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Using Move Rename & Copy to create a back-up disk
blgentry:
I just did some experiments with RM&C and my video collection.
1. Copied 10 movie files from one disk to another: RM&C did NOT COPY the jpeg or XML files! So this appears to be either "broken" if you expect it to do that, or "by design" if that's how the authors designed it. My naive first take on this is that copying should copy all relevant files, which for video is the cover art jpeg and the XML sidecar file. Perhaps there's a good reason why it does not.
Note that this took a really long time (minutes) and showed absolutely no status. I had to watch the file system to see any progress at all. This is the main reason I do not use RM&C for big copies. Or for moves to another disk. Anything that involves a bunch of data getting written somewhere should not be done with MC in my opinion. Not that there's anything wrong with MC. It's just that it clearly wasn't designed for this because it is not resumable, not stoppable, and shows no status. Which makes it a poor tool for moving lots of data. It is a FANTASTIC tool for many other operations. It's one of my favorite features of MC. It's just not good at this particular task.
2. Used the "Rename" function of RM&C to move those same 10 files to a different directory on the same disk. This happened relatively instantly, as it's just a "rename" so it's super duper fast. This worked as expected and put the files into a new directory. It also moved the JPEG and XML files!
3. Did the same "rename" operation above, sending the 10 files to another folder. But this time I also did a filename rule so that it changed each file name also. Again this happened almost instantly. It also moved the XML and JPEG files and renamed them properly as they went. Great news.
4. I cleaned up after myself and put the files back where they went, with their original file names. This also worked and transferred the XML and JPEG files, leaving my test directory empty.
I'll put some other thoughts and advice in the next post.
Brian.
blgentry:
I mostly agree with Roderick on a good methodology for organizing and backing up the movie files:
Do it "in place" on your existing disk. That way you can use all the power of RM&C and it will properly move and rename the JPEGs, XML files, and the main movies. All very quickly and reliably. I would suggest that you set up a parallel directory on your existing disk. If everything is under "Movies" now, then I would create a parallel directory called something like "Movies Cleaned", or "Movies Organized", or something similar.
Use the Rename feature to move all of you existing movies there, using the rules and organizational structure you want. You can do some tests to make sure this works the way you want. Then do it in pieces, or all at once. I probably wouldn't do more than 50 to 100 at a time myself, but I only have a few hundred movies, so it would only take a few passes.
Once you get it all neat and organized, your existing Movies directory should be empty. If it's not, you might have some movies that didn't get imported, or have problematic file names, or something else. I would make sure that directory is empty when you are done. Then the big finish: Delete the Movies directory. ...and rename "Movies Organized" to "Movies" again. You can even use MC's RM&C tool to do it!
From there, you should use a sync tool of some sort to copy this to an external disk that's formatted for both Mac and Windows, since you want to share *and* do a backup.
I hope this is all digestible. I've been doing these kinds of operations for a number of years now, so it's pretty familiar territory to me. If you have questions or need clarification, please ask.
Good luck!
Brian.
RoderickGI:
Good advice Brian. I would add a backup/sync once before fixing everything "in place" though. Because sometimes things go wrong.
I just tested the movie copy functionality of the RM&CF function on Windows, and it also only copied the movie file itself.
While this could be the way it was designed, I don't think so, because for a DVD that is stored using a folder structure, where MC just points to an IFO file (actually it points to the "VIDEO_TS.dvd;1" file, which in turn points to the IFO file), RM&CF only moved the IFO file and not the rest of the DVD. Of course, that would be completely useless, so either the functionality is broken, or it has never been upgraded to cope with DVDs, Blu-rays, or anything other than single file movies, and also never upgraded to cope with ancillary files.
I think the RM&CF function needs to be fixed or updated to handle all movie types, ancillary files, and maybe even Extras files.
Regardless, you can't use the RM&CF Copy function to make a backup of movies or any other file types at the moment.
macdonjh:
RoderickGI,
Thanks for the advice in Reply #9, I wish I'd thought of that. By now you can see what a rookie I am in database management.
I certainly picked the hard way to go about it, but I do have a functioning, cleaned-up copy of my movie collection/ library on my external hard drive. So that part is finished.
I am now working on my TV shows. Most of them were ripped in a much more organized fashion. Also, now that you've reminded me of the obvious (just copy the video files and then re-execute the "Get TV/movie information", this phase is going much faster, even with RM&C.
I have to go back and double check my audio files to verify that cover art has been copied. My new LIBRARY may simply be looking into the original folder where all that cover art was stored by my original LIBRARY.
Thanks for all your help, and your help, too Brian. When it comes time to make a back-up of my cleaned and reorganized collection, I'll get a sync program and let it do the work.
macdonjh:
Another question: is there any way to "import" the ratings to the new copies of these files? Obviously, since I have all new sidecar files for the TV shows, none of my ratings are there anymore. Thank goodness the ratings for my audio files seem to have followed. That's too many files to contemplate rerating!
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