how to backup?
 

heyas!

i need to reorganize my mp3 files.

how can i backup (just in case ;P) my ratings and playcounts?

thx
muab

You're in the wrong forum, I think. Sounds like a general ML-related inquiry--not something specific to ml_iPod. That said...

I assume that by "reorganizing", you mean changing the directory structure of your music folder. I don't think it's possible with Winamp to back up ratings, playcounts, etc. Even if you could, Winamp treats moved files like follows:

1. Original file deleted: Remove it from the ML.
2. New file found somewhere else: Added to the ML as a new entry with an empty playcount, rating, etc.

Because of #2, Winamp wouldn't know what to do with such a backup (how would it know which backup entries corresponded to each of the "newly added" files?).

I think there is a plugin that writes your ratings/playcounts etc. directly to the ID3 tags of your files, and can reimport them into the ML later. That would solve your problem. It's dependent on the id3lib, so it only works with MP3 files, no m4a. And I don't remember its name :(

WOW...does anybody know the name to the program ABU is talking about. That thing sounds amazing! I really wish I knew

You know, I never really got the point of ratings. If I have to rate a song less than 3 stars, chances are it'll be deleted from my hard drive before too long.

Ah, I just remembered, it is part of ActiveWinamp. It will only work with MP3 files that have a ID3v2 tag already (no M4A, FLAC...) :(

Still interested?
Installer download

Then you should replace the gen_activewa.dll DLL with
this version (important!)

Then you need id3com installed, which obviously never came out of beta state: http://www.kindel.com/mp3/id3com/id3com.htm

Then you will have a SendTo item "ID3 Export" which writes rating and playcount (only these two) to the ID3v2 tags.

Never tried it myself, though, this is just by looking at the code :)

If anybody can contribute experiences with that...?

I'll try it out thanks ABU.

@fatcerberus1
Ratings are very useful and can be very complex. If you are a person with a HUGE amount of music...and you have it all rated..now you have an ability to identify and group any amount of music that you know you like even though you may have not remembered the song specifically. In my mind, ratings enable a user to remember how well they enjoyed a song even though they may have forgotten it or have only listened to it once. When you create playlists, that can be a VERY powerful tool. Imagine creating a Smart playlist that takes All your 5-star Hard Rock genre by Tool, Perfect Circle, and Metallica into one playlist. You just instantly picked all your BEST songs with that criteria. That playlist is VERY convenient and fast to create.

Moving onto how you rate a song. Now that is tricky If you think about it. Those 5 stars can mean ANYTHING. In your statement, it looks like you took the generic approach and made a 1-Hate---->5-Love Spectrum. I've heard of people using the star system very uniquely. For example, I know a guy that enjoys every song in his library almost equally....so he decided his rating system should be a spectrum on how well he believes other people (general public) would enjoy the music. SO 1-General Public Hates---------->5-General Public Really Likes. You can do all sorts of stuff with your ratings.

Does this kind of make you want to rate your music....I know for some that have smaller libraries, Rating music seems kind of trivial since you kind of remember most songs.

Sorry to bring this topic back up BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION. I thought I would share it with everyone. In short, this allows you to move any files around and than re-add them to your library but still maintain the ratings, playcount, ect.

Plug-In Download link:
http://filebeam.com/a3f3b767074f4d203fb0e25696ecc5e5

Winamp Forum Thread Talking about Plug-In:
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....e+library+lose

READ AND ENJOY! IT WORKED GREAT

On a sidenote...I also thought of another solution to this problem but I wanted to run it by everyone to check. It involves the iPod. It goes like this:

1. Move files around however you want.
2. Re-add those files into the Winamp Media Library
3. Use the remove missing files in Media Library
4. Use the ml_ipod's "send Ratings, Playcounts, ect. from iPod to Winamp" feature to recover all missing data.

The reason I think this will work is that ml_ipod doesn't seem to care if a file was moved and re-added to the Winamp ML database. It treats it as if it was never moved. So, if you were to move everything and re-add it to Winamp ML...than tell ml_ipod to send Ratings, Playcounts and such from iPod to Winamp....it should transfer everything that Winamp lost in the moving process. Right? I wonder why this wasn't thought of before.....