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Using Move Rename & Copy to create a back-up disk
macdonjh:
I've been creating a back-up disc of my media collection (external USB hard drive using exFAT as the disc format). Overall that's gone pretty well and given me lots of practice with the Move Rename & Copy feature of MC. I have had some weird difficulties with that utility, though:
When copying music files, it would only copy a few albums' worth of music at a time. I know in theory I should be able to highlight every album in my collection, tell MC to copy all those files to another disc and let it go. In practice, if I highlighted more than five or six albums, most wouldn't be copied. I wonder why that is?
When copying my movies, only the video files got copied, the sidecars and cover art files had to be manually moved. At blgentry's suggestion, I did have better luck using "Move", but as I said, I wanted a back-up copy of my files, not just to relocate them.
Finally, a couple dozen movies just would not import correctly: the cover art wouldn't link to the video file and display. I made sure the video file, sidecar and .jpg were all in the same folder and all had the same filename. I also used the "Rename" utility in "update database only" mode a couple of times for each of the problem files. I had no luck with that. I am having some luck recopying the problem children, though. I just wish it wasn't such a pain.
macdonjh:
Oh, one other thing I did: I had better luck getting all the video, sidecar and cover art files to resynch together if I did my copying and moving by hand and file renaming first, then "importing" into the library.
macdonjh:
Movie library is fixed. I had to recopy the problem files into new folders, then delete the folders that were giving me trouble. When I copied the files a second time, the video and .jpg files copied, but the sidecars did not. Weird. I still had one movie that would not cooperate, so I copied it again. I know I used the COPY (and update database to point to new location) option for that one movie, and only the video file copied, I had to copy the .jpg and sidecar manually.
macdonjh:
Does anyone have any tips for renaming sidecar and .jpg files? Is it possible to use Rename Move & Copy to do that? I'm getting ready to copy my TV shows so I have hundreds of files (x3, really for the video, sidecar, and cover art). I really don't want to rename the sidecar and .jpg files manually.
RoderickGI:
--- Quote from: macdonjh on December 25, 2018, 03:54:55 pm ---Does anyone have any tips for renaming sidecar and .jpg files?
--- End quote ---
Yes. Absolutely. Don't do it!
MC names Sidecar and Cover Art jpg files. Leave them alone. The RM&CF function renames them correctly when you move the Movies, TV Shows, Audio Tracks etc. If it doesn't, something is wrong, or you are doing something wrong. Fix the issue, and then MC will look after the files.
If Cover Art images don't link to movies correctly, fix the Cover Art, don't re-copy the files from the source. Just right-click on the movie > Cover Art > Add from file, and navigate to and select the correct file. MC will take care of moving and renaming the Cover Art image file. Or you can use "Quick find in file / Cover Art directory, which works well if the file is named correctly and in the correct location, but just not linked to the movie record. You can do those processes in bulk, for any movies not set up correctly.
Unless you are fixing something that you screwed up by manually copying and renaming stuff, and you know what you are doing, don't go renaming Sidecar files either. Just rerun the "Get Movie & TV Info" process again. If you lose some tags in those files when you do that, and if that concerns you, just run the "Update tags (from library)" function for those movies / TV Shows.
One reason that Sidecar and Cover Art jpg files might not get moved is that you have imported them into MC. You do not want to do that. Check that your Auto Import settings for Movies, TV Shows etc. does not include importing images and xml files. Incorrectly set up Auto Import settings explains a lot of these sorts of problems.
BTW, the RM&CF function isn't really the best tools for creating a backup of your files. Sure, it can do it, but if you get the directory and/or file expressions wrong, MC is going to not just move the files between disks, but also rename the sub-directories they are in and the files. Plus if you copy the files, I think MC is going to import the copies into its Library as well, and you will have two copies listed. I haven't checked that. But anyway, a backup application or a file sync tool would be better for what you are doing.
Someone else has reported that the RM&CF function would only Move/Copy a few Albums worth of files at a time. Search the forum for that thread. There may be answers in it. The MC RM&CF function can copy thousands of files at a time, although that isn't really recommended. Break any large move operation down into smaller lots.
Also, make sure you are running the latest version of MC. There have been some fixes and improvements in the above features recently.
PS: I just noticed that you are running the Mac version, I run the Windows version, but in this functionality, they should be identical. But no guarantees.
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