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[gandt]

I have a few albums ripped which show up fine in the library but dont appear to have any tags written when I look form them in, for example, slimserver. What command can I use to show all the library entries that lack tags of one sort or another (artist name usually)

graham

[NickM]

Just make sure you have the set the update tags checkbox, and the tags will automatically be updated when the library changes are made.


Or manually select all the files and right-click, Library Tools, Update Tags from Library.

[scthom]

That's not quite what Graham asked, though.

MC will only search the library, not the physical file, so there is no search you can run to find files which have no tags.

I've found the easiest way is to make sure the settings are correct as noted and then just select everything and do a right click->update tags from library.

Warning: If you have any special non-MC tags in some files, DO NOT do a remove tags first or you will lose them.

[gandt]

OK thanks at least Im not looking for something that isnt there. Still I have 28000 files - of which (a guess) maybe 2% have tag issues - thats a lot of updating...

[Alex B]

Instead of updating tags in 28000 files you can create a new temporary library and import the files.

In a details view you can click the column headers of each library field and find out which files have empty values. Select these files and send them to a new playlist.

After you have checked all columns that should have values export the playlist to an m3u file, load your regular library and import the playlist. It will appear in the Imported Playlists group. Now you can select the files in that playlist and update tags from the library.

You may want to create a fresh library backup file before proceeding (just in case something goes wrong).

[gandt]

ok sounds ingenius but will reimporting be significantly quicker than tag updates?


graham

[Alex B]

ok sounds ingenius but will reimporting be significantly quicker than tag updates?

I don't know, it depends on how fast your system and drives are, file formats*, file fragmentation, etc.

However, I am sure that creating new backup files of 560 files (= 2%) is much faster than creating new backup files of 28000 files. (Personally I use a backup program that can update only the changed files on my external hard drives in which I keep two separate backups sets.) The same is true if you sync portables.

Also, you may find an explanation for the missing tags (in case you don't already know).


Edit

* Actually, the used tagging format is the key factor. If the files contain appropriate padding area for new tags then the tag update is quite fast. If not, then a complete rewrite is needed. In the latter case importing is certainly faster.

[gandt]

Actually just in case ayone else is following this avidly, I realised I'd been a bit dumb. The problems files are reported in slimserver (artist = no Artist) so i searched for "no artist" in slimserver and then used that record to work out which ones to fix in MC12. Thanks everyone for your help.