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Process to move files without breaking links?
rnbPostApril 26, 2025, 11:24
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April 26, 2025, 14:53
Normal topicProcess to move files without breaking links?

Hi, i'm just looking to confirm Yate can do what I need before buying.... would love some feedback on the best way to accomplish the following:

I have 20,000 songs in an Apple Music library that WAS managed... but I've since disabled Keep Media Folder organized to avoid issues with DJ software. Now i want to rearrange the entire "Media Folder" structure (ie. based on top level genre folders instead of what Apple had created) and am concerned about messing everything up with respect to missing files. I'm reading the Yate documentation and, uh, a wall of text is hard to comprehend for someone who's never used the app.

I see the following linking article:

https://2manyrobots.com/YateResources/InAppHelp/Linking.html

Chatgpt says, "Launch Yate and load all the music files you moved into the new folder structure. Select all the files you want to update. In the Batch Rename window, set the "Find" field to search for the old directory path (e.g., OldFolder), and in the "Replace" field, enter the new directory path (e.g., Genre/Artist/Album)."

I'm not sure this is going to be practical, or if it's the correct action altogether, given that i intend to move 1000's of files. Also i wasn't planning on duplicating the media folder (or creating a 'new' media folder), just rearranging the existing one if possible.

Can anyone give me some pointers on what would be the best approach to rearrange a previously 'managed' Apple Music library?

Cheers!

ps. if anyone knows of good overview videos that show how the app is best used, that would be great. I saw the 2manyrobots youtube channel... it's given me a good overview but there are only a couple of short explainers that are almost 15 years old.

2MR2PostApril 26, 2025, 12:54
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Normal topicProcess to move files without breaking links?

Yah ... the ChatGPT text makes no sense at all.

The most important first step is make sure that every file contains the PID (persistent ID) into the Music database. This will ensure that locating tracks in the library does not require metadata matching.

Do an Actions>Batch Processes>Batch Extract Persistent IDs...

This is a batch process which will store the PID in every file (rewriting the file). This may take a long time to run. The batch processor will produce a log file. This batch process runs with the Music library as source.

Once this is done, you need a conventional batch process action which runs from the file structure as opposed to the Music library. This action will relocate the files however you wish.

When you say Genre/Artist/Album do you mean Album Artist as opposed to Artist? It is possible that an album has variants of Artist on each file as opposed to a consistent tag.

I'm also assuming that you want non audio files to be moved as well?

Let me know the answers to the two questions and I'll put together a simple action for you to relocate the files updating Music to the new locations. Run the Batch Extract Persistent IDs process first.

As far as videos, they're sadly deficient.

rnbPostMay 9, 2025, 18:13
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April 26, 2025, 14:53
Normal topicProcess to move files without breaking links?

Hey thanks a lot for the detailed reply... i really appreciate it! I'm going to come back to this in a bit and post back here to the thread once i've found time to absorb and follow your instructions properly. Again, thanks for taking the time to post your knowledge, super helpful of you. =]

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