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[rwwear]

I want JRiver to change the file names on my hard drive to the same as Media Center. How can I do it easily? Sometimes they don't match. When I make back ups for my hard drives I want the metadata to transfer what I have in Media Center.

[ferday]

use the Rename, Move, and Copy (RMC) tool
select files F6 (or right click, library tools)

leave the parent directory the same, then just choose different filename (commonly [track #]-[name])

[rwwear]

Thanks Ferday. But I want it to do it automatically whenever I change file names in JRiver. I have hundreds of files with no metadata or incorrect data.
Why can't there be a simple selection in options to tell JRiver to write whatever metadata to the storage hard drive that is written into Media Center? I have hand typed hundreds of lines of metadata into Media Center but it does not translate to the hard drive. This is just wrong. When I copy my hard drive for security or to use with another computer, the data is not there.

[RoderickGI]

The metadata is in the MC library though, and that is backed up regularly by MC. You should also be backing up the library when you back up the hard drive that has your media on it.

You don't say what file types you are using, and whether they are audio or video or images, or whatever. That makes a big difference, because usually only audio files of some types store that metadata in the file. When that can't be done, MC stores the metadata in Sidecar files, which is the common method for video files.

If you just want the file name on the hard disk to match the [Name] tag in MC, then do as ferday says, but just set the filename rule to [Name]. But MC knows both the actual file name on disk, and the Name tag shown in the library. The two don't have to match for MC to manage them. If you have updated tags in the library, then you can set some Options to have MC update tags automatically in the future.

First search for "tag" in the Option dialogue box, and look at the result. For example, storing Cover Art in tags, and Update Tags when file info changes. Change any options you need to, based on what you want MC to do.

Then go into Options>Library  Folders>Manage Library Fields, then for any field (which can be stored as a tag), make sure that the "Save in file tags (when possible)" checkbox is ticked. Most of the important ones are ticked by default. If you have been keying data into a tag that isn't saved in the file by default, now you can tell MC to write all that data to the files, as below.

To have MC to write the metadata you have entered into the library to your audio files on the hard disk, select a few files for testing and right click on one, then select "Library Tools>Update Tags (from library)". Check the results. If that does what you want, select portions of your library and run the same process until all your files are updated. You could do the whole library in one go, but it is better to test on a few, then update sections at a time, so if something goes wrong you don't mess up all you files. Use views in MC to manage how you select groups of files for the update.

[rwwear]

Thanks Roderick.
They are audio files.

[rwwear]

Is it better to clone a hard drive by copying and pasting from hard drive to hard drive or is it better to copy in JRiver and paste to the hard drive?

[RoderickGI]

Is it better to clone a hard drive by copying and pasting from hard drive to hard drive or is it better to copy in JRiver and paste to the hard drive?

If you are cloning from one hard drive to another hard drive, either to use a larger hard drive where you will continue to use only the new hard drive, or where you want to create a second hard drive with all your media on it for use in another location say, then it is better to copy the whole directory structure over to the new drive. That will keep all sidecar tag files, cover art files, and so on together as they were on the original drive.

In fact if you are doing this to upgrade to a large disk, you should do the copy across using Windows Explorer, a disk cloning tool, or a file synchronisation tool, and then make sure that Windows give the new hard drive the same letter identifier as the old hard drive had. i.e. If the old driver was D:, once you have finished the copying and removed the old hard drive, make sure the new hard drive becomes D:. Google will help you find out how to do that if you don't know how. If you don't do that JRiver MC will be looking on the wrong drive for your media.

If you copy within JRiver MC in this case, MC will create a second copy of the files within your library. i.e. Duplicates. You don't really want to do that, unless you have a good reason for creating duplicates in the library.

So why are you copying between drives? To upgrade a drive, or to make backups, or something else?

