Following are detailed instructions for setting up the powerful, flexible synchronization options for syncing MediaMonkey for Windows (MMW) with MediaMonkey for Android (MMA). It takes some time to initially set it up, but once you do, all subsequent synchronizations will be a breeze.
Click HERE if you want to learn more about how the free MMW, the free MMA, and the free MediaMonkey Remote form a total PC-Android solution for media management, synchronization, playback & even remote playback.
Synchronization instructions:
1. Install MediaMonkey for Windows (MMW) on your PC.
2. Point it to your media libraries, like “My Music” and “My Videos”.
3. Optionally, you may want to take advantage of this opportunity to use MediaMonkey to fix up your filenames, file paths, metadata, album art, etc. (I won’t go into how to do that here.)
4. Optionally, if you want to import playlists from Windows Media Player (so that you can sync them to your Android device) install the free M3U-importing add-ons from MediaMonkey.com. (There are detailed instructions below in the section entitled, "Additional information for importing playlists from Window Media Player (WMP) to MediaMonkey".)
5. Optionally, if you want a guaranteed pure, fresh start (which I recommend) and if your PC contains ALL of your music, connect your Android device to your PC by USB and “Turn on USB Storage", surf to your Music folder and delete everything.
6. Install MediaMonkey for Android (MMA) on your Android device.
7. Connect your Android device to your PC as a USB drive (i.e. “Turn on USB Storage”).
8. From MMW, go to Tools/Options/Portable Sync Device, and select/highlight the drive-letter of your Android device (like “E:” or your Android device’s model name. Note that you may see 2 instances of your device’s model name with the 1st one will likely being for your desired USB-sync profile and the 2nd one will likely be for your desired WiFi-sync profile. (I didn’t have luck much luck with those device profiles on my ancient phone so I used the drive-letter to set up a sync profile.) Note that the following configuration is a bit long, but you only really need to “configure” the sync profiles once (unless you want to change something).
--a. Click on “Configure...”
--b. In the “Summary” tab, choose your options but definitely check mark “Grant remote sync/access rights to the MM library.” I also check “Scan as soon as the device is connected. “Click OK.
--c. Click the “Auto-Sync (-->Device)” tab to select what you want to sync from your PC. I select “Music” on the left and then on the right I select “Location” and then check mark the specific albums that I want to sync because I don’t want to sync my entire music collection, but you may just want to check mark “Music” on the left if you want everything synced. Similarly, on the left, click on Playlists, and then (if desired) select specific playlists to sync. FYI: Playlists are synced as lists, not as entire wastefully-redundant folders of song files. Choose any other desired options. Hit OK.
--d. I you download songs to your phone and want to sync them back to your PC, click the “Auto-Sync (-->Library)” tab and select your preferences. (I don’t do this.) Hit OK.
--e. Select “Options”.
-----i. Select “File Locations” and choose the path of your destination directory. For me, I keep my compressed music on my PC, in a folder located 4-levels deep at “C:Users\UserName\MyDocuments\Compressed Music” and want to move it to my phone at the top level (zero levels deep) at “/Music”, with the same directory structure so that my playlists work properly. So I input the following sync path for Music: “\Music\<Folder:4>\<Filename>“, where “where <Folder:4> means use the same directory structure but subtract the first 4 levels of the pathname. (That is, subtract “C:\UserName\My Documents\Compressed Music”. I guess you don’t have to do this if you don’t mind having a longer PC-ish directory pathway on your phone. There are also MANY other options for reorganizing and renaming files as you synchronize them to your phone. http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.php/WebHelp:Configuring_Directory_and_File_Formats/4.0
Similarly, select your destination options for video, podcasts, etc. Click OK.
-----ii. Select “AutoConversion” (MediaMonkey Gold only) if you want to convert formats & bitrates on the fly. This is useful if you maintain a high-fidelity, lossless music collection on your PC (perhaps because it’s connected to your home stereo) but want to export the smaller, lower-fidelity, compressed versions to your phone since it has less storage space and lower-fidelity components. (FYI: Personally, I keep 2 different music collections on my PC: one lossless that I use with Windows Media Player for high-fidelity playback on my home stereo, and one compressed version that I and my family members use to sync with our phones via MediaMonkey, and playback remotely on my AV-system-connected PC via MediaMonkey Remote, for situations, like parties, where I value remote-control over audio fidelity. MediaMonkey Gold would let me avoid maintaining two version of my music collection, and I so I may buy it for that convenience.) Hit OK.
-----iii. Select “Playlists”. Check “Sync playlists”. Set playlist format as you desire. (I choose the universally used M3U format.) Check “Force relative paths”. Check “Use Linux folder separator. Check “Use Unicode”Hit OK.
