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[FenceFurniture]

I haven't done an upgrade for a few years, and it has now either become much more painful, or I have forgotten the pain.
Parametric Equalizer - erased
Equaliser settings (several) - erased
Zones - all gone
Various buttons I've placed in the action window and at the top - gone
All the info about what is playing that I so pedantically set up - gone, just "JRiver Media Center 31"
All the column widths in 10 tabs that I so pedantically set up - gone
Whatever else is missing that I am yet to discover

I was under the impression that all the settings were automatically copied over from MC 28.
Am I, or maybe the upgrade instructions, missing something?

[lepa]

I have seen issues here before that upgrade did not get everything migrated. (mine have always gone smoothly)

MC should have created a backup of your library when you upgraded. Or you can do one yourself if you didn't already deleted MC28 installation and if you don't have recent backup. Importing that backup in MC31 hopefully fixes all your sorrows.

[FenceFurniture]

Thanks lepa. I'm glad I'm not going crackers then. I haven't changed anything in 28 for months if not a year or two, so I don't know why 31 would do such a half-baked job. It could have picked any one of scores of backups, even if it didn't do its own proper job.

No way did I delete 28. I can do a back-up (although they are done 2-3 times a week I think). What concerns me is that given the behaviour of 31 not doing a smooth job, will trying to force-feed it make any difference? I don't think I know how to import that backup either – but I haven't looked around yet.

[lepa]

File --> Library --> Restore Library

[FenceFurniture]

Ok, thanks again. I'll get to that tomorrow (it's late here in Oz).

[JimH]

Back up in the old version and include settings when doing so. Then restore in the new version.

[FenceFurniture]

Back up in the old version and include settings when doing so. Then restore in the new version.

Why doesn't it do that automatically? If I recall correctly it has done so previously.

[FenceFurniture]

File --> Library --> Restore Library

I thought I might do the first part now (the backup), but there are no options to include settings, only Thumbnails.
File ► Library ► Back up Library ► "Do you want to include Thumbnails?" ► Yes ► "Backup successful"

[JimH]

The ability to add settings to the backup was added recently.  I'm not sure which version.

[FenceFurniture]

The ability to add settings to the backup was added recently.  I'm not sure which version.

So if that was after MC 28 does that mean I can't back up the settings and have to re-do everything?

[lepa]

Backup saves settings automatically, it only asks if thumbnails will be also saved.

I think MC28 backs up the settings, so you should be fine. Just try to restore it. Restore will then ask if settings and such should be also restored from backup

E:

15.0.1 (03/04/2010)
1. NEW: When restoring a library backup, user settings can also be restored.

[FenceFurniture]

So I restored into MC 31 the backup that I took out of MC 28, and so far it looks good (haven't checked everything yet). Thank you lepa for your assistance.

This begs again the question that I asked Jim earlier, but that went unanswered. "Why doesn't it do this automatically?"
I don't do my backups to where JRiver suggests, as I keep all my music stuff on a detachable SSD, which is also backed up to a separate detachable spinner drive, which is only ever attached during the backup process.

However, if the MC 31.exe was smart enough it would have looked for this, but it is still trying to go to its default position in "Documents". I also note that my choice of site for backups has always been the case for the last several years, which included at least the upgrade to MC 28, which went smoothly.

Furthermore, given that at least lepa and myself know that things do not always go according to plan with an upgrade, the instructions for doing an upgrade should say, in letters as big as you like:

"DO A LIBRARY BACKUP OF YOUR CURRENT MC VERSION BEFORE YOU INSTALL AN UPGRADE!
You should not rely only on the .exe doing a backup.
If your settings are not correct after the upgrade you may need to restore your backup into the new version"

That would have saved me quite a bit of anxiety and frustration, and also saved lepa and Jim the time to assist me through this. I was particularly anxious because I had never had such difficulties in previous upgrades.

[FenceFurniture]

Just a footnote to that:
I have done a huge amount of programming etc in my MC a few years ago. It all works really well, but because it works so well, and was a few years ago, it all goes out of my head. I then just enjoy listening to tunes and doing other stuff. Reworking everything that has left my head is not at all pleasant, especially if it is unnecessary (I had spent some hours unnecessarily correcting stuff until I realised just how much was wrong, and put out the call for help).

[Matt]

The install process should copy the existing loaded library from any copy of MC version 20 or newer to the new location.

This works for lots of users, so I'm not sure why it didn't work for you.

Was there some other library loaded in MC?

Thanks.

[FenceFurniture]

The install process should copy the existing loaded library from any copy of MC version 20 or newer to the new location.

Was there some other library loaded in MC?

No, I only have one Library. It's also set to "Audio Only". It copied, shall we say, a "half job" of the Library.
What was copied was:

• all of the expressions (numerous),
  playlists (not too many),
  Library views (about 30),
  probably other stuff

What was NOT copied was:

• Black on Black Skin,
  the ten tabs across the top that I had assigned my most used Library Views to (along with the specific column widths),
  DSP Studio (10-12 Equalisers, Para Eq, and all other settings I have changed,
  Zones (4),
  Action Window and topline buttons,
  customised display (headline),
  probably other stuff that I hadn't discovered missing before posting in here.

31 was also not aware that my backups had been set to a different location (drive & folder name). It was still using Documents ► JRiver, so I'm blessed if I know how it picked the few settings that it did. There was no interruption to the process – it ran under its own steam.

It turns out to be no big deal by doing a library backup of 28 and restore into 31, but my major point is that for those of us who "set and forget" (years ago in my case) a simple extra instruction (BU & Restore) inserted into the upgrade routine would have saved the situation from occurring.

[FenceFurniture]

I don't know if this gives a clue to you Matt:

If I look in Documents ► JRiver (which is not where I have directed MC to do backups) there are folders for MC 23, 26, 28, 31.
I will delete 23 & 26.
Now the curious part of this is that 28  has folders created in Feb, Oct, Nov of 2023, and that is all. I do not know how these were created. And why so spasmodic?
Those folders are 67 to 70MB in size.

If I then look in M-Drive
M:\1.1 MUSIC - JRiver\Media Center 28\Library Backups    (which is my desired location)
there are backups going back to May 2023, but nothing for Aug 2023! Eh?
Furthermore (refer to screenshot attached), there is a folder for each month May to Dec 2023 (minus Aug), but also 3 to 6 individual backup folders from Oct, Nov, Dec which have not gone into the specific month folder.
These are all 67-70MB in size.

The two manual backups that I have done (Nov 2022 at the top, and Dec 2023 at the bottom "before 31") are both more than 3x that size at 248 to 252MB. The Dec 2023 one ( two days ago) has thumbnails. I am now going to do another backup of 28 without thumbnails to check the size.....standby.....yes, it's back down to 70MB.

I don't actually understand what those thumbnails are, if someone might be able to explain please.

[JimH]

If you restore a backup without thumbnails, MC will rebuild them.  It just takes a while.

If you're not sure you need a directory, rename it.

[FenceFurniture]

If you restore a backup without thumbnails, MC will rebuild them.  It just takes a while.

If you're not sure you need a directory, rename it.

Thanks, but what are they (thumbnails)?

[zybex]

They're small/resized versions of the full cover art images or movie posters. Similar to icons.

MC will use them for faster loading when displaying a view with many items. Instead of having to load 1000 posters of 1 MB each and then resize them in real-time to a small size for displaying, MC uses the pre-resized versions (thumbnails). That saves a LOT of loading time and CPU usage.

MC actually creates 3 thumbnail sizes for different uses - large, medium, small.

[FenceFurniture]

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks zybex.