Organizing ROMs after they have already been imported

[GodSponge]

I have already imported my ROM collection and I have all my metadata saved. When I originally imported my ROMs, I left them where they were (in a ROM subfolder of the emulator). I like the idea of having LaunchBox moving them, but I really don't want to have to redo all of my work. Is there a way to get LaunchBox to move the ROMs without losing my current setup?

[Drybonz]

I asked this question when I first started using Launchbox and unfortunately it's one of the organization and ease of use features that, IMO, is glaringly missing from LB. It was explained to me that you can go into a text editor (notepad+ makes it easier) and edit the .xml file to change the rom location, which I did. It works, but an obvious PITA. The other option is to delete and start over each time you make a mistake or move something to a new folder. If there is a new way to do it since I originally posted about this I am not aware of it. Unfortunately, organization features seem to get passed over a lot because it's based on what features people vote for on the bitbucket site.

[CADScott]

Unfortunately there is no way to get LaunchBox to do this automatically, but there is an easy way to do this yourself. If you delete the games from LaunchBox and then re-import them (Without scraping any media) and let LaunchBox move them to the default location, then the metadata that you have added (Images and videos etc) will still be there and will associate straight away with the new imported games. As long as you don't change the names of the games then LaunchBox should import the games just fine. If you are unsure, test this on a few games to start with. Delete them from LaunchBox and re-import, they should come in fine.

[Jason Carr]

Well, that's true for images and media items. However, for metadata it is not. If you delete the games from LaunchBox the metadata will be gone. However, your images, videos, etc. will remain.

[SentaiBrad]

Yea as long as you're moving drives then editing the XML in Notepad++ is simple really, but if you start going in to folders you'll need to do more passes with the Replace All function. That said, I have my roms in an Emulators\System\Roms Folder structure, the system folder being either the system name with emulators inside there or the system folder being an emulator folder directly with roms in there too. It really doesn't matter too much where your roms are, LaunchBox will read them the same.

[CADScott]

Thanks Jason, that is certainly the case. If you want to keep all the metadata intact, then you need to edit your LanunchBox.xml file manually as Drybonz mentioned above. This is quite easy, but make a copy of the XML file before you do any mods, just to be safe. Then you can do a search and replace on the roms to change their location.

[SentaiBrad]

Though really, it's downloading the images and media that takes forever, the metadata is small in comparison.

[GodSponge]

The main reason I wanted to have the app do it was that I don't want to have to figure out the exact spelling of all of the systems. I like how LaunchBox does it, but if I move the current ones manually, then import more later, those will go to another folder if I didn't spell it exactly as the app does. I guess I'll have to delete and re-add them to get it right. Thanks for all the info!

[SentaiBrad]

When you import games, as long as you select the system from the drop down menu then even if you delete the games and re-import your games all of the images and video will still be there assuming you didn't delete them or run the clean up process when the games weren't in LB. Recently the SNES System name changed and all I did was re-run the metadata scraping process with no images or video selected and let it update that platform. All of the games changed platforms then I went in to the Images and Video folder and named the folder the new system name, restarted LB and all of the media was re-associated just fine. I still need to run a new scan for just media since the Database is now active and has been getting dozens of new images daily, but there might be a feature added in soon that lets you schedule times to have LB update from the server without a users input and it will download and update the new images only. So there may be some manual work that has to be done, but it's still super easy.