Change file path in ML

[Goofus]

After googling all morning, I am getting more or less desperate finding an answer to (what is in my opinion) a relatively natural WinAmp functionality question. Should there already be a thread on this question, I want to apologize in advance for my poor googling skillz

My issue is the following:
I have physically renamed a song on my hard disk, thus effectively changing the file path and causing my ML to be unable to find the song. Hence, WinAmp marks the song as "missing" and refuses to play it. So far so good, this is the behaviour I expect.

Now, obviously I know the new file path and I desire to repair the missing song - not loosing my ML data (rating, playcount, etc.) in the process. I would have expected a menu option somewhere which allows me to change the file path for this single file but I couldn't. How can this be achieved (through WinAmp basic or via a plugin)?

"Solutions" that I have tried but that didn't satisfy my needs:
- remove the missing song from the ML and add the changed song: this breaks rating, playcount etc.
- exporting the library to xml, editing the xml file and importing the altered xml file: too time consuming as I intend to move around more files in the near future and I don't want to go through the whole export / find / edit / import process every time.
- (beta-)plugins which aim to provide this functionality in an automated way (http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=252884): stable automation would be a nice bonus, but I don't feel comfortable with anything carrying the "beta" label messing with my media.

My idea of a simple, but satisfactory solution:
A menu item when right-clicking on a song in the ML, which allows me via a windows explorer browsing window to indicate the song which is linked to this entry in the ML.


Is there anyone who may suggest a workable solution to this issue?

[Koopa]

Winamp lacks a real time updater for the library. You can change the paths under Preferences > Media Library > Local Media > Watch Folders.

[Goofus]

Thanks for your suggestion. However, I am aware of the auto-detect functionality in WinAmp, but using this results in the same behaviour as the first non-solution that I mentioned in the opening post, namely losing rating, playcount etc. This workaround is therefore not a satisfactory solution to my problem I'm afraid.

Again, as I mentioned, a real-time updater would be a great bonus, but that is not a requirement for me. If I could simply indicate the new location of an existing ML-song manually, that would do the trick.

[DrO]

moving to the wishlist forum where this belongs. i'd hope that exposing a dialog (like the ctrl+e one from the playlist editor) would work easily in the ml for such things (though won't know until it's tried out). i wouldn't expect this for the next client release but maybe one after that (as i quite like the idea).

-daz

[Goofus]

I would also think that this shouldn't be too difficult to implement - even if you would want to build in a check that the tags of the missing file in the ML and the file you point it to would match. The only I/O operation that should be done is overwriting the file path in WinAmp's library files I guess. I must admit I have no clue whether writing in these files is a tricky thing to do...

Anyways, thanks for your interest in my problem. As even you don't know of any existing plugins that could solve this problem, I will assume that they don't exist (yet)) I'll see whether I find some other workaround that I'm satisfied with or whether I will wait until the community or developers come up with something

[Hagtessa]

Good Morning,
after googling all day yesterday I - at long last - found this thread that at least mentions this big problem. And I do think it a problem, even if I can not find information on it otherwise.
The details: A playlist with, let's say 90 hours of music. All my musik-files are in one folder. If I renaim/tag or move files in this folder winamp can not find these files when I open the playlist (they are nicely highlighted with a different colour). This means I use the 'search' function and replace the files in the playlist by drag-and-drop. Doing this with hundreds of files is hours of unnecessary work.
If the files are still in the main folder and this folder is scanned at startup, I do not really understand why this happens.
A function saying 'research/replace unfound files' or something simular would be absolutely superb. With so many great possibilities and functions winamp should easily be able to do this.
Otherwise I love using and working with winamp

Regards
Hagtessa

[DrO]

there's a [...] button on the edit playlist entry dialog which allows for edittng of the path for the Playlist Editor without having to leave Winamp. this thread is more about providing an equivalent dialog for the media library local views.

-daz

[Hagtessa]

Originally Posted by Goofus

My issue is the following:
I have physically renamed a song on my hard disk, thus effectively changing the file path and causing my ML to be unable to find the song. Hence, WinAmp marks the song as "missing" and refuses to play it.

This sounds like my problem.... and I would not like to edit single tracks in the PL - thus taking up to much time.

But maybe I am misunderstanding???

Should I post this in a different part of the forum as it isn't really a 'wish' but a problem - at least for me.

Regards
Hagtessa

[DrO]

as you mentioned the playlist editor in your original post (especially with the missing file highlighting being enabled from the sounds of it) led to my response as there was no mention made about the media library.

the issue really is that people want Winamp to "automagically" know a file has been altered and update that path though i don't know if there's an OS api which allows for such things to be notified to a program.

all that has been agreed on in this thread is to provide a means to manually edit the path of a singular item in the media library at a time if the path has been changed. mass-editing isn't something i'm going to look at as it'd involve more work than i'm meant to do on Winamp and probably requires some larger changes.

as for where to post it, it doesn't properly fit in anywhere imho as it's more a feature request for a change in behaviour than a bug as the code is working as it has been designed to work when it has no external knowledge of external modifications. so i guess the wishlist (and this thread) is the best place or the other threads requesting it (though bumping threads just for a me too isn't a great idea) but i wouldn't get any hopes up as the wishlist is just a place for wishes and nothing is guaranteed (unless explicitly said it'll happen by someone with dev access).

-daz