Zunplex - or: the missing feature of the Zune software

First of all: This site is neither maintained by Microsoft, nor does it contain any official software from Microsoft.

All trademarks used in this blog are the property of their respective owners. Especially "Zune" which is a trademark of Microsoft Inc.

Zunplex (sometimes written Zuneplex) allows you to copy the music files of any playlist (that was created by the Zune software) to another folder or drive.

This can be a memory stick, your (android) smartphone or a plain MP3 player.

Zunplex can be downloaded from here.  

It is a plain exe file. Put it somewhere e.g. on your desktop - and just start it.
It's completely free, contains no spy, adware or anything similar.

by Paypal or....

------------------------------------

Basic usage:

1. Choose which playlist you want after pressing "Select zpl."
2. Choose in which target directory to you want the MP3s to be transferred.
3. Press the "Transfer" button

A feature of it is the "Analyzation of deleted files" - after you have copied them to your music device or drive (read more about this feature in this post)

Hint: If you want to avoid some problems during accessing the playlist file you should keep the Zune software closed while using zunplex.

If you want to write a message, e.g. to contribute some grammar corrections ;-) feel free to do so. 
Please combine the email address by putting "zunplex" at the beginning of "@gmail.com", thanks.

Btw: The 1st forum where I had mentioned zunplex and got some feedback was Zuneboards (which is the zune forum that I know for many years now and I would recommend for every zune user). 
In the past there was a similar tool called "Translatum" (from developer AndroidPlusYou), but think this isnt anymore supported nor available.

----------------------------------------------------------------

By the way, I dont need to connect my Android anymore by the USB cable but instead using a WebDav client (DavDrive Lite) that supports remote file access by wifi.

Give the path of your phones WebDav drive directly into your target edit field (after checking by the Windows Explorer that you have access to your device):

Analyzation of deleted files (still in beta stadium)

Zunplex will put a small file (called "zunplex.xml") into your target folder of your smartphone or MP3 player, to keep track of what songs have been written here by this tool.
Consider this typical situation, that you hear later a song and don't like it, and you delete it on your smartphone. The next time you connect it to your PC and let zunplex "Check Target deletions", it will ask you, weather you want to remove this file from your playlist as well.

Hint:
When you go back to Zune software, and it was running while the zpl file was modified, Zune will not refresh automatically, you need to switch to another playlist -and back to the relevant playlist- to be able to see the changes which were made by zunplex.

The checkbox must be checked to generate the info file in target.

(no file in target -> no way to see which files are missing)

The upper button "Check Playlist deletions" will look for songs that you have removed from your playlist (probably removed by the help of the Zune software)
If there were songs found that are missing, you will be asked what to do on the target with this songs.

The second button will check in target for songs that you have deleted manually from your target drive, smartphone, ....

Don't be afraid....
Zunplex will never delete any songs in your source folders (aka from your harddisk) by any of these actions that are possible within here.

The little details

Configure the type of the subdirectory creation 

in target by the help of the following 2 controls:

You can decide in which way zunplex shall create the layout of the folder structure while copying your files to the target.

Lets give an example: Since your files maybe are residing in a deep folder structure like C:\Documents and Settings\user name\My Documents\My Music you will understand, that it makes no sense to re-produce all those subfolders inside your target. 

Thus zunplex gives you 4 different possibilities to face this problem:

1. Omit no. of subdirs from left
   You can tell zunplex how many subfolders shall be ignored from left hand side
2. Keep number of subdirs from right
   This is my favorite setting. I set the amount to "2". So I have the Artist and the Album name as a 2-step subdirectorie structure in my target
3. Create no subirs in target
   All music files will be side by side in the same folder (your target)
4. Repeat full source path
   The whole subfolder structure will be re-created in your target (except the drive letter)
5. Keep one folder item (new since Ver. 12, suggested by user evlred)
   Only one item from path structure will be re-used as subdirectory in target (e.g. all songs from 1 artist directly in one subfolder. The number selector determines which folder item shall be used from the source path structure

Remember: If you change this setting after you have copied the files once and you copy the files later again (by pressing "Transfer") you probably will have every file twice in your target.



