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[songsequencer]

I have to keep my music on an external drive, and for some reason, the Mac sometimes wants to lock down permissions when I don't want it to.  Such was the case when I opened up Media Center tonight and wanted to play an album I had recently added to a watched folder...but it wasn't in Media Center.  I ran Auto-Import, since it often doesn't automatically import as it should...still not there.  So I went to check the watched folder, thinking maybe I hadn't put the album folder there.  It was there, but it had a "Do Not Enter" symbol on it.  I had added it from another user on my computer, so I went to that user, unlocked the clamped down permissions, came back to the first user, verified that the "Do Not Enter" symbol was gone, and tried doing Auto-Import again.  Still not there -- I got "import failed."  From this forum, I found something else to try -- File-->Open Media File.  But then I got this error message: "The file could not be opened for read access (error 0)."  So I went back to the other user and checked the box in Get Info "Ignore ownership for this volume."  When I came back to my current user, then I could play the music from that folder in Media Center using File-->Open Media File.  But it still won't IMPORT the album!  I tried shutting down and restarting Media Center -- it still refuses to import the folder.  How do I get Media Center to accept the fact that the folder is no longer locked?

[JimH]

Try a search for the album.  MC may have imported it automatically while you were making changes.

Did you try a Google search?  I think this is a Mac problem, not a problem with MC.

[blgentry]

I've never seen that one before, but my permissions on my external drives are very simple.  I would make sure that your user has read/write permissions on the top level folder and the folder in question.  Use Finder with the Get Info dialog, where you can change permissions.  You probably already knew that. 

As for MC not importing it:  I would run auto import and then click on the Details button so see what it shows.  If it sees the files, but is skipping them, it should show you that it skipped the files for some reason. 

You might also change the name of the folder for the album.  For example, put a "1" after the name.  That would force MC to see this folder as "new" and possibly import it.  If that works, you can use the Rename, Move, and Copy files tool to change the folder name back to what you want.

Do a few experiments and let us know what you find.

Good luck.

Brian.

[songsequencer]

I've never seen that one before, but my permissions on my external drives are very simple.  I would make sure that your user has read/write permissions on the top level folder and the folder in question.  Use Finder with the Get Info dialog, where you can change permissions.  You probably already knew that. 

As for MC not importing it:  I would run auto import and then click on the Details button so see what it shows.  If it sees the files, but is skipping them, it should show you that it skipped the files for some reason. 

You might also change the name of the folder for the album.  For example, put a "1" after the name.  That would force MC to see this folder as "new" and possibly import it.  If that works, you can use the Rename, Move, and Copy files tool to change the folder name back to what you want.

Do a few experiments and let us know what you find.

Good luck.

Brian.

I'm not trying to make my external drives' permissions complicated; I would simply prefer they be available to all my computer's users, but for some reason my Mac wants to lock them all down, and not even in easily decipherable ways.

Anyway, I tried using the MC search box using the artist name.  The album appeared with artwork as Unassigned Album by Unassigned Artist.  Each track name had the name of the album followed by the track number and title, instead of the usual format of simply track name.  All the metadata is missing -- artist, album, genre, time, track #, bit rate, etc.  The file location was listed, and the album is where I would expect it to be (in the artist folder with other albums by that artist).  What would be the best way to fix this?  Simply using rename won't populate all the metadata.

[blgentry]

I'm not trying to make my external drives' permissions complicated; I would simply prefer they be available to all my computer's users, but for some reason my Mac wants to lock them all down, and not even in easily decipherable ways.

You mentioned, in another forum thread, that your drive was "shared between computers".  Is this a USB drive that you plug into one computer, then unplug and take it to another, etc?  That might be doing funny things with the permissions.

It might be best to set read/write to Everyone as a test.

Anyway, I tried using the MC search box using the artist name.  The album appeared with artwork as Unassigned Album by Unassigned Artist.  Each track name had the name of the album followed by the track number and title, instead of the usual format of simply track name.  All the metadata is missing -- artist, album, genre, time, track #, bit rate, etc.  The file location was listed, and the album is where I would expect it to be (in the artist folder with other albums by that artist).  What would be the best way to fix this?  Simply using rename won't populate all the metadata.

Do you expect these files to have metadata inside them (artist, album, etc) ?  It's possible that somehow it got imported, but didn't read the metadata.  You could force MC to read it again:

Highlight the files in the album.
Right click > Library Tools > update library from tags

If that doesn't do it, either they aren't imported as Audio (Media Type), or for some reason their tags (metadata) are missing from the files themselves.

Good luck.

Brian.

[songsequencer]

You mentioned, in another forum thread, that your drive was "shared between computers".  Is this a USB drive that you plug into one computer, then unplug and take it to another, etc?  That might be doing funny things with the permissions.

It might be best to set read/write to Everyone as a test.

Do you expect these files to have metadata inside them (artist, album, etc) ?  It's possible that somehow it got imported, but didn't read the metadata.  You could force MC to read it again:

Highlight the files in the album.
Right click > Library Tools > update library from tags

If that doesn't do it, either they aren't imported as Audio (Media Type), or for some reason their tags (metadata) are missing from the files themselves.

Good luck.

Brian.

"Update Library from Tags" worked!  Thank you!!!

Regarding the drive question, the drive is not used on multiple computers; it's only used on one computer.  I have multiple login users on one computer that all share the drive.  Before answering this post, each of the users was set to Read & Write, but Everyone was Read Only.  So, I changed Everyone to Read & Write, plus I checked the box "Ignore ownership on this volume."  I hope that solves the permissions hassles.