Like many of you, I have multiple iTunes Libraries. One for the laptop, one for the house and another for my media center. Keeping these in-synch with almost 6,000 songs and over 1100 TV shows as become more than laborious.
I have tried to use Supersync in the past and while attempting to use it yesterday, I ran into a “must download Java 6 SE” issue that I really didn’t want to solve. (Hint: google “Java zero day”)
So I considered for about 10 minutes, exporting the Library in XML format, converting to SQL and using Base to analyze. (yeah, overkill but it would have been interesting and fun!)
It dawned on me that my favorite new programming tool would be perfect for this activity. Kaleidoscope!
Kaleidoscope is a folder and file diff tool that is quite capable and very smart. The new version 2.0 is what I’ve always wanted in a diff tool.
So my work stream is the following:
1) Use “Export Playlist as Text” script from Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes. Install into your iTunes Scripts library.
2) Use the Export… on both machines (or libraries) to create a text file listing the Songs, TV Shows etc. I used ## as a delimiter as the “,” can appear in song titles and the script doesn’t recognize “\t” as a tab.
3) Drag both text files to Kaleidoscope and examine the results! Kaleidoscope is quite smart and will show you blocks of songs that might be missing between the two databases.
Have fun!