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[chrisgreen]

I have recently replaced a number of FLAC files in my library, and I noticed that the Ratings are gone. The rest of the metadata seems intact. Any idea what is going on?

[blgentry]

If you remove an old file and import a new one, the old file's metadata, inside of MC, is gone.  MC reads the metadata from each file as it is imported.  I'm not sure what your procedure was, or what your purpose was in replacing one FLAC file with another, so I might not have the full story.

If you replace a file and keep the file names identical, then there should be no loss of MC data as MC will not see this as a new file.  If you tell MC to update by doing Library Tools > Update Tags (from file), then it will read the tags inside the replaced file.  If that file happens to contain a Rating field that is empty, it will overwrite the field in MC's internal database.  If the Rating field does not exist in the replaced file, then the Rating tag will keep the original value in MC's database.

Brian.

[chrisgreen]

I think you have it. I replaced files with new files that have the exact name and file path. The new files were untagged. I had Update for External Changes enabled on import, and I believe that is how the Ratings were getting lost.

I do not understand why other metadata fields (Artist, Album, Name, etc.) were also not lost. I am happy they were not! Still, why just the Ratings field? None of the other fields had tags in the new files.

[chrisgreen]

I can see now that some metadata other than Ratings was overwritten in the library. So, is this correct...

With update external changes enabled on import, I assume no rating overwrites any existing rating with a 0 rating. Also, I assume that other blank metadata fields do not overwrite existing tags in the library. If a tag does exist, then it overwrites the existing tag in the library.

[blgentry]

You can roll back to a database backup made sometime before this change; then your metadata will be correct again. 

You should probably turn off update for external changes and leave it off. 

Finally, once you have the metadata back to normal, you might want to manually highlight these files and run Library Tools > update tags (from library) .  That will write the MC values into the files including all fields that you have configured to write to tags.

Best of luck!

Brian.

[chrisgreen]

Great advice. I have turned off update for external changes. That was causing more trouble than I realized.

I have been able to retrieve all lost metadata from backups. I learned my lesson a while ago. Make good backups everybody!