Let zunplex create a M3U playlist file 

 If the checkbox is enabled, zunplex will create a M3U playlist file in your target directory, that contains a link to all those songs that were copied to your target during last "transfer". The playlist file will have the same name as your zpl playlist file.

Save the pair of playlist and target folder 
to maintain many "transfer connections" 

If you want to reuse a pair of playlist file and target folder at any later time you have to manually save them by the help of the options described here. For this reason zunplex will create a small file "zunplexSavedLinks.xml" in the same folder where zunplex.exe is located.

• To save your current selection (a pair of playlist file and target folder) press "Save/Load Link..." and then choose the 1st option of the menu "Save current playlist/target pair"
• To delete the current pair of playlist and target folder choose the 2nd option in the context menu (if this pair doesn't exist inside the "saved pairs" nothing will happen)
• To recall any of your saved connections click on "Load saved pair". Like in the screenshot above, you will see all exisiting playlist-target-pairs. Choose one of them, and they will be taken over to the textboxes in the main GUI.

The context menu for every song in the play list 

By the help of this 3 menu entries you have the following possibilities when you right click on a row in the list:

• Delete this song from the zpl - Removes this item from your playlist, but does not delete it in your source folder (e.g. harddsik) nor on your target (your smartphone,...)
• Delete song from harddisk - Deletes the MP3 file definitely from the source (and from the zpl as well)
• Play song - with the default music player (That application will start, which is configured to be be the standard music player, exactly like when you double click a MP3 file in file explorer)

Feature future

There are already some ideas and requests to improve the software in the future:
Feel free to add a comment. At the moment I just write the ideas down here as a unsorted list:

• multi-playlist syncing setup (read this) added in Ver. 9
• different user impersonisation (read more)
• export zpl as Window Media Player playlist (and vice versa)

Version history

Version History:



Ver 12 - May 5th, 2013

• Added 5th type of subfolder creation in target as suggested by elvred (see "the little details")
• If zunplex.xml is found in target, a check is performed to see if the subfolder creation settings are set as they were on last transfer

Ver 11 - Septmeber 16th, 2012

• Added the ability to export a M3U playlist file in target dir beside the songs

Ver 10 - August 20th, 2012

• Bugfix: The zunplex.xml was deleted accidentally, when application was closed

Ver 9 - March 9th, 2012

• added the option to save a pair of playlist and target folder - to recall them faster
  (press the "Save/Load Link..." button)

Ver 8 - Feb 18, 2012

• zunplex now shows the approx. size of the playlist content - and the free space in target drive.
• enhanced the GUI for "analyzing song deletion", that displays now a preview of all songs missing
• separated the searching procedure into 2 different steps (playlist deletions vs. target deletions)
• bugfixing, i.e. all message boxes are forced to open now in front of main window

Known problems

zunplex is a small tool, but as any software out there, it probably contains bug and shows issues. I dont receive a lot of feedback about what is working out there and what not, but I guess there are simply not many users out there.
But I will give you a brief overview about what you should keep in mind while using zunplex:

• Space problems in your target - Zunplex will not estimate if your playlist files fit into your target drive. If zunplex runs out of space during the copy process it will abort this transfer and you have to check yourself, which songs were copied and which not. This is not really a big problem, but other functions e.g. "Analyzation of deleted files" may give strange results afterwards.
• Folder access / File permissions - As I got a report by a user, there was a problem to access the MP3 source files while they are located on a shared folder that needs special user login data to access them. (something that is known as "user impersonation", and zunplex cannot handle it ...sorry!)
• MP3 file renames - Folder moves, ...
  If you rename any MP3 file or move your songs within your target, this is something zunplex can not detect. This means, if you expect any intelligence from zunplex you probably get dissapointed here. So maybe you will end up having all your renamed files twice in your target (after you did a second "transfer" process) or, the "Analyzation of deleted files" will give you 'false' warnings.
• Miscellaneous
• If you have a big playlist, the reading/loading of it may take a minute or more. During this timeframe the info box showing you the actual action could become unresponsive and a windows message could be shwon that "this app is not responding". But if you still wait a bit everything goes fine.
• You currently cannot scroll the "preview list" of the songs that were found to have been deleted