Print

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

[MusicHawk]

REQUEST: Provide a comparison mode for Update Tags (from Library), so MC only updates the file if it does not exactly match the database record. Slow, but an incredibly valuable option when needed.

At times I realize that some of my physical files do not have exactly the same tags data as the corresponding MC database fields. When I find this, randomly by luck, I wonder how many other files have the same problem. For these files, the database is correct, the files incorrect.

The only solution I know of is to select all files, the entire library, and run Update Tags (from Library). I assume this fixes the problem, but also assume it is brute force, updating every file. Yet likely 99% of them are already correct. In a library of 80,000+ audio files, and another library of 60,000+ image files, this leads to a massive files change that then must roll through to local and cloud backups. Wow.

And it gets repeated at times when I find a files-database tags mismatch in newer files. Ugh. Why this happens is another discussion, but a simple version is, sometimes, if anything prevents MC from updating the file's tags at the moment the database record is changed, MC issues an error, but then moves on. It doesn't let me go back to each file and try again, for instance. (Other times, the file simply fails to update, even after repeated tries, a huge mystery because most files update just fine.)

But whatever the cause, to recover my BIG suggestion is that MC offer an option, via a check box, that Update Tags (from Library) have a comparison mode, where for each file it compares tags with the database record, and only updates the file if there is a difference. Of course, this would be much much slower for MC to execute, but doing the brute force update of large libraries can take hours, so a few more hours (or days) would be preferable to updating a hundred thousand files that don't need it.

[mattkhan]

That feels like it should be a function not an operation

i.e. provide a function like isMetadataInSync (perhaps with a field list to compare as a parameter) and then you can do the rest with existing tools via search

[MusicHawk]

Well, it would be a mutli-part implementation.
-- Create a function to compare database and file metadata.
-- Provide options so it only compares data that is important to be in sync, which will vary with media type. For images I need to be sure to reliably have Date, Caption, Description, Keywords.
-- Provide a switch to determine the outcome: Notify/List/Select only, or Update File from Database, or Update Database from File.
-- Provide a straightforward way to run the function against selected files.

To make this useful to everyone (including those who aren't up to building and executing expressions), put it on a menu which leads to the options.

In effect this would be a Repair tool, to recover from whatever might cause MC and the files it manages to not have the identical metadata that the whole system relies on.

Of course I'm hoping for a straightforward way to fix database vs. files mismatch problems I encounter more than I'd like, but I recall posts from others with similar needs. I'm thinking this would be a valuable tool. Back when I was a database app developer (mostly accounting systems) we always put in a database repair tool (stashed somewhere in the menus) because no matter how good the app, Stuff Happens.

[Vocalpoint]

The only solution I know of is to select all files, the entire library, and run Update Tags (from Library). I assume this fixes the problem, but also assume it is brute force, updating every file.

This does not work - even on one file.

Recently I have been updating my library - specifically a custom field that I added several years ago called "Chart". I use this field (in context with the Ratings stars) to populate my Smartlists selections based on specific subset of music like Billboard Rock Tracks or Billboard Hot 100. More on this in a bit.

In our layout here - I have one master stash of FLAC files - about 80,000 and they sit in a standard single file share (Music) on our server.

This stash is accessed by two MC instances - the "server" version running on the server and my own personal standalone copy here on my workstation. Both instances point to this singular set of 80,000 files. Both library instances contain this custom field (Chart). It is configured to be identical in each database. I was assuming that if I changed the tags in a file from this share using my workstation - that change would get picked up by the server version after some still unknown interval. Yet it does not.

Today - during a bit of maintenance - I decided to check a smartlist I created on my workstation that hones in specifically on the Chart field I referenced earlier. Let's call this Smartlist - Rock Tracks. And all it does is display all tracks (from the Music Share) that contain the Tag of "Chart" with a value of Billboard Rock tracks.

When I run this on my workstation - I get 4500 tracks (approx). When I run the same on the server - it sees 7200 tracks (in the SAME location).

So I am perplexed - how is it that a track that I examine in my workstation install of MC - that has NO Chart value at all (when examining the actual file tags) - still appears when I run the same Smartlist on the server?

I attached a sample of this issue - in the first attachment - MC clearly insists the Chart tag of Billboardİ Rock Tracks is in this file. Yet in the second screencap - when I open the actual tag data - there is no Chart field anywhere to be seen.

And no amount of "Update Library from tags" or any other automated action will fix this. The only thing I can do is now go to each track that has not been updated on the server edition and remove the "chart" tag manually.

Making MC very unreliable as it dawns on me that I made changes to several thousand files over the last several weeks and NONE of those changes were properly picked up by MC (server version).

This is unacceptable and seems to have been going on for who knows how long. I would appreciate any insight as to why this is not working or what I may have done to make it not work.

On the server MC version - during Auto Import - I have Update for External Changes clicked on - thinking this was the key for the server version to ensure any changes I made to files in the file share - would be automatically picked up. But it seems this option simply does not work - all the time. Only when it feels like it.

In the last attachment - there is a list of 10cc songs that I dropped the Billboard Rock Tracks tag on. MC shows a modifed date of 5/6/2018 @ 8:56pm - which is exactly when I changed this tag from my workstation on these files. But MC (on the server) still insists that the "Billboard Rock Tracks" tag exists in all these files - even tho an examination of the actual tag data shows NO instance of the Chart tag whatsoever.

Frustrating.

VP