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Playlist backup & restore to SD

alostpacket

alostpacket

Over Macho Grande?
Hey all,

I know a lot of people have been waiting for PowerAmp to implement a playlist backup and restore but I think I beat him to the punch. Huzzah! :)

BlueMuze now has a new feature: simple backup and restore for playlists.

Being a new feature, there may be a few glitches, so use at your own risk and please feel free to email me or post here with any issues or suggestions.


Anyways, just thought you guys might be interested.

This feature is in the trial version too so you dont have to buy my app to use it just to backup playlists (though that's not the purpose of the app heh).


Market links to trial version
market://details?id=com.alostpacket.bluemuze

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.alostpacket.bluemuze


backup.jpg
restore.jpg
restore2.jpg
 
I was doing a search if there was a better way to set up playlists with Poweramp and came upon this. I have a question. Why would you charge for an app that is in beta and not even finished? I can see giving it out for free and when you have it finished then you charge for the new version.
 
I created my playlists on my PC. I copied them to my phone, put them in "my playlist", and I can edit them using the music app.
 
kalel33 said:
I was doing a search if there was a better way to set up playlists with Poweramp and came upon this. I have a question. Why would you charge for an app that is in beta and not even finished? I can see giving it out for free and when you have it finished then you charge for the new version.
Click to expand...

I think you've misunderstood, BlueMuze is not in beta -- it is at version 1.3.0 right now. It is just this new feature that is beta.

It was something people had requested after they used my app. The main purpose of my app is for transfering music from one phone to another, but I was told the playlist features were already better than most of the major music players, and people asked if I could add playlist backup and restore, so I did. :)

And the new feature actually is in the free version.

Sometimes when I add new features while I know they work pretty well from my testing, I let people know that particular feature is still "beta" so that hopefully I'll get some more feedback on it. And just to let people know there may be some unforseen kinks in that one new feature. I'd rather inform people than leave them in the dark.
 
pool_shark said:
I created my playlists on my PC. I copied them to my phone, put them in "my playlist", and I can edit them using the music app.
Click to expand...


If that works for you that's cool, I was told though that many people had problems with disappearing playlists -- especially on the DroidX. And that my app was good for managing playlists even though that's not its main purpose.

So that's whay I added the feature, if it's not something you need, no worries, my app is for sending and receiving music over bluetooth and WiFi, not just playlists ;)
 
"The missing link" is the ability to back up and restore Android playlists to .m3u files.

Adding tracks to playlists on an Android player is the natural thing to do when listening to music on the go, but up till now there's been no known way to create .m3u files from them, for backup purposes, editing and use on the PC. If you reset your phone, all the time you put into creating the playlists, is lost.

Winamp have recently produced a player for Android which syncs by WiFi to their PC desktop software and allows the editing of playlists on the Android device itself from the desktop. It does not, however, enable their backup or transfer to the PC.

Now, with the new features in BlueMuze, it's possible to transfer the results of the editing of the Android playlists to the PC for backup purposes, and with slight editing, use these playlists on the PC in Winamp, MediaMonkey, etc.

This is absolutely great. Thanks.
 
eyallvy said:
"The missing link" is the ability to back up and restore Android playlists to .m3u files.

Adding tracks to playlists on an Android player is the natural thing to do when listening to music on the go, but up till now there's been no known way to create .m3u files from them, for backup purposes, editing and use on the PC. If you reset your phone, all the time you put into creating the playlists, is lost.

Winamp have recently produced a player for Android which syncs by WiFi to their PC desktop software and allows the editing of playlists on the Android device itself from the desktop. It does not, however, enable their backup or transfer to the PC.

Now, with the new features in BlueMuze, it's possible to transfer the results of the editing of the Android playlists to the PC for backup purposes, and with slight editing, use these playlists on the PC in Winamp, MediaMonkey, etc.

This is absolutely great. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Thanks much for the kind words!

It sounds like you may know all this but I just want to clarify a bit of a disclaimer here heh.