[rwwear]

I am copying to create a back-up of my audio files. I like to keep at least three copies of my JRiver music files. But I also like to use the files with two other computers. I never had a problem with this until recently. I copied to another hard drive and had 1344 unassigned files and lots of missing art. I spent three weeks (hundreds of hours) going through 701 gigabytes and hopefully have the spare drive straightened out. I also decided to let JRiver put the artwork in a file with the audio files but it doesn't work unless I copy and paste the art under Tag. I would like for it to work automatically.

It would be great if what's on the hard drive would automatically correspond to what's in Media Center. When files are changed in Tag etc. I would like this to be the default setting in JRiver so it will automatically works and a cloned hard drive will automatically work in the same or another computer without being such a pain.

Thanks
Robert

[yannis]

In Options>General>Importing&Tagging you can tick "Update tags when file info changes", so that all your changes are promptly saved into the files or sidecars.

Renaming the files to reflect the changes you've made to the tags is not (and should not be) automatic, because the tool is too powerful and there are many possible problems entailed. For example, if you're renaming by a rule that contains [Album Artist (auto)] maybe you'll find (only too late) your compilations spread out into different folders. Even worse, if you have CD booklets etc imported in MC, maybe they won't be moved along with your audio to a new target disk. So it's better to have a non automatic tool that encourages trial and reduces error.

[RoderickGI]

Hmmm, you have three drives with your media files on them, but you use the two "backups" on two other PCs. You know all three of those drives are going to fail at about the same time, don't you? Murphy's Law always prevails. It is better to have one good backup drive that is not used otherwise, and is likely to last a lot longer than the working drives.

I never had a problem with this until recently. I copied to another hard drive and had 1344 unassigned files and lots of missing art. I spent three weeks (hundreds of hours) going through 701 gigabytes and hopefully have the spare drive straightened out.

If you copied your media from your "Primary" drive to one of the "Secondary" drives, and noticed problems, why didn't you just do the copy again, assuming that the primary MC installation was still Woking fine. Now that you have done all that work on the secondary drive, that installation of MC is different to the primary installation, and you will no longer be able to just copy drives as required. Worse, maybe the problem was caused by a failing drive?

As mentioned above, when you do a copy from the primary MC installation to a secondary drive for a secondary installation, you need to backup the primary MC library and restore it on the secondary installation at the same time as you do the copy between hard drives. You also need to make sure that each MC installation is the same on each PC. i.e. Has the same drive naming (D:, E:, M:, whatever) as the primary installation. You should also do a few other things, such as put all Cover Art on the media disk, so that it is copied across when you copy the drives, and the library will correctly find it.

Otherwise you are just making work for yourself, and if you forget a step, or change something somewhere, things are going to go wrong.

[rwwear]

Hmmm, you have three drives with your media files on them, but you use the two "backups" on two other PCs. You know all three of those drives are going to fail at about the same time, don't you? Murphy's Law always prevails. It is better to have one good backup drive that is not used otherwise, and is likely to last a lot longer than the working drives.

Well first of all The spare drives are much newer then the original and they are only rarely used so hopefully they will last a long time. And as drives become cheaper they will be cloned again. I also keep another at a friend's house but it is not current. I plan to erase it and clone it again in the next few weeks.

If you copied your media from your "Primary" drive to one of the "Secondary" drives, and noticed problems, why didn't you just do the copy again, assuming that the primary MC installation was still Woking fine. Now that you have done all that work on the secondary drive, that installation of MC is different to the primary installation, and you will no longer be able to just copy drives as required. Worse, maybe the problem was caused by a failing drive?

Secondly, I did redo the copy and had just as many unassigned files. And the drive was not failing because it is pretty new and I have used it quite a bit since then.

And because I have connected the cloned drive to my main JRiver computer and used "Play in Media Center" to check the bad files and repair them in "Playing Now" By various means of copy and paste from the main drive and comparing both, they are the same because they both play the same in Media Center. This was not the case before.

As mentioned above, when you do a copy from the primary MC installation to a secondary drive for a secondary installation, you need to backup the primary MC library and restore it on the secondary installation at the same time as you do the copy between hard drives. You also need to make sure that each MC installation is the same on each PC. i.e. Has the same drive naming (D:, E:, M:, whatever) as the primary installation. You should also do a few other things, such as put all Cover Art on the media disk, so that it is copied across when you copy the drives, and the library will correctly find it.

