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[ccduff]

MC21 used to create a list of genres used in my library such that when I bring up the tags panel on an album I could use the drop down list to select a genre I am already using. I notice that in MC24 the drop down list for genre is empty. How do I get MC24 to create the genre list so that I can easily select one?

[RoderickGI]

What version of MC are you on?

Update to MC24.0.45 if you aren't already there. I have Genre lists just fine on MC24.0.45, but there have been some issue and fixes along the way.

[ccduff]

Thanks for the reply. I am using 64 bit MC24.0.41 which is the latest version on jriver.com. I don't see a link to 0.45 and MC is not indicating an update is available from the app itself.

[RoderickGI]

MC24.0.45 is available at https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,116887.0.html, but if you are using automatic updates then it probably hasn't been marked as stable so you won't see it automatically. I always just download the version I want to install and have automatic updates turned off.

Anyway, there probably isn't a fix between .41 and .45, looking at the Release Notes.

There was some discussion about this happening some time back, but I think that was using Panel Views. Your image shows you meant the "Tag Action Window" that displays to the left of a View. A diligent search of the forum might find the threads and answer.

Maybe this is the answer for you? https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=114579.0 But it works for me if I select an Album rather than a single track.

Try just selecting one track and seeing if the drop-down list works.
How about with several tracks selected?
How about with several Albums selected?

[ccduff]

I notice that if I click on an arbitrary album or track in my library that the genre list is populated. When I noticed it was missing, I was ripping a new CD to my library. The genre list is not populated with my library genres when I load a CD and prepare to rip it. I know this worked in MC21 which is what I used to rip the bulk of my CDs to a NAS. To test this, you need to load a new or obscure CD that it doesn't automatically find the tag information for. Then when you want to manually provide the date, genre, etc. the list is not populated. Is there a mechanism to submit a defect?

[RoderickGI]

Is there a mechanism to submit a defect?

You already have by posting here. The JRiver team will have seen this thread. It is a very specific circumstance that the error shows up, so it may not get attention for a while. If it doesn't you can bump this thread every now and then (not too often though) to get it noticed again.

Are you able to add the Genre via a drop-down list once the CD has finished being ripped?

Oh, and BTW, with the problem CDs, can you confirm that you have never ripped or inserted these CDs into the drive while MC was running? You see, MC looks at every disc that is inserted into the drive, looks up the CD on YADB (JRiver's online database), and writes a record to the MC table locally. If you have inserted the disc, just to play it perhaps, before you tried to rip it, MC would already have tried to collect metadata. That shouldn't stop the drop-down list working after the rip, but may at the setup for the rip. Just clarifying the circumstances of the issue here.

[ccduff]

I found a CD that had never been seen by MC. I inserted the CD and went to Rip->Details and opened the Tags panel. I got the image 'Before Rip'. I confirmed that the genre list is empty. Next I updated the album info using the automated tool. I got the image 'after update before rip'. Now the tracks have a date and genre but the tags don't reflect that. i closed and reopened the tags panel. Now the tags show the updated info. See 'reopen tags window'. I still don't see a genre list when I click the genre pull down. I went ahead and ripped the disk. This closes the tag window. (I have to click the rip button twice.) When the rip is complete, it automatically ejects the CD. Now I see a summary of the rip, the tag window is closed. At this point, I would have to go back into the library view to find the CD and update the genre if it wasn't included in the first place. That is what I am trying to avoid. I would prefer to get all of the tag info correct before the rip as there isn't a good mechanism to do it after the rip without a lot of clicking and scrolling to find the album in the library.

[RoderickGI]

This is probably a silly question, but are you clicking the down arrow to the right of the Genre field to show the drop-down list? The arrow I mean is circled in the attached image.

I can produce what your images look like by just clicking on the Genre field. But when I click the arrow I get the full list.

[ccduff]

Yes, of course.

[ccduff]

I think with a small amount of effort, you could reproduce what I describe easily enough.

[RoderickGI]

I found a CD that had never been seen by MC. I inserted the CD and went to Rip->Details and opened the Tags panel. I got the image 'Before Rip'. I confirmed that the genre list is empty. Next I updated the album info using the automated tool. I got the image 'after update before rip'. Now the tracks have a date and genre but the tags don't reflect that. i closed and reopened the tags panel. Now the tags show the updated info. See 'reopen tags window'. I still don't see a genre list when I click the genre pull down. I went ahead and ripped the disk. This closes the tag window. (I have to click the rip button twice.) When the rip is complete, it automatically ejects the CD. Now I see a summary of the rip, the tag window is closed. At this point, I would have to go back into the library view to find the CD and update the genre if it wasn't included in the first place. That is what I am trying to avoid. I would prefer to get all of the tag info correct before the rip as there isn't a good mechanism to do it after the rip without a lot of clicking and scrolling to find the album in the library.

I think with a small amount of effort, you could reproduce what I describe easily enough.

