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[M.Yu]

I pre-purchased MC 25.  I currently have MC 21.  I just downloaded and installed MC 24.  After installation I see that the 24 did not import any of my previous settings from MC 21.  How can I get the settings from 21 into 24?  Shouldn't the installation of 24 pick up the settings and data of 21 and display them?

Any help is appreciated!

[blgentry]

With MC for Mac, it's totally normal for new versions to totally ignore the old version(s) that are installed.  But it's fairly easy to get up and running again.  Here's a brief outline.

1.  Open MC21 (your old version) and run a backup.  File > Library > Backup Library.  Make note of the folder that this backup file goes to.
2.  Close MC21.  Open the new MC, which should be MC24.
3.  Now import that backup into the new version of MC:  File  > Library > Restore Library > (Choose the backup you just make from the folder you put it in).  You should probably let it restore settings too, that way you'll get all of your old settings in the new version too.

That should mostly do it.  Good luck!

Brian.

[M.Yu]

Thank you!

[macdonjh]

I'm getting ready to do just this.  While I was looking through my folder of library back-ups I noticed that some files had a date (e.g. 2019-01-24), while a few files had just the month (e.g. January).  What is the difference between these two types of back-up files?

[blgentry]

MC keeps making backups, every few days, or (I think) each time you stop and start it, with a maximum of one per day.  At the beginning of each month, it makes a backup with the name of the month.  This backup is the same as any other, except it was made at the beginning of the month and has a month name in it's title.

MC prunes the old backups, but I'm not sure what the schedule is.  I think it keeps around 3 days of backups around, *AND* keeps every monthly backup.  So after a year you would have something like 12 monthly backups and 30 days worth of the latest backups.

Brian.

[macdonjh]

I opened MC24, found the latest library back-up in my MC21 folders, and RESTORED.  Everything went well, but none of my Smartlists "came over", and the art work for my television series didn't follow, either.  Is there something I need to check?

[Awesome Donkey]

Thumbnails don't get carried over in library backups. You'd have to either rebuild thumbnails or with MC closed move the Thumbnails folder in the J River Application Support folder (~/Library/Application Support/J River/) > Media Center 21 directory into the Media Center 24 directory.

[blgentry]

I'm surprised your smart lists did not transfer.  I'm not sure how to troubleshoot that.  I would expect them to be right where they were in MC21.  Did you have any regular playlists that got transferred?  I'm wondering if your restore really worked.  I hope so.

Your TV art you are asking about is probably series and season cover art?  If so, that's stored in your main cover art folder, in subdirectories called "series" and "season".  By default those cover art directories are in the MC directory FOR THE CURRENT VERSION.  So, your cover art is probably back in your MC21 directory and needs to be copied over.

Or better yet, you should move your cover art directory to somewhere that's not underneath an MC versioned directory (something like Documents/Cover Art) and then tell MC to find your cover art there via Tools > Options > File Location > Cover art > folder .

Good luck.

Brian.

[macdonjh]

Brian,

One of the things I like best about MC is the SmartLists, so much so that I don't have any playlists.  If I wanted playlists, I'd still have CDs. 

I'll try your suggestion for my TV cover art.  Yes, the missing pictures are those that appear in the SHOWS view for each series.  I don't remember for certain, but I think the pictures for each individual episode are still associated with the video file.

[blgentry]

You might try your restore again, and verify before and after the location of one or more smart lists.  I just checked my Library and found a few smartlists that I created maybe 3 or 4 years ago back in MC21 or so.  They have transferred each time I did a major version upgrade.  So I'm pretty sure that smartlists follow the library when doing a backup and restore.

This makes me think that your restore didn't actually work, thus why I'm suggesting that you try again.  You could even make a test library to try this out; that way your current MC24 library doesn't get touched while you verify/play with this.

Good luck.

Brian.

[macdonjh]

I finally looked at my TV cover art, now that I've installed MC25.  I still haven't figured out a way to recover some of my TV cover art. 

In MC21:
When I open Video\Shows in the Tree, I can see a screen-full of cover art, one thumbnail for each series.
When I open a particular Show I get a list of the various episodes. I can only see the episode cover art by hovering over the file entry.

In MC24 or MC25:
When I open Video\Shows in the Tree, I can see a screen-full of thumbnails, but each thumbnail is the cover art for the first episode of each series, or some generic graphic.
When I open a particular Show, I get a list of various episodes and can see episode cover art by hovering over the file entry.

I looked in the Finder and could only see .jpg files for each episode, but no "extra" .jpg for the series.  I was looking in the series folders.  I also did a search on my hard drive for "cover art" and didn't find anything.


I even looked in the Tags and only saw episode-specific cover art, no thumbnail that was associated with the entire series.


Any ideas?