My backup/restore is not made to be compatible with using the playlist on a PC or another device.

If you find that works for you though please let me know! :)

Rather, it's designed as a way of keeping a backup in case your phone deletes playlists by itself for whatever reason. I have heard the DroidX can do this and possibly some Samsung phones but I really have no idea, and supposedly the bug is in the Android OS itself.

Anyways, the playlists are .m3u8 (a utf8 version of .m3u - not supported by all players). This is because many people have files/songs with names not in english and the file must be UTF-8 in order to save the path properly so that the playlist can be restored.

They also have to contain full paths to the songs such as:

/mnt/sdcard/music/DJ Mixes/Sasha and Digweed.mp3

So your computer may not be able to edit/understand that. Anyways thanks for the compliment I just wanted to be sure I wasn't clear about what the feature is intended to do so people don't get unexpected results.
 
Hi,

I think the playlist backup feature is something people might want, but I had done quite a lot of googling before I came upon bluemuze and saved me.

Brilliant for my requirement which is:
Trying to get all my family's music shared & syncs and I hate to say iTunes was the best solution.
Consequently iSyncr came to my rescue, however my daughter has lots of large carefully produced playlist on her HTC Desire (not the PC)
iSyncr copies the playlists from the PC & overwrites the phone copy.

How to get her playlists onto iTunes?
(I am not an expert, I used trial & error & followed other posts. May be easier way and might be some issues with this method as only done small testing so far but has worked for me)

Save playlist via bluemuze as .m3u
EDIT the m3u using notepad++ (new to me)
REPLACE LF CR with CR LF (using \r\n to \n\r or visa versa)
REPLACE all / with \ (iTunes will import with / but when isyncr'd back to phone "can't find file")
REPLACE \mnt\sdcard\syncr\ with desire PC hard disk location e.g D:\My Music\

/mnt/sdcard/syncr/All Saints/Saints & Sinners/01 Pure Shores.mp3
/mnt/sdcard/syncr/All Saints/Saints & Sinners/02 All Hooked Up.mp3
/mnt/sdcard/syncr/All Saints/Saints & Sinners/03 Dreams.mp3
(with LF & CR symbols messing up format)
Becomes:-
M:\My Music\All Saints\Saints & Sinners\01 Pure Shores.mp3
M:\My Music\All Saints\Saints & Sinners\02 All Hooked Up.mp3
M:\My Music\All Saints\Saints & Sinners\03 Dreams.mp3

This assumes all you music is in one place on the PC or the phone(perhaps) and not spread about different main folders.

Can make macro in NotePad++ to do all this in one easy go.

& save.

In iTunes file/library/import the m3u file on the phone or where you saved it.

Playlist works fine in iTunes & when iSyncr to phone playlist is nicely copied.

As I say not done huge testing and not sure if could be issues, artwork perhaps but guess mp3 tag should be intact. I personally not done much with playlists so daughters will be real critics.

I may have missed a much easier way of importing playlists but if not, I hope this is a help to others.
 
Thanks bignose2, very helpful tip, and glad to see people are finding it useful despite that not being its intended purpose :)


Edit: Also I think as an idea I may add a feature to save a PC compatible playlist file with forward slashes so they are easier to edit. Possibly adding a custom prefix and/or some type of sync/conversion utility for the desktop to help the process along.

Anyways, thanks again for the very helpful post, it sparked some ideas brewing in my head :)
 
I usually keep my update "bumps" to my app announcement thread, but this update was primarily focused on improving the stability of backup and restore.

Also there is a new known issue caused by Google that I must address.


1.4.7
-Bugfix release
-Major rewrite of playlist backup/restore & folder handling
-This should address most issues users may have been seeing
-Fixed an issue with Bluetooth connections failing on first try
-Fixed an issue with Wi-Fi manual connections


KOWNN ISSUES:

Note: the playlist backup & restore feature is still in beta. Please let us know if you have any problems whatsoever. ***Please be sure to make extra backups of playlist files to you PC (just in case)***

1) A few users have reported not seeing playlists when flashing CM7 or FCs when restoring playlists.

