Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[zombie-wmd]

greetings -

i have a master license and run MC on both my PC and Mini. 

1st bug - the display on the PC side is ok.  on the Mini, for albums that have multiple artists, the album is listed for every artist and contains only 1 track.  e.g.  for album called 'album' with tracks 1-5,  it will show as 5 albums, all with the name 'album' and each instance only having 1 track.  e.g. album - track 1, album - track 2, etc.

2nd bug - also only on the Mini, not all album cover art shows up and instead there is the default quarter note symbol.  these albums are not necessarily the same albums as in bug 1.

at this point i consider the Mini side unuseable.

both the PC and Mini libraries import from common folders on my NAS.  when i open the Mini side i get a message stating 'in read mode. all changes will be lost upon exit', or something to that effect.  this is probably due to the NAS, for some reason.  still, shouldn't be causing the above 2 bugs.

Incredibly, Stupendously, Profoundly Annoying.

please respond.

[blgentry]

I'm guessing that you've developed your library and tuned and tweaked it using the PC.  I'm further assuming that the "mini" is a Mac Mini.  Finally, I'm guessing that the Mini has just done an import of the files on the NAS without any real tweaking or anything.

Assuming all of that, here are my guesses:

1.  Albums made by multiple artists are a well known thing in MC and show symptoms exactly like you've described.  You generally need to set the [Album Artist] field to something like "Various" to group them together to show up as a single album.  Go to the PC and open the Tagging Window and look for [Album Artist].  Now, go to the Mini and do the same thing.  I'm guessing you'll see value for [Album Artist] on the PC, but not on the Mini.  Here are some further details that might help you:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_%28Auto%29

2.  Album art can be stored either in a specific folder, OR in the folder with the songs, OR inside the files themselves.  If you see album art on the PC, but not on the Mini, you probably have the album art stored in a specific folder for some (or many) of your albums.  Here's a good way to diagnose it:

Go to the PC and find one of the albums that shows up with no album art on the Mini.  Open the Tagging Window and go find [Image File].  It should show you the location on disk where the file is.  If you find that a lot of your albums have their album art in a certain folder, you can copy that folder over to the Mini and configure it to look in that directory for album art.

Like I said, a lot of this is guessing.  Hopefully I'm more correct that wrong.  Good luck to you.

Brian.

[RoderickGI]

I think Brian has put you onto the correct track, but you really need to fix this;

when i open the Mini side i get a message stating 'in read mode. all changes will be lost upon exit'

or it is going to trip you up somewhere along the line. For example, if you try to get Cover Art from the internet using the Mac Mini, and save it to the file, or a directory on the NAS.

Given your description, you don't really want to be saving Cover Art on the PC or the Mac Mini, but on the NAS in either of a specified location, beside the file in its folder, or inside the file as a tag. Otherwise you will need to duplicate Cover Art on the PC and the Mac Mini.

Also, is there a reason that you have set up two independent libraries, one on the Windows PC and one on the Mac Mini? You would be better off from a library maintenance point of view making the Windows PC an MC Server, and the Mac Mini an MC Client, for example. Then do your maintenance on the PC and play your music from either device. Of course, the MC Server on the Windows PC would then have to be running to play from the Mac Mini. Would that be a problem?

[zombie-wmd]

Like I said, a lot of this is guessing.  Hopefully I'm more correct that wrong.

greetings Brian -

all that you guess is true.  thanks for the help.  in a few days, when i have the time, i will diagnose and fix.

regards

[zombie-wmd]

Also, is there a reason that you have set up two independent libraries

greetings -

in my original post, i misstated the situation, which affected the answers i was given.

mea culpa.  mea culpa.  mea culpa.

i stated that the PC and Mac libraries were imported from the same music folders on my NAS.  that's true, as far as it went.  what i should have added, is that, i run both PC MC and the Mac MC using that same common library, which is also on my NAS.  this doesn't work, as far as i can see.

