Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[proton32060]

I am going to take some time explaining a few things that some users may find helpful.

I am sure there are many people like me that use JRiver as a Media Player and that is about as far as it goes.
Yes, we may know how to fiddle around in the options menu but as far as all the things it can do ( some of them very complex) we either don’t really understand, know they exist, or would even care even if we did know everything Media Center can do.
We simply use it to play our media and that is as far as it goes.

But I think there is one aspect of Media Center a lot of casual users like myself need to understand.
And it took me hours to figure out.
And that is “ Explorer” under “Drives and Devices” on the left Column in the Media Center Window.
Many might think it is a File Explorer like Windows Explorer that shows the files on your hard drive in real time.

From its appearance it looks like Windows Explorer that lists your hard drives and shows the Directories, and Sub-Directories on your hard drives.

But that is not what it is at all.

What it is in fact is a Database viewer and what you are scanning is not the hard drive but the JRiver Library itself and what its database knows about the hard drive.
Think of it more like a phone book.

So understand the JRiver Explorer is not scanning your hard drive in real time but telling you what it knows about your hard drive from the last time it was updated.

That can get very confusing very fast.
Let’s say you have a hard drive full of a bunch of CD’s you have ripped in JRiver. Then those folders of the Cd’s you ripped in JRiver will be added to the Library Database and when you look through jRivers Explorer those songs will be listed.

But say someone gives you a copy of a CD they ripped on a thumb drive and you put it into your albums folder on your hard drive and then go looking for it in jRivers Explorer.
It won’t be there.
Because you didn’t tell JRiver to rescan the hard drive and update its Library database.
Now if you play the new songs JRiver will add it to its Library automatically because you brought the new files to jRivers attention but until you do that  JRiver will never know you added a new folder.

If you don’t understand that it can have you pulling your hair out like I did before I figured it out.
The folder is clearly on your hard drive but jRivers Explorer doesn’t show it.
Well, it is because it is not scanning your hard drive in real time like Windows Explorer but showing you instead jRivers Database of that hard drive the last time JRiver scanned and updated its Library.


It can also get very confusing when you are using jRivers Explorer and the names of the songs don’t make sense.
So say for instance you have a file you named “Venus - Bananarama.flac” on your hard drive and you get into the JRiver Explorer and scroll down to the directory with that file.
You would expect under the “name” Heading in JRiver Explorer it would say “Venus” ?
Right?
Well it might not.
It might say “Track 1” instead.
But that makes no sense because you clearly named the file “Venus-Bananarama.flac”.

But it is not reading the file name on your hard drive but it is reading the tag inside  the file for the name of the song and that is what it  is showing.

Each audio file has tags embedded into it which has song name, artist, album, date, album art, etc.

That is what jRivers Explorer is reading and what it displays. It is not reading the name of the file for the name of the song but the tag inside the audio file for the name.

If you don’t realize that it can get very confusing very fast.

But let’s say the file did list Venus in jRivers Explorers “Name “ Column and did have Banarama in the “Artist” Column.
What would happen if I went back in Windows Explorer and changed the name of the file on my Hard Drive to “Schools Out- Alice Cooper”.

Would jRivers Explorer show the new name and artist?
No.
Because the tags in the file would have still said Venus as song name and  Bananarama as the artist. So it doesn’t matter what I name the file because JRiver isn’t reading file names but the Tags inside the file.

Once you understand that life gets a lot easier.
When you realize JRiver is not a Hard Drive Explorer but more an explorer of its own Library Database it starts to make a lot more sense.

It doesn’t matter what you name the file because it isn’t reading the File Name to get the name of the song, it is reading the tag inside the file that tells it what the name of the song is.

Think of it like your GPS.

Your GPS doesn’t have some magic ability to go out and see every road and house in the world every time you turn it on.
It is reading a DataBase of what it was told the world looked like when the database was created.
New roads could be built, street names could change, or entire towns could be wiped off the map but your GPS would still show what it thinks is there instead of what is really there.

Because unless it is updated and given accurate information you could find yourself driving down a new road but your GPS is telling you that you are driving through the middle of a field.
Or say someone changed Maple Street to Magnolia Avenue.
Your GPS will still tell you that you are on Maple Street because it can’t see the new street sign that says Magnolia Avenue.
Because it isn’t scanning the world every time you turn it on.
It is telling you what it thinks the world is, not what it really is if that world has changed since the GPS was built.

That is exactly what jRivers Explorer is doing.
It is not telling you what is on your hard drive that instant and constantly updating itself for changes. Neither is it listing the name of the song from the name you put on the file. It is instead reading the tags from inside the files and telling you that.

And as mentioned if you drop new songs on to your hard drive and don’t tell the Library to rescan the hard drive the new songs won’t show up unless you play them because the Library Database wasn’t updated to know the new songs are there.

Once you understand that JRiver Explorer is more like scanning through a catalogue and reading what is inside the file instead of what the name of the file on your hard drive  happens to be it will make a lot more sense and will make your life a lot easier.

[RoderickGI]

Yep, you pretty much nailed that! 

It can be a frustrating tool if you don't understand it, that is for sure. A couple of comments/clarification.

Media Center temporarily imports files as per the selections at the top of the MC Explorer. It is that part of the database that MC is looking at when you view the directory structure in MC Explorer. MC shows the files just as they would be if they had been imported, using the same rules such as reading data from file names using CARNAC, and reading tags inside the files, as you mention. It is not a file explorer like Windows Explorer. What is shown will be the tags/fields as best MC could determine when it imported them into its temporary database.