- This issue should be resolved in 1.4.7. Please let us know if you continue to see this problem

2) Playlists created in Google Music Beta are not visible in BlueMuze.

- Unfortunately there is little we can do for this issue. All 3rd party music apps have this problem. This is because Google hides the playlists it creates.

I urge you to please write Google and ask them follow their own "open data" policies and allow playlists to be seen by other apps. To learn more about Google's own policy, visit this Google website: the Data Liberation Front

You can contact Google here:
https://www.google.com/support/music/bin/request.py?contact_type=feedback


3) Playlists use a forward slash / as a folder separator.

This is not a bug but rather the default folder separator for Android. However we hope to add a tool to help with converting files for the desktop in the future.

In the meantime, see the tip above in this thread on how to convert easily using Notepad++
 
alostpacket said:
1) A few users have reported not seeing playlists when flashing CM7 or FCs when restoring playlists.

- This issue should be resolved in 1.4.7. Please let us know if you continue to see this problem
Click to expand...

I just rooted and flashed my phone with CM7 for the first time today... and I get an "Error: file list empty".

Do I have to put the playlist backup file in a different folder or directory for the app to see it?

Thanks.
 
Hi Paulmz,

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. The backup playlist should exist in the directory:

/BlueMuze/Backup_Playlists/

That folder should remain after flashing a ROM because it's on the SD card.

When do you get the error exactly? When you go to restore the playlists through BlueMuze, do you see any playlists in the pop-up dialog?

Did you back up using 1.4.7? Older versions of BlueMuze put playlists in a different folder and those would not show up in this newest version.


Also, as always, please feel free to email me for support.



.


 
alostpacket said:
Hi Paulmz,

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. The backup playlist should exist in the directory:

/BlueMuze/Backup_Playlists/

That folder should remain after flashing a ROM because it's on the SD card.

When do you get the error exactly? When you go to restore the playlists through BlueMuze, do you see any playlists in the pop-up dialog?

Did you back up using 1.4.7? Older versions of BlueMuze put playlists in a different folder and those would not show up in this newest version.
Click to expand...

No problem with the delay. I am using the most current version 1.4.7. The first time I performed a backup it did generate a backup but not in the "Backup_Playlists" folder. The only thing in there is a "no media" file. It seems to have placed the backup in a separate folder: /BlueMuse/Playlists/.

I just performed another backup and it saved it in the correct /BlueMuze/Backup_Playlists/ folder. I don't know why it didn't work the first time. Seems to work now.

Unfortunately, I can't give any more information about the CM7 problems. I have since abandoned CM7 due to several bugs and things I didn't like. Back to the stock ROM for me.

Thanks for getting back to me. All is good now.
 
No problem, I will keep any eye out for that bug though, this information was very helpful :)

Glad it's all sorted now for you too :)
 
What are the limits to the trial version? I need an app that can transfer playlists from one phone to another. If it expires that's fine because I'll be done with it by the time it expires. If not does anyone know a free app?
 
The trial can only send 7 songs at a time and is limited to bluetooth. But the trial can receive an unlimited number of songs via bluetooth. There is no time limit or expiration date.

The full version ($0.99) can send and receive unlimited songs and has the additional option of sending or receiving via Wi-Fi (beta feature).


It really isnt expensive all things considered, and neither version has any tracking or advertising.

However, I would prefer if you please dont use this thread to ask for free stuff.

I'm trying to put food on the table with this work, and am hard pressed not to take offense that you think you deserve such an app for free. This took several months to program and is still undergoing changes. So all I ask is that you please respect that fact and ask elsewhere if you would like free apps.

Cheers,
-alp
 
I should also note, as of there are no limitations on the playlist/backup and restore feature in either version.

Eventually the paid version will have new features of an automated backup and restore option as well as support for .pls files.
 
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