Thirdly, I did make sure to copy the back-up files with the music files because they are stored with the music files. How many of the back-up files should be kept? All or just the last ones?
I did tell Media Center to save a copy of the artwork along with the music files as a jpeg. folder but it is not doing it automatically like it should. I have to copy and past the art while in "Tag".
I will change the drive letter to correspond to the original and try to copy the library to the other computer. The spare drive seems to work fine in my main computer so maybe it will work in the other now.

Thanks Roderick and Yannis.
Robert

[RoderickGI]

Okay, it sounds like you have it under control.

Thirdly, I did make sure to copy the back-up files with the music files because they are stored with the music files.

If you have the library backup file location set to be on the same drive as the media, so that backups get automatically copied to a secondary drive when you do a copy, that is great. I assume that is what you mean above, and that you have that set in "Options>File Location>Program Files>Library backups", which could be set to something like "[Media Drive]\JRiver\Library backups". I do that for my test libraries, and it works well.

How many of the back-up files should be kept? All or just the last ones?

A good question. I think the answer is, if you update MC every year to a new version, you don't ever need to delete any library backups, until you are ready to delete the old version of MC, and maybe not even then.

MC seems to do about 10 automatic backups per month, and keeps all backups for the last two months. The first backup in a month is named for the month, for example "MC Library Backup (Main Library - June).zip", while later backups are named for the date it was made, for example "MC Library Backup (Main Library - 2016-06-16).zip". All the dated backups are deleted if they aren't for the current or previous month, but the monthly backups are kept forever. As the library backups are quite small, with mine about 4 to 5 MB, they aren't using a lot of space.

So let MC manage the library backups, and keep all the ones it doesn't delete. At least until they have no relevance at all. You never know when you may want to restore an earlier library to fix a problem, or check the way you did something in the past.

I did tell Media Center to save a copy of the artwork along with the music files as a jpeg. folder but it is not doing it automatically like it should. I have to copy and past the art while in "Tag".

I think if the drive letter was the same for the media drive on all PCs, and the library used was just a restore from the primary library, then all the artwork should appear automatically. There may be some issue with the Thumbnails not being built on the secondary PC installations, as thumbnails, which are used in many views instead of the original artwork file, are stored in "C:\Users\[User ID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 21\Thumbnails" on the PC on which MC is installed. So your primary PC will have up to date thumbnails in that directory, but the secondary PC will not have the latest versions.

You could copy the thumbnail folder, and maybe all the other subdirectories of the "C:\Users\[User ID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 21" directory, over to the secondary PCs, but then you are getting into some grey areas, which may give you more trouble than it is worth.

I think it would be best when you copy a media drive over to a secondary PC to;
a) If Cover Art doesn't show up correctly on the secondary PC, select ALL files in the library, right-click on one of the files, then select "Cover Art>Quick Find In File / Cover Art Directory". That should be pretty quick and get all your artwork back.
b) If artwork still isn't displaying in views where thumbnails are being used (most views), select ALL files in the library, right-click on one of the files, then select "Cover Art>Rebuild Thumbnail". That might take a bit longer to complete, but will update all the thumbnails on the secondary PCs, and show all your artwork again in views that use thumbnails. Alternately you could delete everything inside the "C:\Users\[User ID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 21\Thumbnails" directory on the secondary PC, and MC would rebuild the thumbnail automatically, probably when Auto-Import next runs, if the process doesn't start immediately.

I will change the drive letter to correspond to the original and try to copy the library to the other computer. The spare drive seems to work fine in my main computer so maybe it will work in the other now.

Good. I think that is a better solution than updating the moved library to point to a new location. Not that it is hard to tell MC to, for example, look for media on the E:\ drive now, instead of the D:\ drive as previously, but it is just one more step to take, and can be avoided. Also there is no automatic or semi-automatic way to tell MC that it should now make library backups on the E:\ drive instead of the D:\ drive. Those sorts of changes would have to be done manually after updating the secondary drive and moving it to a secondary PC.

