Multiple PCs Media Library

[ken1to]

This is a nice wish, i hope someone think about and try to start the plugin.

I wish you can share the media library with multiple computers, not just to create playlist and stream music (i know about ml_www)... is more than that, it's about share ALL the information, like song rating, playcount... so that way it doesn't matter in what station i play the song it counts all the plays for the same song (ofcoruse to do this it have to do some hash/code/mark on the mp3 so the media library know it's the same file... this is an old wish from a lot of people since that way you can reorder the music on the harddisk and the info on the ML stay the same), another good use of that is to create a top hit playlist from a group of computers... that would be an awesome feature for work parties... so that way most people fav music will be played...

On the other side... to make this kind of information sharing it have to be some kind of server that keeps the information from all other stations... or replicate the information thru all winamp's ml on the network... it would be awesome, cuz that way if a play the song with my notebook, and then i came to the ofice or to my house it will add the info to the "global" information of the library.

I'm a good computer programmer... but i far way from doing this all bymyself... maybe with some guide and help this can be done. I know so many people will be happy with that feature.



(sorry about my english)

[ken1to]

I was thinking about my wish... is there a way to change the location of the ML "database"? mayme this can be solve in a very esay way if i just set all the media library to the same directory over the network... at least i can create a average playlist from the data of all my network.

any idea with this?

[siebe83]

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=1584529#post1584529

No guarantees it will work flawlessly though... You could give it a try. Be sure to read the whole thread, btw.

[ken1to]

yeah that will do the trick... but i would be nice to have a plugin specific for that.

Another solution is make the media library use a relational database, so you just set the datasource (with ODBC)... and it 'll be nice that way so you can use any database engine... even oracle, sql server, mysql... to access.

Don't know... i can give unlimited ideas that how to do it. If only i understand more and just do it myself but right now i'm not a genious... like most of the plugins programmers...

[mtabic]

Since this thread is 5 years old and Winamp has changed a lot since, I've been wondering if someone has a good solution for this?

I've been using Windows Live Sync to exchange file changes in appdata/winamp/plugins/ml/, however, Live Sync has changed in the meantime (it was also renamed to Live Mesh), and I suppose the way it syncs has changed, because It doesn't work anymore. After a sync, Winamp becomes stuck after a few songs.

Any ideas?

[envoy510]

Since this thread is 5 years old and Winamp has changed a lot since, I've been wondering if someone has a good solution for this?

I've been using Windows Live Sync to exchange file changes in appdata/winamp/plugins/ml/, however, Live Sync has changed in the meantime (it was also renamed to Live Mesh), and I suppose the way it syncs has changed, because It doesn't work anymore. After a sync, Winamp becomes stuck after a few songs.

Any ideas?

A strong 2nd here. I'm coming from iTunes where I used SuperSync (which didn't really do that good a job... it didn't handle ratings, for example).

I would love to be able to sync my library among different 'puters. Unfortunately, some of those are Macs.

[floutsch]

I'd also like to see that! I could imagine a server to install on one computer and all other computers would use a server connection to the library instead of buliding their owns. It could be cached, though.

Basically like Winamp Remote but really integrated instead of using the built-in browser.

[strigger]

Old thread, and not sure if this will help anyone, but there is a way to have a number of machines use the same media library on a network. For this to work you need to have a single server which holds all of your music. Needless to say the server has to be switched on for Winamp to work.

1) On the server, ensure that Winamp is configured to use UNC paths for its watch folders (i.e. \\computer\directory).
2) Share your Winamp data directory on the server, and ensure that whoever needs to has write access. The data directory should be in Users\[You]\AppData\Roaming\Winamp.
3) Rename or delete the existing Winamp data directory on the client machine.
4) Add a symlink in place of the Winamp data directory which points to your server. For example:

mklink /d c:\users\someone\appdata\roaming\winamp \\computer\winamp

This works well for me as I have a single machine to store the music and a couple of laptops which I may be playing from at any given time. Could also work remotely via VPN although I haven't tried this.

I should point-out that running Winamp on more than one computer at the same time in this way is likely to cause problems!!

[Nightryde]

mklink does not work on windows xp.

I have a solution for this.
Here is what I do:

- I have my music folder on a network drive.

- If I'm on the same network, i just map the network share to to e:\music and have Winamp media library point there

- If I am not on my network, I use LogMeIn Hamachi (https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/) to create a virtual private network, then map the music network share to e:\music again

- Then I install Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com/) on all the machines I use Winamp on.

- Then I create a junction (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896768) link from the Winamp media library folder (e.g. c:\winamp\plugins\ml to the dropbox folder c:\dropbox\ml). Thus all the media library files are stored on the dropbox account and folder. Dropbox keeps the files synced automatically every time winamp is exited.

- On my Mac, I use this entire setup in a 512mb ram windows xp vmware (http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/overview.html) image and it works great even MilkDrop 2 runs well!

This allows me to listen to my music from any network or OS and carry my media library with me preserving play counts and ratings.

[scochgid]

I assume your paying for more than 2GB though XD.
I'm using Mesh at the moment.

[Nightryde]

I assume your paying for more than 2GB though XD.

No, im only using Dropbox for the media library which is 8 megs.

I'm using Mesh at the moment.

Mesh is this?

http://www.musicmesh.net/

What does it do?

[jdmarti]

Thanks Nightryde I was looking for a solution to this with Dropbox. I think that will work and I will try it out now.

@strigger, if the dropbox solution doesn't work, I will try your method since both computers I am trying to sync are on the same network. Unfortunately, that solution would not work with two computers outside the same network, but the Dropbox method would.

[osmosis]

I sync my actual music library across my home network (D: on my desktop to the My Music folder on my laptop) using Microsoft SyncToy, which will keep it all on your local network whereas Live Mesh wastes bandwidth and time sending it out to the cloud and back. If you set Winamp to write ratings to files you've got pretty much all of your relevant metadata preserved, then just have Winamp set to rescan the ML on startup on both machines and it all takes care of itself.