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[DDixon]

Hi,

I am a new user of MC23. I had heard good things about JRiver as a music server so I bought it to use in place of iTunes. I imported most of my music collection without any issues but about 1,000 songs have been placed in the "unassigned" file and can not be played. I was able to change some of the tag info to at least put some of them in an album under the right band/artist but I can't do that manually for over 1,000 songs. Even when I correct the tag info, the songs still don't play. I get a box popping up with an "automatic output format" message and then the application locks up and crashes.

All of the metadata is there for the tags to be filled properly and has been done so for almost 5,000 songs. It is just this random group of 1,000 songs that is not being processed properly. I have orgamized, consolidated and exported my library from iTunes as best it can be. Not sure where the problem lies. I might have to just go back to iTunes.

Any help would be appreciated.

[rsg]

Did you try Right clicking a track, or some, or all, and choosing 'Library Tools > Look up track from online data base'? Might work if you have track and artist name, but not sure. I had the same problem exactly. Ended up re-ripping some (don't know if your music is ripped or not), dumping some, and painstakingly filling in tags for songs that I really wanted. Switching from ITunes cost me 400 albums' worth of tags, but I ended up fixing a lot by hand. Try the online lookup, though; it may help. Definitley do not go back to ITunes! What format are you using? I had all WAV files in ITunes, but converted them to ALAC before switching over (I have 36,000 songs [about 1TB compressed] now so I prefer the compressed ALAC format). People will tell you to go with FLAC, but it is not supported by Apple, and ALAC works great for me. Really, JRiver is a million times better!!

[DDixon]

Thanks for the advice. I tried the look-up function many times with different tracks and it never finds any info. I have a mix of mp3, mp4 and AIFF files. I prefer JRiver as a player but if I have to fix this manually it will take weeks. Also, once the file data is corrected, the files don’t play. That’s over a thousand songs lost.

[JimH]

If the Album and Artist tags are empty, you may be able to fill them if your directory structure has the information.   Right click on a file or a few files.
 The tool is called Fill Properties from File Name.  Try a few before you do very many.

[DDixon]

Thanks, tried that and it doesn’t automatically fill any info. The only way that I have been able to move the individual file to an album and group songs together is to click on the file so it is highlighted and then open the tag by clicking on the “tag” button on the bottom left box. This allows me to type in the artist info and any missing info. Once closed the file will move and show up in the right spot after a few minutes. I will have to do this over a thousand times to correct the info. The issue of not being able to play the track still exists after this is done.

[JimH]

What kind of files are they?  Extension?  AIFF?  ALAC?

What is the Media Sub-type tag?

[DDixon]

They are mp4 and mp3. All coming from iTunes. The files that are unassigned are no different than the rest that are organized properly and play properly as far as I can tell.

I don’t know what a media sub-type tag is.

[RD James]

In Media Center, try right-clicking on one of these MP3 files and select: Locate > On Disk (external)
Now right-click the file in Windows Explorer, go to Properties, and then the Details tab.
Does this include any information about the track, or is it also empty? If it's empty, the track does not contain any ID Tags.
 
MusicBrainz Picard is a tool that I often see recommended to people for identifying tracks which do not contain any ID Tags.

[RoderickGI]

If these problem files come from iTunes where they played fine, but don't play in MC, and they are mp3 and mp4 files, then they are probably encrypted with Apple DRM.

The best way to fix that issue is to use Apply Music Match to obtain non-DRM versions of the tracks, and then import those into MC. MC can't play encrypted files.

DRM may be the reason that MC isn't picking up metadata from the files as well. I'm not sure on that.

There have been other discussions on the issue not so long ago. Search the forum for "Music Match". I think someone mentioned a way to check if a file was encrypted in a recent thread.

[RD James]

If these problem files come from iTunes where they played fine, but don't play in MC, and they are mp3 and mp4 files, then they are probably encrypted with Apple DRM.

I though that at first too, but they specifically said MP3 and MP4, not M4P - though upon typing it, I now realize the latter could have been a typo.
I don't think Apple has ever distributed MP3 files.

[DDixon]

Thanks, I’ll try that. The mp3’s We’re from cds that I ripped into iTunes. Thanks for the guidance. Much appreciated

[DDixon]

Fixed!!

In case this helps anyone else, I fixed my issue by clicking on; Library Tools, then Fill properties from file name, then Template with directories box checked and clean files checked. The songs have to be highlighted of course. This filled in the artist, album artist and album name automatically for over a thousand songs. Phew