--f. If your phone is connected to your PC with MMW launched and your phone’s USB storage turned on, then in MMW, you’ll see your phone’s drive letter or sync profile on the left side, along with a dual-arrows-sync icon, and “eject” icon. If you didn’t select automatic sync, then click on the “sync” icon. It will sync to your phone according to the sync profile that you created above. Note that if you have a large music collection the first time that you do this may take a long time- maybe even a couple hours if you have a 26GB collection like me. But you can pause, and (I think) hit the eject button to dismount the USB drive from MediaMonkey (but not from the PC), and resume the sync at a later time.
9. When finished syncing, from your phone, turn off USB storage.
10. On your phone, launch MMA. If you have a large music collection and an older phone (like mine) then after you do a large initial sync, it may take a long time (even hours) for MMA to create a library, but the results will be worth it. Subsequent incremental syncs (of a few songs) don’t take very long, and if you don’t sync any new data, there is zero processing time at startup.
11. All of your media & playlists should now be synced with your PC, and all metadata (even that for WMA files) viewable from MMA.
Additional information for importing playlists from Window Media Player (WMP) to MediaMonkey- especially if you maintain an uncompressed media collection that you play with Windows Media Player and a compressed music collection that you play with MediaMonkey.
1) Go to the add-ons section of MediaMonkey’s website (particularly the library-maintenance section at http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/browse/management/library-maintenance/) you’ll find two add-ons that enable M3U playlist importing; “Import M3U” (which can batch-import a folder of M3U playlists if the original M3U’s song’s file-names and path-names match the library which MediaMonkey is using), and “Recreate M3U” which can individually import a playlist, and use intelligence and “fuzzy logic” to recreate playlists based on metadata, if the path-names and/or file-names are different between the source-M3U and the destination M3U. I recommend downloading both add-ons to your PC.
2) From MMW, go to Tools/Extensions/Add... and install the add-ons from the location at which you saved them on your PC.
3) From WMP save your playlists as M3U playlists (rather than as the default WPL playlists).
--a. In WMP, double-click each playlist and select “File/Save As...” and then save as file-type M3U.
--b. In WMP, you’ll now see a duplicate of your playlist. Delete the second one. It is the WPL playlist. Use M3U version from now on. M3U playlists works just as well and are more universally compatible.
--c. Note that if you plan to continue to use WMP as your primary playlist-creation program, then whenever you create a new playlist, you may want to always do so in M3U format.
4) From MMW go to "Tools/Scripts" import your M3U playlists from WMP using the appropriate add-on (as described in step #1). On Windows XP/Win7 by default they are located in the “Playlists” folder under “My Music”.
Click HERE if you want to learn more about how the free MMW, the free MMA, and the free MediaMonkey Remote form a total PC-Android solution for media management, synchronization, playback & even remote playback.
Synchronization instructions:
1. Install MediaMonkey for Windows (MMW) on your PC.
2. Point it to your media libraries, like “My Music” and “My Videos”.
3. Optionally, you may want to take advantage of this opportunity to use MediaMonkey to fix up your filenames, file paths, metadata, album art, etc. (I won’t go into how to do that here.)
4. Optionally, if you want to import playlists from Windows Media Player (so that you can sync them to your Android device) install the free M3U-importing add-ons from MediaMonkey.com. (There are detailed instructions below in the section entitled, "Additional information for importing playlists from Window Media Player (WMP) to MediaMonkey".)
5. Optionally, if you want a guaranteed pure, fresh start (which I recommend) and if your PC contains ALL of your music, connect your Android device to your PC by USB and “Turn on USB Storage", surf to your Music folder and delete everything.
6. Install MediaMonkey for Android (MMA) on your Android device.
7. Connect your Android device to your PC as a USB drive (i.e. “Turn on USB Storage”).
8. From MMW, go to Tools/Options/Portable Sync Device, and select/highlight the drive-letter of your Android device (like “E:” or your Android device’s model name. Note that you may see 2 instances of your device’s model name with the 1st one will likely being for your desired USB-sync profile and the 2nd one will likely be for your desired WiFi-sync profile. (I didn’t have luck much luck with those device profiles on my ancient phone so I used the drive-letter to set up a sync profile.) Note that the following configuration is a bit long, but you only really need to “configure” the sync profiles once (unless you want to change something).
--a. Click on “Configure...”
--b. In the “Summary” tab, choose your options but definitely check mark “Grant remote sync/access rights to the MM library.” I also check “Scan as soon as the device is connected. “Click OK.
--c. Click the “Auto-Sync (-->Device)” tab to select what you want to sync from your PC. I select “Music” on the left and then on the right I select “Location” and then check mark the specific albums that I want to sync because I don’t want to sync my entire music collection, but you may just want to check mark “Music” on the left if you want everything synced. Similarly, on the left, click on Playlists, and then (if desired) select specific playlists to sync. FYI: Playlists are synced as lists, not as entire wastefully-redundant folders of song files. Choose any other desired options. Hit OK.
