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[steveklein]

i have gone to great lengths to edit my own tag info for genres, dates, cover art, etc.... however it appears that media center has done some auto updating on its own and has messed up a few hundred of said tags. It's no big deal for me to fix what's been "broken" but I'd like to figure out wher the option is in MC so that it won't do this again in the future.

Thanks,
Steve

[rjm]

What file types were modified?

[Matt]

MC doesn't do any auto-tagging.

If the file is changed with an external program, MC will update the library from the tags.

[Alex B]

MC doesn't do auto updating on its own -- except when cover art is added. (Please provide details of what you think happened if it is not because of adding cover art.)

Some time ago the cover art behavior was changed so that adding a link to an external cover art file rewrites file tags using the database info. I was against this change. Now I need to disable tagging before I change or add cover art links. (I have no way to know why the files are changed when I update my backup sets.)

You can disable tag writing in Options > General > Update tags when file info changes.

EDIT

The change was made because some users wanted MC to be able to always remove embedded cover when external cover art is linked. The solution was to force a tag update. In my opinion MC should be clever enough to not do that when embedded cover art doesn't exist, but possibly that is not easy to accomplish.

[rjm]

MC doesn't do any auto-tagging.

If the file is changed with an external program, MC will update the library from the tags.

Unless he was running <428 >404 with auto-import on and files that do not store tags internally. This is why I asked what file types were changed.

[Alex B]

Unless he was running <428 >404 with auto-import on and files that do not store tags internally. This is why I asked what file types were changed.

I think steveklein means specifically the internal file tags. But if not, then he means updating library info automatically. The database can indeed be unsynced with the file tags if MC can't physically tag the file type or if tag writing is disabled. Rereading the tags may pull unwanted metadata.

[steveklein]

all files in question are .mp3 files

basically i have 60,000 or so files and i've decided to create 26 genres (southern rock, classical, reggae, pop, metal, etc) and i'm not sure what i did, but i know i did not change the tags myself.

a handful of songs i rated (3 *'s, 4*'s, whatever) and it seemed to cause tag changes. i know this because some of my tags changed from "Metal' which is pretty general 9what I want) to things like "Black Metal" or "Nu Metal"

however, it is not exclusive to songs that i have rated. some files that i have done nothing with in weeks... not edited tag info, not grabbed new cover art, not even played the files... have changed tag info. it's like media center ran an auto-import and overlayed my tags that i wanted there with whatever is in some online database.

Same thing when I want all my punk music to just say Punk Rock, and now some of my tags say Power Punk, Pop Punk, etc.

[Alex B]

So you mean specifically the info you see inside MC, correct?

[JimH]

Maybe another player or utility did that?

[steveklein]

yes, the info i see in MC. a few days ago i had 26 genres, today i have over 70. basically too detailed for my tastes as i want to keep it general.

i'm not that adept at working with ID3 tags, I just use MC's WYSIWYG interface where I seect all my Radiohead music and simply right click genre, reame them all to 'Rock' and move on to Pantera, change to 'Metal' etc

i installed vista ultimate so i did a clean install of media center and it didn't keep my prior settings which had been working fine for months.

now, however, there is something that is causing MC to grab info that i don't want it to be grabbing and i just want to turn this off.

[steveklein]

Maybe another player or utility did that?

i can't imagine how. i haven't used other programs to play or edit tag info. and some of the files that have different genres now have not been listened to or edited at all.

when i run auto-import, i did notice it was "updating for external changes" for a number of files which i found to be odd. however, even if i did somehow edit tags in another program, i alwas do it manually and physically type in 'Rock' 'Metal' 'Instrumental' 'Christmas' etc. So how I would end up with AltRock and Folk and Thrash Metal as genre tags is beyond me.

[steveklein]

also, i've never had to restore my library using a backup, but before i did that to reqind a day or two, i wanted to ask what all wil be changed?

will this revert to my old tags? files that have been analyzed using "analyze audio" will these need to be redone? or does it simply revert back to the files that were present in the library at the time of the backup... while things like tag info, ratings, etc. that have been added since will still be present?

[Alex B]

Probably MC is reading the outdated info from the file tags. I don't know what triggers that. It should not be happening unless the last modification dates are really changed. (If that is the case, you can disable the "Update for external changes" option in Auto-Importer.)

However, the big question is why the file tags are not up-to-date. Do you have tag writing enabled?

(Options > General > Update tags when file info changes)

[Alex B]

also, i've never had to restore my library using a backup, but before i did that to reqind a day or two, i wanted to ask what all wil be changed?

will this revert to my old tags? files that have been analyzed using "analyze audio" will these need to be redone? or does it simply revert back to the files that were present in the library at the time of the backup... while things like tag info, ratings, etc. that have been added since will still be present?

A library backup stores a snapshot of the current situation. It includes all file data you can see inside MC, including view schemes and playlists. Only the cached thumbnails are not included.

A restore simply replaces all library data with data from the backup zip file.

[rjm]

Probably MC is reading the outdated info from the file tags. I don't know what triggers that. It should not be happening unless the last modification dates are really changed. (If that is the case, you can disable the "Update for external changes" option in Auto-Importer.)

However, the big question is why the file tags are not up-to-date. Do you have tag writing enabled?

(Options > General > Update tags when file info changes)

One possible explanation...

Versions 410 until 428 had a problem that incorrectly detected some files as having changed. So if steveklein was using one of these versions, and if he had auto-import on, and if he had set MC not to write tags to files, then some of his tags would have been changed back to their original values.