I hope that all works well for you in future.

[rwwear]

Today JRiver went crazy and for no reason I can figure out started doubling every song on every album. I had to delete the library and re-install everything. Now I have 405(10.6 GB) of unassigned files. I have been using JRiver since Media Center 17 and have never had one problem. I have 2241 albums, 701GB of music. Is there something wacky with version 21 that is making this stuff happen? I just bought a master license for version 22. Now I'm wondering if I made a mistake.

Robert

[RoderickGI]

If MC doubled up every song on every album, then it is likely that MC thought the files were on one drive, i.e. D:\, and you attached a media drive which was assigned a different drive letter, i.e. E:\. Auto-Import would then duplicate all the media in the library, if the Auto-Import "Fix Broken Links" setting was set to "Yes (protect files on missing drives)". That is consistent with your comment "started doubling every song".

Of course, if you had two media drives connected to the one computer at the same time, both with different drive letters and identical content, then that would happen. But it can also happen if an external drive is assigned a different letter by Windows when it is attached. There are ways to make sure that Windows always assigns the same drive letter to an external drive, or you just need to be careful when swapping drives.

When you had all the duplicates, if you had only one media drive attached, did one copy of each of file have a red circle with a white line through it for the small icon at the left of the Audio>Files view? If so, then it was just a problem with the drive letter assignment.

You should have posted here before you did anything to fix the problem, except perhaps close MC. You didn't have to reinstall anything to fix this problem. You just had to turn off Auto-Import for a while (before it started importing from the "new" drive), or not start MC until you had made sure the drive letter assigned was correct, and then restore a recent backup of the MC library. Even if you want to change the drive letter for an external drive recorded in the library, there is a simple and fast process for that. You just need to prevent MC from importing duplicates while you do the fix.

You have never clarified what you meant by files being "unassigned". MC groups files as "Unassigned" whenever they don't match the view criteria you are using. For example I have lots of "Unassigned" records in my Audio>Panes view, under the Genre, Artist, and Album columns, because those tags haven't been complete for all my files. (I'm working on it, slowly.)

So how are you identifying "Unassigned" files?

[rwwear]

When you had all the duplicates, if you had only one media drive attached, did one copy of each of file have a red circle with a white line through it for the small icon at the left of the Audio>Files view?

I did turn off auto import and had no other drive connected. In addition, I have not changed the drive letter of my spare drive. The songs that were imported were only the names of the songs and would not play but there was no circle with a bar. When I clicked on them every other one was empty.

You didn't have to reinstall anything to fix this problem. You just had to turn off Auto-Import for a while (before it started importing from the "new" drive), or not start MC until you had made sure the drive letter assigned was correct, and then restore a recent backup of the MC library. Even if you want to change the drive letter for an external drive recorded in the library, there is a simple and fast process for that. You just need to prevent MC from importing duplicates while you do the fix.
[/i]

I did try to use Restore to a recent backup but it only imported around 408 megs of music.

You have never clarified what you meant by files being "unassigned". MC groups files as "Unassigned" whenever they don't match the view criteria you are using.

The songs that are unassigned are put in a folder by MC calls "Unassigned" on the "Standard View" audio pane. They look just like a regular album in this case they even have an album cover.(usually from the first song unassigned) The songs all have the artists names and song titles but are not with an album where they should be. The irritating thing is they are not in a logical spot and you can't type in "unassigned" in "Search" and find them.
I have been able to restore some of them from my spare drive but they are not completely correct. For example I had ten or so Chris Rea Albums and knew which ones were missing. So I deleted the files from my hard drive and copied and pasted them from the spare drive and it imported them again. This time they are mostly correct. Strangely the album art is not correct even though I stored my own art in a jpeg file with the songs. I never turn on allow MC to get the art from online sources. I scan my own and submit it to the server. I only want high quality art.

