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[wer]

So I'm afraid I have a rather absurd question I have to ask...

I have a file, Thor.mkv, which used to play fine, but tonight MC decided it will no longer play this file.  Screen goes black for a few seconds, then exits back to the main screen.  Delete from library and re-add, same problem.  Delete from library, and "Open with JRiver Media Center" from windows explorer, same problem.

There is absolutely zero wrong with this file.  If I rename the file to Thor2.mkv, MC plays it just fine.

So obviously I am not going to permanently rename my movie to get around this nonsense. 

I'm guessing JRiver has cached something (corrupt) about this file (tied to the name) that is giving it fits.

So can anyone tell me what sort of voodoo I have to do to make MC play this file again properly, clearing the cache, or list of deleted files, or whatever other nonsense is required?

I'd be grateful if anyone could help with this frustrating and annoying problem...

[RoderickGI]

You are correct, MC keeps all the tag metadata for any deleted file and reuses it if that file is imported again. You must have had some bad tag data for Thor.mkv, perhaps in the [Playback Info] tag. You could just check and clear that tag if you currently have Thor.mkv in the Library. That may also fix it. Could also be a bad [Bookmark] position. Could try clearing that as well.

If the above doesn't work, create a View under the Video group and restrict it to the "Removed" database, no other rules. You should find the Thor.mkv movie in there. Delete it. Search for it a second time to be sure it is gone. It sometimes needs to be removed twice.

Re-import the Thor.mkv file, which should now be treated as a new import. Should work now.

[wer]

Thanks Roderick...

It was indeed a bad bookmark.

The root cause is that JRiver doesn't handle MKVs with ordered chapters properly.  It thinks the length of the video is the total duration of the file, rather than the duration of the edition as structured.  (This is an old problem, reported years ago here: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,92378.0.html )

Because MC uses the wrong duration for the video, it does not clear the bookmark when it should (96% != 96%), and the video gets perpetually "stuck" at the last frame.

Obviously one can use work-arounds like changing the resume behavior or manually disabling bookmarks for files with ordered chapters, but that's sad.

I'm running the latest LAV, and a very recent MadVR (the last couple of versions have broken subtitles).

But I don't know if the flaw with ordered chapter duration lies in LAV, MadVR, or MC.  Maybe someone from JRiver would know?

[TheShoe]

why not also have an option to delete the metadata info when deleting the file from the lib?

this happened to me with bookmarks very recently.   i kept trying to delete the bookmark but MC would not allow it either (could highlight but not edit)

[wer]

Well I make sure that all the needed library info is saved in the tags or sidecar files anyway.  So with that capability, I'm puzzled as to what benefit keeping the metadata in the library after deletion actually provides.  Seems counter-productive to me.

The auto-import function does have an option to clean out old data.  You can also do it through a special smartlist but that requires obscure black magic knowledge.  In either case, needing to do it at all seems strange to me.

Does anyone have any idea where the source of the mkv ordered chapters duration issue lies? (MadVR/LAV/JRiver?)

[Hendrik]

I've added some additional logic to the bookmarking handling that hopefully solves issues with files that can have varying durations. Its not only that the  length in the database was that of the entire file, but also that when you select different editions, the duration can change and will always mis-match the database then in some case or another, screwing up bookmarking.

One note though, I cannot really fix already "broken" bookmark tags quite so easily because of the varying duration of files. Instead it'll avoid writing them. If its wrong, the first attempt to play the file may still fail, but then it'll clear the bookmark and the second attempt should work.