--d. I you download songs to your phone and want to sync them back to your PC, click the “Auto-Sync (-->Library)” tab and select your preferences. (I don’t do this.) Hit OK.
--e. Select “Options”.
-----i. Select “File Locations” and choose the path of your destination directory. For me, I keep my compressed music on my PC, in a folder located 4-levels deep at “C:Users\UserName\MyDocuments\Compressed Music” and want to move it to my phone at the top level (zero levels deep) at “/Music”, with the same directory structure so that my playlists work properly. So I input the following sync path for Music: “\Music\<Folder:4>\<Filename>“, where “where <Folder:4> means use the same directory structure but subtract the first 4 levels of the pathname. (That is, subtract “C:\UserName\My Documents\Compressed Music”. I guess you don’t have to do this if you don’t mind having a longer PC-ish directory pathway on your phone. There are also MANY other options for reorganizing and renaming files as you synchronize them to your phone. http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.php/WebHelp:Configuring_Directory_and_File_Formats/4.0
Similarly, select your destination options for video, podcasts, etc. Click OK.
-----ii. Select “AutoConversion” (MediaMonkey Gold only) if you want to convert formats & bitrates on the fly. This is useful if you maintain a high-fidelity, lossless music collection on your PC (perhaps because it’s connected to your home stereo) but want to export the smaller, lower-fidelity, compressed versions to your phone since it has less storage space and lower-fidelity components. (FYI: Personally, I keep 2 different music collections on my PC: one lossless that I use with Windows Media Player for high-fidelity playback on my home stereo, and one compressed version that I and my family members use to sync with our phones via MediaMonkey, and playback remotely on my AV-system-connected PC via MediaMonkey Remote, for situations, like parties, where I value remote-control over audio fidelity. MediaMonkey Gold would let me avoid maintaining two version of my music collection, and I so I may buy it for that convenience.) Hit OK.
-----iii. Select “Playlists”. Check “Sync playlists”. Set playlist format as you desire. (I choose the universally used M3U format.) Check “Force relative paths”. Check “Use Linux folder separator. Check “Use Unicode”Hit OK.
--f. If your phone is connected to your PC with MMW launched and your phone’s USB storage turned on, then in MMW, you’ll see your phone’s drive letter or sync profile on the left side, along with a dual-arrows-sync icon, and “eject” icon. If you didn’t select automatic sync, then click on the “sync” icon. It will sync to your phone according to the sync profile that you created above. Note that if you have a large music collection the first time that you do this may take a long time- maybe even a couple hours if you have a 26GB collection like me. But you can pause, and (I think) hit the eject button to dismount the USB drive from MediaMonkey (but not from the PC), and resume the sync at a later time.
9. When finished syncing, from your phone, turn off USB storage.
10. On your phone, launch MMA. If you have a large music collection and an older phone (like mine) then after you do a large initial sync, it may take a long time (even hours) for MMA to create a library, but the results will be worth it. Subsequent incremental syncs (of a few songs) don’t take very long, and if you don’t sync any new data, there is zero processing time at startup.
11. All of your media & playlists should now be synced with your PC, and all metadata (even that for WMA files) viewable from MMA.
Additional information for importing playlists from Window Media Player (WMP) to MediaMonkey- especially if you maintain an uncompressed media collection that you play with Windows Media Player and a compressed music collection that you play with MediaMonkey.
1) Go to the add-ons section of MediaMonkey’s website (particularly the library-maintenance section at http://www.mediamonkey.com/addons/browse/management/library-maintenance/) you’ll find two add-ons that enable M3U playlist importing; “Import M3U” (which can batch-import a folder of M3U playlists if the original M3U’s song’s file-names and path-names match the library which MediaMonkey is using), and “Recreate M3U” which can individually import a playlist, and use intelligence and “fuzzy logic” to recreate playlists based on metadata, if the path-names and/or file-names are different between the source-M3U and the destination M3U. I recommend downloading both add-ons to your PC.
2) From MMW, go to Tools/Extensions/Add... and install the add-ons from the location at which you saved them on your PC.
3) From WMP save your playlists as M3U playlists (rather than as the default WPL playlists).
--a. In WMP, double-click each playlist and select “File/Save As...” and then save as file-type M3U.
--b. In WMP, you’ll now see a duplicate of your playlist. Delete the second one. It is the WPL playlist. Use M3U version from now on. M3U playlists works just as well and are more universally compatible.
--c. Note that if you plan to continue to use WMP as your primary playlist-creation program, then whenever you create a new playlist, you may want to always do so in M3U format.
4) From MMW go to "Tools/Scripts" import your M3U playlists from WMP using the appropriate add-on (as described in step #1). On Windows XP/Win7 by default they are located in the “Playlists” folder under “My Music”.
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