[JimH]

When you want to quote, you can use the quote tags:

[ quote ]
What the person said.
[ /quote ]
Your reply.

I've added spaces so the forum software doesn't process them.   If I remove the spaces, it looks like this:

What the person said.

Your reply.

[RoderickGI]

Okay Robert, I am going to keep trying to help. But there seems to be an understanding gap that we need to get over here, and that might take some effort.

I have been able to restore some of them from my spare drive but they are not completely correct. For example I had ten or so Chris Rea Albums and knew which ones were missing. So I deleted the files from my hard drive and copied and pasted them from the spare drive and it imported them again.

First, do something for me, or more correctly, don't do something. Never, ever, ever, ever delete any music files off a disk, then copy them back from another disk, to try to fix the problems you are seeing. Don't do it. Ever. You are just making things far, far worse. Really, I mean it.

I did try to use Restore to a recent backup but it only imported around 408 megs of music.

Did you restore the MC Library backup? Or did you restore a backup of your hard disk containing all your music files on it?

If the latter, as above, never, ever, ever do that again. Backups of your music files are required only to restore corrupted, damaged, or lost music files. They are not required to fix problems in the MC Library.

I cannot emphasise the above issue enough. When you first had this problem, had you explained it instead of asking how to do a specific task (renaming files on your hard disk), the whole problem could have been very easily fixed. Now that you have deleted files, uninstalled and reinstalled software, made lots of changes to your metadata and rekeyed a lot, the problem is far, far harder to fix.

You are not alone in the problem you had. Other people have had it, and it was an easy fix, if they hadn't broken other stuff before asking for help.


Now, some information sharing. I want to know if you understand this:

The MC Library is like the old style Index Cards in a physical library full of holds books.
Your music files are like the books. They have some information in them about what they are, plus hold the content itself.
Some information about the books is stored on the index cards.
Information in the books about the books can be copied to the Index Cards.
Information in the Index Cards about the books can be copied to the books as well.
The information that I'm talking about is the tags that are stored both in the MC Library and inside your audio files.

If you had such a library, and you copied all the information (tags) in the Index Cards (MC Library) to the books (Audio files), then if your Index Cards were destroyed, all you would need to do to recreated the Index File is copy the information (tags) from the books (audio files) back to a new set of Index Cards (MC Library). You do not need to destroy the books (delete audio files) and get a new copy (restore a copy of files from a backup drive) of them to recreate the Index Cards. You never, ever, ever have to destroy the books in order to fix a problem with the Index Cards. That is what I mean above. Recreating the Index Cards by reading the information in the books is like re-importing your audio files, including the tags in the files. In both cases, with the books and your audio files, this is the hard way to restore the information.

Alternately, and even better, if you had made a copy of your Index Cards recently (MC Library backup), you could get that copy of the Index Cards (restore a MC Library backup) and use that. Your Index Cards (MC Library) might be a little out of date, but if your copy was recent (automatic MC Library backups happen about every two days), then not by much. The MC Library is stored by default in this directory on your PC: "C:\Users\[User ID]\Documents\JRiver\Media Center 21\Library Backups\". You can access the MC Library restore process via menu at the top of MC, under "File>Library>Restore library". You will see the backup function is there as well.

Now Robert, I am not trying to be condescending. Sorry if I sound like a jerk. But do you understand the above, and do you understand that deleting audio files and restoring them from a backup drive is not the way to fix problems in the MC Library?

If you do, we can move forward and try to get you back to where you were before the original problem happened.

[rwwear]

I did use the MC Library backup. It did not work. I did not delete the files on my main hard drive. Only when Library backup failed did I resort to using a few files from my backup drive.

I do understand about the index card and book concept.

But, I am almost glad what happened occurred because it showed me which files were tagged incorrectly. I will simply rip them again making sure to edit anything incorrect before ripping. I also changed the filename rule to include artist-album-track # and name. Maybe that will make identifying files easier in the future.

I appreciate the time you have spent helping me Roderick. I know it's frustrating to you too. I'll let you know if there's a problem or lack of understanding.

Robt.