for those who replied to my post, you probably realized that the message talking about 'database being open for read only' was coming from my NAS OS, rather than from MC  i didn't grok this fact for awhile and once i did i tried an experiment.  i reversed the order in which i started MC.  usually i start it in the PC and then the Mac, which results in the Mac having the 'read only' message.  starting on the Mac first and then on the PC results in 'read only' message being on the PC.

well and good, but guess what!  the library on the PC is now screwed up in the same way as on the Mac (albeit involving different albums), with missing cover art and multiple entries for albums with various artists.  to add to the injury, the common library is now irredeemably messed up on both the PC and Mac.  no amount of MC restarting, or library re-importing, or machine rebooting will fix this. i hadn't look at my movies under MC, in a while.  when i did i found they were also screwed up, although in a different way.  for movies, i have double entries for every movie.  this difference in the way they are screwed is probably because my .mkv files don't have tagging abilities.

i don't know the layout of your library database, obviously, but i suspect this whole fur ball is the result of trying to share a library with machines running two different OSes and the different ways the OSes name their folders.  so be it.

luckily, i never deleted my original 'Main' local library on the PC.  i have fallen back to that version which is mostly intact and is set to auto-import from the always-the-same music/movie folders.  since i use a syncing program to sync my music folders to Amazon's S3, i.e. over the internet, i save all my cover art in the folders, rather than the music files.  in this way, i avoid unnecessary, extended uploads should the cover art un-explainably change. this has happened, although because the cover art is in a NAS file that is also shared by multiple OSes, i suspect that will never work either.

do you think multiple OSes are the problem?  my guess is that, since my situation is relatively unusual, this approach and its seemingly attendant problems have never occurred to you to consider.  something to keep in your hip pocket.

of course, the solution to this is to use the client-server approach.  i originally tried this before anything else.  i, for some reason, found it inadequate.  i don't remember why.  i may simply have been tangled up in my shorts.

since the 'Main' library on the PC is relatively healthy, i plan to use the PC as server and the Mac as client.  once i do this i may remember why i rejected this approach in the first.  if so - to be continued, otherwise - no news is good news.

regards

[blgentry]

That's a lot to try to digest.  Let me see if I can hit the relevant points:

1.  MC Library files on a NAS:  This is not recommended. You want the library files themselves (the metadata library) on a local disk.  This is for performance.  MC won't have full performance if it has to hit the library across the network.  MC's database files (library) are the secret to it's speed!
2. Sharing library files:  Not supported at all as far as I know.  Certainly trying to share the library between two different OSes won't work, as you have said, because of the path differences.
3.  Recovering a broken library:  MC makes automatic library backups every day or two.  You should see these library backups on your disk.  Go to:  File > Library > Restore Library .  That should bring up a dialog with library backups.  They will be indexed by library name and date.  You should be able to find a backup from a date before the library got corrupted.  You can restore this and be back where you started on the PC side.  I would recommend making a new library to test the restore into.  That way your current working library doesn't get touched.
4.  MC's Media Network client/server model is the designated supported solution in your case.  I have not personally tried it, so I don't know about it's relative merits or shortcomings.  Only a little I've read about.

Good luck with your recovery.

Brian.

[RoderickGI]

I'll only add a little.

I don't think it is the different paths from the different OSs that caused your problem, or that it was access to the media files. It was that the library itself on the NAS is just a bunch of files, and is not intended, or capable of, being shared for updates real time from two different users. It is not a multi-user database. That is why the MC Client-Server model is the correct solution for you, and why that model uses file synchronisation rather than multiple users connecting to and updating the one library/database.

MC's Client-Server model does have its shortcomings, such as not being able to use Rename, Move & Copy Files from the Client (there are exceptions), not being able to create views on the Client which would be retained after a restart (the Client library is refreshed every time the Client is started), not being able to make all settings changes on the Client, and so on. But it is a good solution and works well if you understand how it works, and can designate one computer as the Master, holding the Server copy of the library.

Carry on. There is lots of reading to do about the Media Server functionality in the Forum and Wiki.

PS: It sounds like the automatic backups MC would have made would be too old to help in the recovery, as the problem has existed for some time. Therefore your method of recovery is probably the best; using the old PC library and updating to the current state.