Topic: Handheld sync w/ special characters (Read 5027 times)

mechaMecha · « **on:** May 28, 2018, 12:01:59 pm »

I think Media Center is a great on-computer music player. I'm very happy with it in this regard (although it does seem to have trouble playing nicely with Sonarworks True-Fi; it seems I often need to fiddle with the playback options to get it to work correctly).

However, the main reason I initially purchased it was to manage my music library and sync it to my portable player. This has created some headaches for me, because Media Center has major problems handling special characters. It continually re-syncs all songs that contain special characters in its tags, creating an additional copy of each file every time it syncs. It seems the only way to prevent this is to eliminate all special characters from every tag which, in this day and age, seems extremely archaic.

Since this is quite and old problem that has yet to be resolved, should I just assume it will never be fixed?

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** May 28, 2018, 12:25:43 pm »

Could you provide a couple of specific examples?

mechaMecha · « **Reply #2 on:** May 28, 2018, 01:01:43 pm »

I apologize if I used the wrong term in my first post; I'm referring specifically to accented characters (é for example). If a tag containing an accented character gets used to create a directory on the synced storage device, Media Center will ignore the previously synced files in those directories and continue to sync an additional copy each time the storage device is re-synced.

This happens for all Björk albums, for example, and the only way I can prevent this behavior is to change her name to Bjork. Same with any tags containing accented characters that are being used to create a directory.

JimH · « **Reply #3 on:** May 28, 2018, 01:05:01 pm »

How about a full artist, album, and track name? Something we could test.

mechaMecha · « **Reply #4 on:** May 28, 2018, 01:08:15 pm »

I just modified my post above to include more info. Any accented character: any album by Björk (since each album would be a subdirectory under the Björk directory), any album with café in its title, any Spanish artists/bands/albums containing accented characters...

After changing Björk's name to Bjork in all of the tags, I then found I had to rename her album Medúlla to Medulla, because it was also used to create a directory which Media Center ignored.

Media Center doesn't have this problem with song names, since they're not generally used to create directories.

JohnT · « **Reply #5 on:** May 29, 2018, 12:51:21 pm »

What kind of device are you syncing to?

mechaMecha · « **Reply #6 on:** June 05, 2018, 11:43:51 am »

Sorry, I just noticed your reply. I own a Pioneer XDP-100R, but I remove the microSD cards and sync through a card reader. I did a bunch of searches before posting on the forum here. It looks like other people have had similar problems, but none of the threads ended in any kind of real solution.

mechaMecha · « **Reply #7 on:** June 05, 2018, 02:03:32 pm »

Just to be clear: It syncs properly the first time, but only the first time. If the synced playlist is refreshed in Media Center afterwards, it will immediately show that any files within folders that use accented characters (derived from the song's tags) need to be re-synced. Then, with every re-sync, an additional copy of every one of those songs is copied to the card. I haven't tested to see if there's any limit to the additional copies Media Center will make (I doubt it), but three re-syncs has resulted in three copies of each song in the same folder.

Are you unable to reproduce this behavior? This is the Mac version.

Mr.WaCko · « **Reply #8 on:** June 12, 2018, 08:27:53 am »

Same topic discussed here: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,114396.0.html

jeffcdo · « **Reply #9 on:** January 06, 2019, 02:44:09 am »

I'm still having this problem, I'm wondering if it might have been addressed or if anybody has come up with a workaround by now?

mechaMecha · « **Reply #10 on:** January 06, 2019, 10:52:16 am »

This problem has existed for years now. I think it's safe to say that JRiver has no desire to fix it.

Matt · « **Reply #11 on:** January 06, 2019, 11:27:30 am »

We'll try to reproduce this on Monday. Stay tuned. Thanks.

jeffcdo · « **Reply #12 on:** January 06, 2019, 05:07:55 pm »

To be clear, since I have my device configured with "Delete from handheld any files not in sync list" enabled, I'm not generating additional copies of the files every time I sync - it just unnecessarily deletes and re-syncs every file with a special character every time I sync (Hüsker Dü, Béla Fleck, Moxy Früvous, Camille Saint-Saëns).

mechaMecha · « **Reply #13 on:** January 06, 2019, 11:05:18 pm »

I have mine set up the same way, but it keeps adding additional copies of the same file. Are you positive another copy isn't added every time you sync? I gave up on JRiver fixing it a long time ago and just removed accented characters from all of my artist and album tags, which is far from ideal.

jeffcdo · « **Reply #14 on:** January 06, 2019, 11:36:56 pm »

No additional copies created on my device (it's a Sony NW-A35 Walkman), just those same files replaced every time I sync. In my current playlist setup it's only 36 files that contain special characters, so it's not a deal breaker for me as it's not much additional sync time, still it seems a waste to constantly replace them.

Matt · « **Reply #15 on:** January 07, 2019, 07:51:17 am »

I just tried syncing a file with accents (I copied the Hüsker Dü value) in the artist, album, and name.

The file synced no problem and showed as synced when using a handheld added at a folder path.

So I'm wondering if it's just specific to the type of device? Or could it be specific to the Mac version of the program?

Thanks.

Matt · « **Reply #16 on:** January 07, 2019, 07:59:18 am »

I just tried the same test with my phone and that also worked.

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #17 on:** January 07, 2019, 08:19:23 am »

Random thought, would file type matter?

jeffcdo · « **Reply #18 on:** January 07, 2019, 03:38:30 pm »

My list of files is mostly flac and a few mp3s. I've only run the Mac version of the program (24.0.69 currently) and cannot comment on the Windows version.

mechaMecha · « **Reply #19 on:** January 13, 2019, 04:56:08 pm »

As stated much earlier in this thread, I'm using the Mac version. My files are all ALAC. Transferring the files to the mobile device isn't the problem, as the files do transfer. The problem is upon repeated syncing. MediaCenter doesn't seem to recognize that it has already synced files that contain accented characters in their tags (I'm guessing MC can't locate them for some reason) and resyncs them every time. In my case, MediaCenter transfers an additional copy of each file upon resync. The only way to get it to stop behaving this way is to remove all accented characters from the tags.

I'm on MediaCenter 23. Maybe that's the difference between what I'm experiencing vs jeffcdo. I'm guessing that JRiver is done with MediaCenter 23 bug fixes, so anyone experiencing this problem with v23 is SOL. I might consider upgrading if they finally fix this, but until they do, I don't think I'll bother.

Library Eye · « **Reply #20 on:** October 07, 2019, 11:12:16 pm »

You can try what seems to be working for me, seen here in new post I made since 23 is an old version now:

Quote from: Library Eye on October 07, 2019, 11:10:31 pm

mechaMecha · « **Reply #21 on:** October 09, 2019, 10:48:52 am »

Thank you for sharing your workaround for this. I'll give it a shot.

Quote from: Library Eye on October 07, 2019, 11:12:16 pm

You can try what seems to be working for me, seen here in new post I made since 23 is an old version now:

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Author Topic: Handheld sync w/ special characters (Read 5027 times)