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[macdonjh]

I just upgraded from MC27 for Mac.  I three questions:

1. In MC27 for Mac there is a Documents "folder" in the tree.  Has this been abandoned in MC28?  Is it available, but turned off ("...look ma, no more clutter...")?  If so, how do I turn it back on?  I ask because often my DVDs rip as data files and show up in Documents until I get the tagging corrected.  Without the  Documents "folder", I don't know where these files will end up.

2. In MC27, my TV Shows were sorted by [Series] and [Season] in the Tree.  With MC28 all episodes are shown in the same drop down in the tree.  Again, is sorting by [Season] a feature which has been turned off?  Can I turn it back on again?

3. I have several episodes of the series House in my library.  When I imported my media files into MC28 I lost almost all the metadata for [Season], [Episode] and [Rating].  That didn't happen to any of my other media files.  Does anyone have an explanation?  Is there a way to get that metadata (especially the ratings)?  Does MC simply hate Greg House?  He is kind of a jerk...

[macdonjh]

Oops, and a fourth question:

I save my "cover art" for [Series] in a dedicated folder.  I've mapped that folder in Tools -> Options -> File Locations -> Folder.  But MC28 doesn't use those image files in my Series View.  What did I miss?

[JimH]

Tools > Options > General > Features.  Check Documents.  Import a few documents.

Did you try restoring a backup?

[macdonjh]

No.  Would that work since my most recent back-up is from MC27 for Mac and my new installation is MC28 for Windows?

[macdonjh]

I haven't tried saving a copy of my MC27 library and restoring it on my MC28 computer yet (I'm setting up my old computer to do just that...), but:

I have found several goofy things related to copying my media files from USB drives to a NAS in the past few days:

   Several albums have lost their cover art, and I had MC configured to save cover art with the music file.

   Several episodes of one of my TV series found their way into Music\Unknown Artist\Unknown Album.  They are now tagged correctly (I think the tags were correct before I moved them, but I'm not positive) and I've used RMC to put them in the correct folder.  Now the video, image and sidecar files are all together again. 

[macdonjh]

Tools > Options > General > Features.  Check Documents.  Import a few documents.

Did you try restoring a backup?

I didn't think about this previously: I have two recent back-ups.  One from my USB drives, and one from my new NAS.  I wonder which I should restore?  Funky data transfer from my USB drives to my NAS is one suspect I have for the troubles I have with my new Library on my new Windows PC.  So perhaps restore the Library from my USB drive?

Oh, and I'll import a document or two as well.  I'm sure I have a few around.

[macdonjh]

...now I remember why I didn't restore my old library created after I switched to my new NAS: that library was garbage because <import> didn't work properly.  My antique Mac didn't communicate properly with the NAS, which I why I ultimately gave up on that computer.

The last library I had which worked properly was created by MC27 for Mac, and pointed to a USB drive.  If I connect that USB drive to my new PC, restore that library (will a library created by MC for Mac work with MC for Windows?), and then edit the library to update from the NAS, will it work?

[macdonjh]

My previous library created in MC27 for Mac was restored by MC28 for Windows.  That didn't solve my problem, though.  Ratings are still missing, Album art is missing (only some), my Shows aren't organized by [Season] anymore.  It's all very odd.

[macdonjh]

Problem with my Shows: I lost a big chunk of metadata when I copied my media files to my NAS.  For the Series no longer grouped as Series, those tags were missing.  I still don't know why two Series lost much of the Ratings tags I've entered.  I am rebuilding the tag/ metadata now.

Frustrating.

[macdonjh]

Back to cover art questions:

Music: some miscellaneous albums are missing cover art.  I have my preferences set to:
   File -> Options -> File Location -> Cover Art -> Audio mode: in the same folder as the file.
I have verified that several of the albums not showing cover art do in fact have a .jpg file in the [Album] folder on my computer.  When I checked the tags for a few random song files, the Image file location was shown as "inside file". 

However, when I click on a song file which isn't displaying Cover Art, there is no image file shown in Tags.  For an [Album] which isn't displaying Cover Art properly I tried Cover Art -> Add From File, and selected the .jpg in the [Album] folder.  It didn't work.

Movies: none of my Movies is displaying its "cover art" properly.  I have checked random [Movie] folders on my computer and every folder I checked had a .jpg file as well as a MediaCenter sidecar file.

TV Series: none of my TV Series is displaying its "cover art" properly.  I have set my preferences to:
   File -> Options -> File Location -> Cover Art -> ...Folder \\NAS\Multimedia\Cover Art\Series
Within that folder is a .jpg file named [Series].  Before I moved everything to my NAS and switched from Mac to Windows this worked and my Series "cover art" displayed properly.

Can somebody help me figure out what's going on and how to get my cover art to display properly?

[macdonjh]

I think the root cause of these problems is poor copying from my USB drives to my NAS.  I think the large transfers got interrupted, corrupting files.  I am going through my media files now, deleting the corrupted files from my NAS and recopying them from my USB drives.

[Doof]

Since it sounds like you're new to Windows, let me recommend using Robocopy to copy your files. I just did this myself from an old server to my new Synology NAS. It provides error checking and resuming in the event an operation is interrupted. Best part is it comes as part of Windows so nothing to buy or download.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1073.robocopy-and-a-few-examples.aspx

For example, here's the command I used to move all of my movies from the server to the NAS:

Code: [Select]

robocopy G:\Movies M:\Movies /E /MOVE /Z /J /UNILOG+:M:\robocopy.log /FP /NP /TEE /unicode
where
/E says to include everything, even empty subdirectories
/MOVE moves instead of copies
/Z restartable mode
/J unbuffered IO mode which is good for large files like the movies I was dealing with. Probably wouldn't bother for music files
and then the rest is just for logging. Obviously you'd need to change this to match your situation, but that should help insure that everything has made it over properly from the USB drive to the NAS. You might even be able to run it with things the way they are and it might find all the incorrect files and correct it for you by only copying files that are either missing or invalid. It has a /L switch you can use as well have it just show you what it plans to do so you can be sure you have the syntax correct before you run it for real.

[macdonjh]

Thanks for the tip, Doof.  I was unaware of Robocopy.  I'm not new to Windows, just new to 5TB transfers.

That looks similar to rsync from the Mac I was using (I don't think ever again for me, life is too short to have to know two operating systems).