[Fineus]

Hi all,

I have an .M3U play list of MP3s. I'd like to extract the actual MP3 files from their current locations and copy them all into one separate directory *without* having to go through the whole list by hand, selecting the individual files from their folders etc. (The reason for this is that I've created a "Favourites" list of about 1400 songs, but don't want to trawl through over 4000 just to find those 1400 in their individual locations.

Does anyone know a way to do this? Or do I have to do it all manually?

[karajorma]

I'd say crop the list until you only have the ones you want. Play the first second or so of each, go to the folder, view details and then organise by Last Accessed.

If they're all jumbled up do a search for *.mp3 first. You may have to add the last accessed option to the list of details the search will organise by right clicking on the column names of the options it does give you but that still shouldn't take more than a few seconds to do.

[Davros]

one way would be to use winamp + the write to disk plugin but that would take ages

your only hope i think would be a media player that has a export playlist function

Edit: check out gen_yar
http://www.bcheck.net/apps/#gen_yar

[Inquisitor]

Interestingly, I just did this without realizing it.

I use Tversity as a media hub, and have it play from my main iTunes music store (all mp3).

I had imported my normal playlists like that, then I fired up iTunes on a different computer, and subscribed to the podcast of those play lists. It downloaded them all to a new directory on the other computer, sorted by "podcast."

I like Tversity , it lets me stream music and video to any device in the house, Xbox, PSP, PS3, etc. Supports a wide range of other devices. Pretty easy to set up.

[Flaser]

1. Open the m3u file with a text editor, and extract the locations.
2. Write a batch file using the data from the m3u file.

Help: http://www.computerhope.com/batch.htm

3. ???
4. Profit!

[Stealth]

here, because i'm nice, and also because i wanted to do the same thing a few years ago, and had trouble finding out how too.

First, open the .m3u or playlist file in word or another text editor or word processor


i used word


here's what it looks like.


using FIND>>REPLACE (or you can copy and paste this to excel to take advantage of some of its more advanced functions) you format it to look like this.  note that you could've left the "#EXTINFO" in the .bat file, because it won't interpret it.  just to make the end result look simpler, i took it out


when you have it nicely formatted, (note, make sure you use the real "s... the ones Word does are open and close parentheses... that won't work.  easiest way i think is to just copy/paste the " from notepad )

This will copy the files to a folder called "newmp3s", in the same location as the .bat is located.  NOTE that you need to put the .bat in the same folder as the playlist was, since (if you look at the file locations) it's linking to the RELATIVE locations of the MP3s... based on the playlist's location.

i don't like making .bats out of word... i don't know if it's even possible, so i copy and pasted the formatted data to notepad, and then saved as a .bat


now run the .bat... mine took a split second to run, but if you're copying hundreds/thousands of files, you'd be waiting a few seconds/minutes.


it should've copied them to the new folder you created

[WMCoolmon]

Hi all,

I have an .M3U play list of MP3s. I'd like to extract the actual MP3 files from their current locations and copy them all into one separate directory *without* having to go through the whole list by hand, selecting the individual files from their folders etc. (The reason for this is that I've created a "Favourites" list of about 1400 songs, but don't want to trawl through over 4000 just to find those 1400 in their individual locations.

Does anyone know a way to do this? Or do I have to do it all manually?

Foobar2000 will do this.

Open the .m3u file in foobar2000, select and right-click the files you want to copy; select "File operations->Move, Rename, or Copy files".

For some reason, foobar2000 will rename the files by default; to change this, click the "edit" button under "output file names". click "Add". Put "Filename" for the display name, and "%filename%" for the format. This will make foobar use the original file name when copying the files.

Click OK, then OK again to get back to the main dialog.

Under "Output directory", uncheck "Same as source..." and press the "..." button to browse to the directory you want to copy the files to. Click "Run" and wait for the files to copy.

[Stealth]

or use wmcoolmon's method :-/

HEY COOLMON, what happened to your 'long' avatar?  or was that back in the vbb?  i forget

[WMCoolmon]

Nah, it was here, the site that it was for didn't really get off the ground because my focus was diverted to the SCP.

[Stealth]

yeah that's right... the early days of HLP.  what'd it say again?

[WMCoolmon]

"m101". Yeah, it was pretty oldskool, it was made by Setekh himself.

[Fineus]

Thanks to everyone for their help but in the end it turned out to be Stealths method that was the most straightforward so I went with that.

WMCoolmon, thanks for the help with Foobar2000 mate but I figured mucking about with text files would be simpler than trying to persuade a third party program to do what I wanted.

Suffice to say the problem is sorted. Cheers guys!

[Stealth]

so it worked? awesome.

i have a macro you can use if you have a playlist with, say, hundreds of entries, and are having trouble formatting.

Copy/paste the playlist file to excel (or just open it in excel in the first place ).
make sure it's in row A
press ALT+F11 (open vbeditor)
click INSERT ==> MODULE
paste the following:

Sub AlterList()
    Dim r As Range
    Dim LastCell As Long
    Set r = Range("A1")
    LastCell = Range("A" & r.EntireColumn.Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row + 1
    Do Until r.Row > LastCell
        If Left(r.Value, 7) = "#EXTINF" Then
            Set r = r.Offset(1, 0)
            r.Offset(-1, 0).EntireRow.Delete
        ElseIf r.Value <> "" Then
            r.Value = "Copy " & Chr(34) & r.Value & Chr(34) & " tempmp3"
            Set r = r.Offset(1, 0)
        Else
            Set r = r.Offset(1, 0)
        End If
    Loop
End Sub

press ALT+Q to close vbeditor
now run the macro (ALT+F8) named 'Alterlist'

that should:
- delete #EXTINFO
- put a 'copy' in front of the lines
- put the file location in "quotes"
- put the name 'tempmp3' one space after each line.

that should make it really easy