Okay, so I found a CD that hasn't been seen in one of my local databases. Popped it into the optical drive and clicked on "Rip disc" in the Action Window.
Clicked "Details" to see what MC knew about it. See first attached image. Mariah Carey, Music Box. The Genre tag was already populated with the genre "Pop". All other tags were populated. I didn't need to run the automated "Update from Online Database" tool to get the metadata.
So I selected the first track, "Dreamlover" and opened the tag windows using the "Alt-Enter" shortcut. The Genre tag was already populated with "Pop".
I clicked on the Genre tag field. It opened and highlighted the word "Pop".
Clicked the down arrow to display the drop-down list. The list opened and automatically scrolled to the position of "Pop". The full Genre list was displayed.
I could change the Genre to a different value and save it so that the new value is displayed on the Details View.

Mariah's is a common album so I picked another obscure CD that shouldn't have values in the YADB database and repeated the process. In fact, the online lookup found two records for the CD, neither of which was particularly accurate, and neither had a value in the Genre tag for all tracks. As you can see in the second attached image, immediately after inserting the disc I could edit the Genre field and a drop-down list of values was available.


The third attached image shows my CD ripping settings. Nothing special there. Are yours the same?

So basically, I'm not seeing the issue you are seeing. I'm wondering why your installation isn't looking up the CD in the online database when you insert it, as mine does. From the Wiki: "CD or DVD Lookup happen automatically when an unknown disc is placed in the drive" Reference: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/YADB  That is what has always happened when I rip CDs. I would suspect your Firewall was blocking the lookup process, but then the "Update from Online Database" probably wouldn't work either. Plus just because MC hasn't looked up the online database, I would still expect it to display the Genre list in the drop-down list. So still a mystery.


Note also that before ripping the CD (i.e. At the point of your second image "After update before rip") you could select all tracks then edit the Genre for all of them, and that metadata will be used. But of course, you don't have the drop-down list at that point, so you can't easily specify a "Standard" Genre value. You would have to remember the correct values. Not good.

When the CD rip finishes MC should open the "Recently Ripped" playlist and display the metadata details of the CD that are in your library. If the Genre isn't correct at that time, you can just select all the tracks and right-click ay Genre value to edit (Rename) the values for the selected tracks, or in my case use the drop-down list of predefined values.


Other notes:
The tag window doesn't get closed when I do all the above, as you reported. It just gets minimised but can be opened again by clicking on the "Tag" heading. You can see the Tag window heading in the bottom left of the second image.
I tried to display the drop-down list at other points in the process, and it always worked.
If I start typing a Genre value into an empty Genre field, then suggested matches display in a drop-down list.
Closing and reopening the tag widow when it appeared that the metadata had been collected but the tags hadn't been updated just refreshed the tag window. If the metadata is in the Details View, they will be saved in the library during the rip.

Possible solution?
I normally would not suggest it, but maybe backup the MC library, uninstall MC24 and any other version of MC you still have installed, then install MC24.0.45, restore the backup you just made, and see if the problem still occurs.

[JimH]

Antivirus / security software problem?

[ccduff]

It is actually not as hard as I thought to see what I am describing. Put in a CD, even one that you have ripped before. Click the 'rip disk' from the action window. You will see a list of tracks on the right. Don't click on any individual track. Open the tags panel from Edit->Tag or alt-enter. In my case, it populated the genre field with 'Metal'. Click the down arrow. I don't see a list of genres. It only shows 'Metal'. Now click on an individual track to the right. Now when I click the down arrow it acts as you describe, brings up the list and highlights 'Metal'.

From my experience 99% of the time, all of the tracks on a CD are the same genre. So I would like to change all of the tracks to a previously used genre without having to click on each track and modify them one at a time.

[ccduff]

Since JRiver allows you to have multiple MC's installed at the same time. I went back to my install of MC21 and tried the steps above. I confirmed that MC21 does show the genre list when no individual track is selected and that I can change the genre on the entire list to a previously used genre by selecting a new genre.

One additional note. If you click on any whitespace to the right it will deselect the previously selected track and show the tags that correspond to the entire CD. Once you do this, you again lose the ability to see the genre list.

[RoderickGI]

Obviously there have been lots of changes between MC21 and now. What I think you are seeing is a consequence of some changes made around the default selection of items in a View. There was a problem where MC was selecting some items by default but not visibly showing it, or selecting more items than was obvious, and hence actions were being applied to more items than a user expected.

So I would like to change all of the tracks to a previously used genre without having to click on each track and modify them one at a time.

If that is all you are trying to do, and acknowledging that MC functionality is going to change when a problem is recognised, all you need to do after inserting the disc and displaying the list of tracks is to;
1a. Click the whitespace anywhere, then use the keyboard to select all tracks using the Ctrl-A shortcut, OR
1b. Click the first track then Shift-click the last track to select all tracks.
2. Open the tag window, click the Genre field and then the down arrow.

You should then see the full list of Genres in your library, with any Genre currently defined for a track highlighted.


I'm afraid the solution to your issue is to slightly change your ripping workflow/procedure. Not by much though.

[Matt]

This should be fixed in the next build.

Thanks for the help!

[RoderickGI]

There you go. It pays to be persistent and narrow down the cause of an issue.

I could reproduce your simplified method of showing the problem ccduff, hence the workaround I described above. But it seems Matt has found an issue and the fix is in as of MC24.0.46. I checked and using your simplified method the Genre drop-down list now works as you expected. Look for that version or later to be available publicly.

Thanks Matt.