (easy free) way to automate this process? I am really just interesting in iTUNES Ratings>WM10 and iTUNES playlists->WM10

I played around with this last night but couldnt quite get it do what I was hoping it would.

I want to synchronize my Itunes library on my desktop computer with the WMP library on my HTPC. This would allow me to maintain my HTPC library without having to access to the HTPC (I had hoped).

Is this capable of synching libraries on 2 different machines?

No I'm afraid not. this is only designed to sync WMP and iTunes when they share the same physical library structure.

Sorry.

ok, i was very foolish, and didn't back up my music, this was because the dvd ram writing drive was stolen and i wasn't able to - i still have a lot of it backed up on a seperate hard drive, but it's missing quite a lot of music which i have added since it was copied. Firstly, i'm not blaming the person who wrote this program - it's entirely my foolish mistake, however, somewhere along the line something went wrong and now i'm stuck with about 1300 songs with track numbers and titles - and thats it, in pretty much both windows media and itunes. A few albums had id3 tags which both programs understood but alot of the data for the albums etc seems to have gone, i'm doubting theres anyway to get this back again - but if anybody knows something that could help me recover, or help me get all the information back and from itunes into wmp i would be grateful. If any are curious, the reason for this move was because I was considering getting a creative touch zen player which sadly I could not find a plugin that will make it work on windows with itunes . so... if anyone can shine a bit of light or advice on the foolish problem i've brought myself into, it will be very much appreciated sorry if this was posted elsewhere, i'm too tired to search through pages of search results, sorry

If your songs are MP3 then you could just set WMP to fill in all the blanks... If they are AAC files I think you have a bigger problem...

I am curious about the situation that got you here. What format are your files in? Which function of MusicBridge did you use that caused this, and was it incorrect behaviour or did you do the sync in the wrong direction?

I'm sorry I can't help you get your tags back, but any information you can give me may prevent this happening to someone else.

I'm pretty sure I did the sync the wrong way which is my fault - and now i've tried it so many times - in both directions that i have no hope - my fault of course - i think because i was tired i misunderstood the prompt.

From memory i believe i did "sync from itunes" first - but the box below only produced start... finish

after this did nothing - i attempted the opposite way : i think, that due to my tiredness i misread the "are you sure you want to replace all WMP info with itunes info" - at the time i think i understood this as all information from wmp would be changed to itunes, which is incorrect? i have no files in wmp, was this the problem?

after this failed, i synced from wmp - i think i had added all of my files into wmp at this point even though the names did not come up - this seemed to make progress and started removing all names from itunes and not bringing anything up in wmp.

 

I am under the understanding that i did it the wrong way wrong, or in some way wrong, however, could you please explain to me the exact way this works? ie. just to check the sync from putting all itunes tags into wmp? and vice versa, as i can probably get all my music back from cds and typing the tags in to an extent but if i end up in a month with an ipod i would like to be able to sync the tags between the problems. If i load all of the cds back into itunes and a new folder on my harddrive, would it be sync from itunes? and will i need all the files added into wmp already? i am very confused, i am sorry for my lack of understand, maybe i've got the idea entirely wrong i sadly rushed the process

i downloaded the first version i saw, which was from the first post i believe, i later found out there was a later version but my internet (even though its dsl) is being very slow this week and i didnt have the time to find, even get to another page without it somehow going wrong.

 

when you say wmp to fill in the blanks, do you mean have it search from the internet?

 

 

Ok the high-level overview is that you have a situation in which iTunes and WMP share the same physical files (AAC or MP3). You have one library that is better tagged than the other. You then use MusicBridge to make copy your good information into the lacking library. This way you can rip and manage in one application (WMP or iTunes) and duplicate all the information into the other application.

I for example use iTunes to manage all my music. I rip to AAC format, add those files to WMP (or let WMP add them by monitoring folders), and then I use MusicBridge to duplicate the information from iTunes to WMP.

Does that make sense?

 

Ok, I did reply to this with a longish post - but it seems to have been lost...

Anyway, i made the stupid mistake of forgetting to check that all my files were in wmp in the first place, and thats where it all went wrong. There's nothing wrong the program you wrote, it was the mistake of me first not adding the files and then trying to sync it with nothing there and then afterwards syncing it the opposite way around. I've got libary xml file backed up on another harddrive somewhere with all the files - so i can recover them with a bit of time, i needed to do some clearing of it up anyway because of the different file formats and compression rates. Its all good I've been able to use your software correctly since after re-ripping a few albums

Thanks for your help.