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[IAM4UK]

I moved many files from one drive to another, and pointed MC's library to include that new path. The movies which I moved show in the library, but their tags are gone. Is this normal? Must I re-do all the hours of tagging? Are tags recoverable?

[RoderickGI]

Of course, you used the MC Rename, Move, and Copy Files function to move the files, didn't you?

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Moving_Files

If you moved the files outside MC, say using Windows Explorer, and you aren't using or didn't move the video Sidecar files, then MC considered all the moved files as new files and re-imported them... without any of your tags metadata, because they can't be saved in video files. If you were allowing video Sidecar files, and you moved those as well, then MC would still have re-imported them, but it would have found and used any tags in the Sidecar files. Of course, not all fields in the MC Library as saved as tags in file or Sidecar files, so you would still have lost some metadata.

While you could do some stuff to fix what you have done, the easiest (if not the fastest) thing to do is move the files back to where they were, and then use the RM&CF function to move them again. All tags will move with the files then.

If the above doesn't make sense, or you deleted the original directories on the source disk that still held Sidecar files, explain exactly the steps you took to move the files.

[IAM4UK]

Thanks, RoderickGI. No, I didn't use MC to move the files. I wasn't aware of that RMCF scenario. I used a computer that sees the Synology NAS folders I was keeping the files on, and moved them in File Explorer.

Since all the "Movie and TV info" and posters/art seemed to have been re-populated appropriately in the Library, I suppose I'll just go through the work of re-Tagging the movies. Moving the movies back, then moving them again via RMCF would be even more painful, it seems.

[blgentry]

You do not have to rebuild manually.  You don't have to move everything back.  Here is one way that will recover all of your original tags and things:

1.  Find an MC backup made before you moved your files and make note of where it is and what it's name is.
2.  Restore this backup into your library.  Now you will see all of your original files with all of their original tags.  However, all the ones you moved will have red circles with lines through them, indicating that MC can not find these files.  We expect this to happen because you moved the files from their original locations to somewhere else.
3.  Now we tell MC where these files moved by using the RM&C command.  This gets very detailed, but there are the basics:
  A.  Highlight all of the affected files, and open RM&C.
  B.  Put RM&C into "update database only" mode (near the top of the dialog).
  C.  Use the Find & Replace section of RM&C near the bottom to substitute the new file path for the old file path.  As an example, you might put C:\Movies into Find and E:\Video\Movies into Replace.  You'll need to figure out the right things for your situation.
  D.  Look at the PREVIEW before you do anything!
  E.  Once you have verified that the preview is correct, press OK and it will update MC to point all of those files to their new location.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  This method will overwrite your database.  So anything you changed between the backup we are talking about, and now will be gone.

This is not a comprehensive set of directions, but it's not too bad.  I hope it can get you started.

Roderick is pretty darned good at this too and might be able to answer questions or write a more detailed set of instructions.

Good luck!

Brian. 

[RoderickGI]

Thanks for the kind words Brian. 

The only things I would add to that procedure would be that I'd turn off Auto Import before running the Restore, and I'd probably not restore settings, if I hadn't changed those much, as I wouldn't want Auto Import turned back on.

If Auto Import is on it could start fixing broken links, depending on your Auto Import settings, and you wouldn't want that, since all links are broken by the Restore.

Just turn Auto Import back on after the fix.

The need for the above procedure to restore tags is why I said:

While you could do some stuff to fix what you have done, the easiest (if not the fastest) thing to do is move the files back to where they were