Make all playlist view settings the same?
 

How do I do this? I am creating multiple smart lists and I want them all the have the same custom columns and view settings. Right now I'm having to go in and do each one manually. There's got to be a way and I'm just missing it somewhere.

Please help, thanks

If there is a setting I could duplicate for each list in an ini/xml file or a reg setting that would be good enough for me. I love this software it does everything I need and it's improved remarkably, it's just I make many smart playlists and it would be so much better if I could use the same custom setting for each one without having to do them manually.

good question!

Dude I totally figured it out.

buahahahaha

BRB in a few to see if I can find an easy way to explain it.

???

I posted it but it said the post had to be approved by a moderator.

Lets try again.

Alright this is what you do.

1.) First make all your smart playlists, even if you always make new ones, make all your main favorite ones first and don't set any customizations.

2.) Go to the 'audio' playlist and customize it exactly the way you want all of the other playlists to appear.

3.) Then go into C:\Users\*your-user-name*\AppData\Roaming\Winamp\Plugins and right click the gen_ml.ini file and open it in notepad or better yet download "notepad++" and use that.

4.) In the file you will see blocks of queries. Each query is a playlist and contains 5 lines each. The 4th line down in each query specifies the location of the "playlist customizations file" for each of the given playlists. It ends in the extension .vmd. So goto the first query which should be "audio", this is the playlist we customized in step 2. Copy the name of the .vmd file on line 4, it will be something like "met93AE.vmd".

5.) Now for each of the playlists you want to follow the main playlist go to line 4 in each of the queries and overwrite the name of the .vmd file for each one with the name of the one you just copied in step 3.

--And viola it's as simple as that. You'll see when you go into Winamp and now customize any one of your playlists all of the others will follow the same layout.

........................................

**** Notes ****

-- You will need to have enabled viewing of hidden & super hidden system files, and file extensions in windows explorer if you haven't already done so.

-- This works for sections 1,2, & 4. Section 3 containing the album art will need to be set separately which is very simple with just a single click on each one. I'm sure this can be set in another file I just haven't looked for it yet.

-- If you want each of your playlists to start with your fav layout but not follow all the others then instead of replacing the .vmd file in each query, you will then go into *C:\Users\*your-user-account*\AppData\Roaming\Winamp\Plugins\ml and manually edit each .vmd file in notepad++ by copying and pasting the code from your first list into each one. Then when you further customize your lists, each list's settings will be saved into their own unique .vmd file vs all of them following one file. You can do this either way you decide works best for you.

-- Backup the files you edit before hand if you decide you want to revert back to stock, or download the winamp backup tool and use that.

-- Any new playlists you create, just go back into the gen_ml.ini and continue doing steps 3 & 4. I tried pasting the code in the default.vmd file to see about changing the defaults but that didn't seem to work. I'm sure there's a way just haven't looked into it any further.

So all in all if you create all your main fav lists at once and then do this they will all follow each other's customizations. This saves from A TON of clicking and asynchronous columns in each list, if you like to have everything looking totally in sync. Then create a shortcut to the .ini file and past it to your taskbar, then you can go in and edit every time you make new lists. If you make "smart lists" and not "regular lists" which follow the tags in your tracks, then your playlists will always update accordingly when you add new albums to your media library, so once you have all your main lists created, you should be good to go for a while, and the rest is cake.

Many thanks to Winamp for creating and continuing to improve this software better and better with each release. Also if anyone has any comments or additions you want to contribute to this post you are welcome to do so.

Cheers. :D

blazin9s, Thank you, thank you, thank you... :)

Damn, thanks a bunch for this post, blazin9s! Been looking for a way to to this for ages now..

I just have a couple of comments on this procedure:

1) You can name the vmd file anything you want (i.e. mysettings.vmd), to make it a bit easier to spot or whatever.

2) You should make a backup of the vmd file containing your settings! Winamp reverts the settings within the file to default when you delete one of the playlist linked to it.