Help importing iTunes statistics on Linux/NAS

General Discussions
1

Hi,

I’ve googled this forum quite a lot but haven’t found a solution. I’ve moved my entire music collection and my Plex Media Server from a Mac to a (pretty powerful) Synology NAS. Everything works nicely, except that I can’t seem to import my iTunes data to Plex. This is crucial because I have 78 carefully curated playlists that I want to keep.

This is what I’ve done:

  • Manually edited the iTunes Library.xml reflect the actual paths of the music files on the NAS (replaced /Volumes/ with /volume1/)
  • Set the correct path for the XML in Plex Media Server → Channels settings

That should work I think, because both the music and the XML is in the expected folder. But it doesn’t, and Plex spits out this in the log:

Sep 24, 2016 12:29:10.850 [0xe8d59b40] WARN - Could not find path: /volume1/music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Drömhus/Hålla Dig Nära/Hålla Dig Nära (Radio Version).m4a
Sep 24, 2016 12:29:12.117 [0xe8d59b40] WARN - Could not find path: /volume1/music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Drömhus/Stjärna på himmelen/01 Stjärna på himmelen.m4a
Sep 24, 2016 12:29:12.279 [0xe8d59b40] WARN - Could not find path: /volume1/music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Tiësto/Just Be/10 Adagio For Strings.m4a

That’s all. Nothing more. It just stops after three tracks, so apparently this is not how it works. Do you guys have any ideas?

(PS. It would also be super useful if Plex could import and export regular M3U files, so that moving from other apps would be super smooth)

2

It seems it might have something to do with special characters and the way they are encoded? Like ÅÄÖ in Swedish band names and the ï in Tïesto. Could that be it?

Then again the iTunes import feature sole purpose is to do exactly what it’s called, so this shouldn’t be the an issue.

4

@trumpy81 said:
The address you need to use in the iTunes Music Library.xml has changed.
Try this: file://localhost/volume1/Music/

I did change that from /Volumes/music which is what the Mac uses, to /volume1/music which is what the NAS uses. I tried adding localhost to the beginning as well, but I still get the very same error as above. Also, there are usually two iTunes XML files: iTunes Library.xml and iTunes Music Library.xml. Which did you use, and does it matter?

Be warned though, ChuckPA and myself did some extensive work and investigation regarding iTunes playlist importing and we reported our findings to the devs, but we were told that a) we were not doing it right and b) it was not relevant.

So don’t expect any support from Plex on this matter.

That’s a disgrace. They did after all make this feature so that we could abandon iTunes and move in to Plex. I’m so sorry it doesn’t work.

Also, ChuckPA and myself were successful in the end in getting the import to work, but we had a lot of trial and error before we got there and we are not certain that everything actually imported and worked correctly, although it appears to have worked.

What else did you do, besides changing the paths?

And you are correct in thinking that foreign characters may prevent things from working. Try it with as many English only file names and also with names containing foreign characters and let us know how you get on please.

What I don’t get is why it just stops after three errors. The Drömhus song is the first one in the XML, but the other errors aren’t the second and the third. There are other songs before without special characters in their names. EDIT: This was after trying to import only the playlists from iTunes in the Playlist section of Plex. See post below for the logs from actually creating a music library from scratch.

Also, the checkbox for iTunes import in the library creation dialog box keeps unchecking itself whenever you leave the tab. Not sure if that’s just a cosmetic issue or if it actually has an impact.

5

So this is what happens when trying to create a Plex Premium Music Library from scratch: http://pastebin.com/SsaLNr4P

7

I did use that exact address. Not sure why the logs cut off the local host part.

8

But honestly, the smart thing would be to just use Synology’s own Audio Station. It reads my playlists perfectly.

10

Here’s hoping this will change. I’d really prefer to have just one system for all my oldschool local media.

I’ll try some other things as well but I’m running out of tricks. Thanks for your help

12

Since almost 2 years passed, and I am exactly there… May I ask if there are some news? The music management integrated in Plex is one of the main reason I bought the lifetime Pass and I feel very disappointed.

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