There is not much documentation about the importing and maintenance of iTunes playlists, hence these questions:
Are iTunes static playlists supported? Please assume that the latest versions of iTunes and iOS are being used, that “import iTunes” was checked on the initial creation of the library, and that the “create XML” option is checked in iTunes.
Are iTunes Smart Playlists supported?
If yes to #2, do you import the logic of the playlist, or do you import a current snapshot of the playlist’s result?
When and how are playlists updated? Is there a manual update option somewhere? Do newly created or changed playlists get imported during maintenance sessions?
Do you have a recommended strategy or process for keeping a libraries’ externally-created (iTunes) playlists current? Is there some hack to force importing, i.e., messing with the XML file?
I ask these because my iTunes playlists were imported once – sort of, when I first created my (PlexPass) library. The Smart ones appear but aren’t functioning, and only one static playlist was imported. Once within Plex, they don’t seem to update when iTunes changes them (allowing for the maintenance lag).
Thanks. This affects my whole approach to the library. JohnV
Yes, smart playlists are supported (caveat: to the extent that the rules can be mapped to rules in a Plex library filter). It’s important to note that nested playlists are not supported (e.g. playlists where one of the rules references another playlist).
For smart playlists, it imports the rules, not a snapshot.
There’s no automatic updating/syncing of playlists from iTunes. Importing from iTunes really isn’t meant to be an ongoing thing; it’s more for “moving from using iTunes to using Plex” rather than for keeping things in sync. (Right now, it’s currently only possible to import when creating a library via the GUI. A web app update due out soon will restore the Import from iTunes action on the Playlists page so that things can be updated for an existing library.)
Again, that’s not really the intent behind the feature. You’d have to manually kick off new imports to update things (once that action is restored in the UI).
(Note that being able to import static playlists requires that both iTunes and the Plex music library be pointing to the exact same music content with the exact same filepaths. If the path to a track in iTunes is different than it is in the Plex library, then the track would be skipped for playlist importing.)
Wow! Direct. Articulate. Detailed. Quick. Five stars, Chris. Thanks!
That said, you say that Plex strives to sync music tracks but doesn’t strive to sync the playlists generated from said tracks??
I’ll also point out that I have several smart playlists that are quite simple (e.g. Genre = Jazz Piano) which don’t make it into Plex intact (mine have zero tracks in Plex, several thousand in iTunes). Perhaps Plex should check into that.
I doubt that you will succeed in getting folks to move permanently away from iTunes without tag editing or smart playlists, but perhaps that’s in the next version. Best of luck in any event, but I hope you don’t set off a tech war. Apple could remove the “generate XML” option that might slow you down and would wreak havoc for many end consumers. Play nice.
Chris, a passing thought from a long-ago programmer (y’know, someone who no longer knows anything relevant): I first created the “Genre=Jazz Piano” playlist before I moved the library to a NAS drive. Might it have somehow falsely tricked Plex into thinking it was referencing the original library? Also, does a smart playlist get disqualified for import if ANOTHER playlist references it? Just spitballing.
You can absolutely create smart playlists within Plex. Simply filter a library as desired and then Add to Playlist (or Save Playlist in some contexts`). That creates a dynamic, smart playlist based on the filter/sort/etc. criteria.
I first created the “Genre=Jazz Piano” playlist before I moved the library to a NAS drive. Might it have somehow falsely tricked Plex into thinking it was referencing the original library? Also, does a smart playlist get disqualified for import if ANOTHER playlist references it? Just spitballing.
It’s certainly conceivable that an old playlist (prior to moving stuff in iTunes) could reference things in such a way that it couldn’t be imported to Plex. While I occasionally use iTunes myself, I’m definitely no expert on it.
As long as the “source” playlist doesn’t itself reference another playlist, then it would be eligible for import into Plex.
Technically, it wasn’t “removed”. The Playlists page was re-worked for the “v3” version of the app and that feature didn’t make it in to the revamped page for initial release. So, it was really a lack of (initial) inclusion rather than a removal. Not that it really matters from the users’ standpoint - in either case, an action that was previously available is no longer there and we’re working to bring that back.
Excuse my ignorance on this topic, but I just dont get it.
1- Why my iTune playlist are not being imported on Plex?
Channels>Enable iTunes channel(enabled)
iTunes library XML path> m:/iTunes Music Library.xml (as this is a moped drive)
2- From where does the iTune ?imported? playlist should be accessible?
3- From where Enable iTunes channel should be showing up?
Plex server is not running from the same computer where my iTune library is located.
@yveslanglais said:
1- Why my iTune playlist are not being imported on Plex?
Channels>Enable iTunes channel(enabled)
iTunes library XML path> m:/iTunes Music Library.xml (as this is a moped drive)
2- From where does the iTune ?imported? playlist should be accessible?
3- From where Enable iTunes channel should be showing up?
Plex server is not running from the same computer where my iTune library is located.
Imported playlists would appear on the regular “Playlists” page. The “iTunes Channel” would appear under Channels alongside other channel plugins you’ve installed.
If your Plex Media Server and iTunes are running on different computers, then you probably won’t be able to use iTunes with Plex. In order to work, the path to the music files from iTunes has to be identical to the path to the music files from Plex. That is almost never the case when you run iTunes and Plex on different computers.
So how exactly are we supposed to get this working? I have plex server installed on the same server/pc as my iTunes library. I have “Share my library on my local network” checked in iTunes. I have Settings pointed to C:\Users\XXXX\Music\iTunes for my library and nothing upon executing “import from iTunes”
Smart playlists in iTunes Library.xml contain all of the songs currently in the playlist.
Please, please just load these songs as a static playlist when a smart playlist doesn’t match any of Plex’s filters. This would be much, much better than importing nothing.
I think this would be pretty simple to code, and would add a lot of usefulness. Better to have a static playlist than nothing.
I ran into this same issue. One thing you can is to turn the Smart Playlists into Dumb playlists before importing into Plex. This can be done by editing the “iTunes Music Library.xml” file before importing into Plex (PLEASE back up your xml file before doing this, and don’t have iTunes running at the same time. After you make the changes and import into plex, restore your backed up xml before opening iTunes again).
You can either find all your smart playlists by hand and then remove the tags that make it “smart” (slow), or just open the file in Notepad++ and do the following Find/Replace and just replace all:
Open Replace dialog, choose “Regular expression” and check “. matches newline”
Find the following (without quotes): “Smart Info.+?Playlist Items”
Replace with (again without quotes): “Playlist Items”
I stopped trying two years ago and it still isn’t fixed?
I proposed a very easy to implement solution above, but Plex devs haven’t seen it / don’t care. I presume this will never get fixed. It’s quite sad that it never worked from the get-go for smart playlists and they just walked away from it.