I'm surprised your thumb drive didn't show up in MC Explorer pretty quickly. I guess you had MC Explorer selected when you inserted it. All you needed to do was refresh the view and it would have shown up. You didn't need to play the files. MC does actually rely on File Events to identify if it needs to recheck a drive. That process is very quick. If File Events aren't supported then a refresh, or some other way to trigger MC to update, is required.


There are some other "GotChas", such as.

Using the Explorer on a MC Client while it is connected to a MC Server can be very confusing, as MC looks at the local hard drive names, but shows the remote files under drives with the same name. For example, I have an F: drive on my Client. My MC Server has an F; drive as well. There is no F:\Movies sub-directory on my local drive, but when I select the F: drive in MC Explorer, and then tick "Show Files In Subfolders", MC displays the files on my MC Server. That is logical, because MC is just querying the Library using the [Filename] field, and not the hard drive. The Library shows files in F:, so MC displays them.

Put simply, using the MC Explorer while connected to a MC Server Library can be very confusing, and makes little sense. However using it when a local Library is loaded can be very helpful, if used carefully.


It is a great tool for checking what is on your drive, and of those, what has been imported into MC and what has not.

It is an excellent tool for tagging files before they are imported into MC, so that the original import has the correct tags. That could be used to fix the "Track 1" name situation, for example, before MC ever actually sees the files via a real import process.

It can be used to fix tags inside files which will never be imported. MC just writes the tags as if they were imported into its normal Library, and then forgets the files when you close MC Explorer. Neat.

[proton32060]

I used the Thumb Drive example as merely that.
I never had the problem but I assumed if you copied a folder into a Music Folder without Media Center running it would never see it.
But part of that may be that I think I set it not to auto scan drives.

To be honest I still don't really understand it.

I tried to modify the tags in Media Center and finally gave up and got a program called "Mp3tag" to modify the tags instead.

But I still use Media Center to insert album art.

Here is what caused all of this in the first place:

I would bet I am considerably older than you. I was born in the late 50's and grew up in the 70's.
I have a main drive for music with folders for 70's with sub-folders for High School, College, Dental School, etc.

I also have folders for the 80's, 90's, and another folder called albums which is where all my ripped CD's went.


What created the problem is a lot of the files in the 60's and 70's folders actually came from compilation disks of songs of the era and not directly from the original albums.

The problem is these compilation disks created a slew of tags on each file that created a mess when the car stereo started playing them and all I wanted was the name of the song and the artist to display.
And as you probably surmised, some of those audio files from the Compilation disks I had to manually rename.

It never really mattered in Media Center since I just double clicked the file I wanted and the song played. The problem was when I put those songs on a Thumbdrive in the car and the stereo started pulling up all those weird tags from the compilation disks and totally ignored the actual file name it was playing.
What I wanted was to strip out everything but the song title, the Artist, and the album art.

I never could figure out how to get Media Center to do this to Batch Files so I used the "Mp3tag" program instead.

I don't know if my explanation actually helped or hurt but I thought it might help someone else.
You see, I am one of those people who use Media Center to play my files and that's it.
I really don't know what it can do and probably wouldn't use its advanced functions even if I did understand them.
To me it is just a Media Player.

But upgrading the car stereo is what made all of this an issue since it simply reads tags like the Library does. Then all of a sudden the screen in the car started displaying all this nonsense  I never even realized was there which then forced me to figure out how to get the car stereo to display what I wanted instead of the garbage coming up on the screen. And that is what got me into Media Centers Explorer and trying to figure it out.
Up until then I just double clicked a file on my computer and let it play.
I am not what you would call an advanced Media Center Expert.
I am the guy who knows how to turn on the TV and change channels but how it works is beyond me and is not necessary for me to use the device.
You have me beat in Spades on that front.
But I did rebuild a Player Piano from scratch and it worked perfectly. I grew up in a mechanical world and you grew up in a software world.
For that reason you have me beat on every front in this modern world.

Unfortunately, the new car stereo required me to try to figure out some of these technical details  I never thought about and really didn't understand.


You know why I really keep buying every upgrade of Media Center for over 10 years?
Because of the bouncing boxes in the Spectrum Analyzer view.
For some reason I love it and that is why I keep supporting the program.

I just got in over my head when I put the stereo in the car and realized the file tags now were a big deal when they never had been on the computer.

I hope my explanation helped a little since I had such a hard time understanding what was going on.
I thought I would share what little I had learned for other knuckleheads like me.

[RoderickGI]

You've done fine in understanding MC and explaining the MC Explorer. Hopefully, it will help others.

You don't have many years on me. A very few in fact. My background is in Mechanical Engineering. I just got into software along the way.

Car audio systems can be very crude, and awkward to satisfy. If it is now working for you, then that is excellent.

Thanks for sharing!

[proton32060]

Thanks for the kind words.
I needed them.
I am 62 and have been working 14 hour days trying to catch up with 6 weeks of patients and the ones that were already scheduled.
I am getting too old for this.
My wife works with me and we are really wishing we had a deserted island to escape to.
My Brother in law always told my wifes family," If you put Alec and Rosemary on a Deserted Island and gave them enough to eat you would never hear from them again".
I wish now we had that deserted island.

But I guess I can't complain.
30 years ago I married an angel who is essentially a sweet 10 year old little girl in a grown womans body. She looked just like Samantha in Bewitched when I married her and she is still just as pretty.
Everybody who knows her loves her and they put up with me to be around her.
I guess there are more important things in life than understanding Media Center programming.
But I still grew up in a mechanical world that is now one of software.
But I figured out how to make the car do what I wanted it to so I can't complain.
I just wish I knew where the last 30 years went.

[RoderickGI]

You are a very lucky man Alec, having a good woman by your side.

I think you have a lot of blessings to count.

Just do something about the Work-Life balance, so you can enjoy those blessings a bit more. Life is good, but you have to live it to notice.