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[shahrukh]

I successfully upgraded from MJ8 to MC12. Then I tried to import my MJ8 library from MC12 by using File > Library > Restore Library and selecting my backed-up MJ8 library.

It prompted me to do the conversion, as I expected, and all 6146 files are there. The only problem, but a major one, is that many of my files have titles, artistes and filenames that contain accented characters since most of the song titles are in Spanish: á, é, í, ó, ú, ü, ñ. For some reason, MC12 encodes these in some non-standard way (or perhaps MJ8 did). At any rate,after the import, all these non-7-bit-ASCII characters show up as an "unprintable" square in the MC12 display, including in the filename filed.

Worse yet, it's not just the way it shows up but in the way it's actually encoded, since if I try to play one of these files, it thinks the file doesn't exist (files that happen to have no accented characters play fine). Going through thousands of files to edit each one manually is not an option. More disturbing is the thought that if I update my MP3 IDv1 tags from the MC12 library tags, I could corrupt those as well.

If there is another way to import the library that bypasses this bug, please let me know, otherwise I will have to revert to MJ8 until it is fixed in MC. Thanks.

[JimH]

On a file or two, try right clicking in MC, then do Library Tools/Update Library From Tags.

[shahrukh]

Says "Library updated for 1 files (1 failures)" and as the "1 failure(s)" suggests, there was no apparent change. Still shows unprintable square in the Title and Filename and still won't play. Which isn't surprising (that it failed): since it could not find the file (to play), it would not be able to find the file to retrieve the tags either.

[Alex B]

Apparently the library converter has a bug.

For some time MC12 didn't have an MJ8 converter, but because of popular demand it was returned.

I created some test files and an MJ8 library. MC11.1 can convert the library correctly, but MC12 cannot. It changes the filenames and tags with special charaters to "square" symbols and the file links are broken as shahrukh reported.

The test files and the three test libraries (MJ8, MJ8 restored to MC11, and MJ8 restored to 12) are available here:
http://uploading.com/en/files/YN37H3K2/MJ8characterproblem.zip.html  (about 1 MB)


shahrukh,

As a workaround you can install MC11.1 and restore your MJ8 library to it. MC12 can restore the MC11.1 library correctly.  ftp://ftp.jriver.com/pub/downloads/music/old/MC111201.exe

[shahrukh]

OK, thanks will try that later today or tomorrow and confirm if it worked for me, although I expect based on your testing that it probably will. In any event, I would suggest that it be fixed in a near-future build (even if the fix is simply replacing the buggy converter with back-to-back MJ8->MC11 + MC11->MC12 converters in a transparent-to-the-user way), otherwise it's a bit of a time bomb.

I noticed it immediately because so many of my files (1 in 30 or so) have accented characters, but someone who had a very small fraction (as I imagine would most people) might not notice this until one out of a hundred or thousand files refused to play (perhaps months later when the MC12 library would have been updated with new material and reimporting a months-old MJ8 database would cause loss of all the subsequent changes). And if the accent mark were only in the filename and not in the title it would be even more mysterious and hard to debug since most people probably don't display the filename, and even if they did, it is typically so long that the part with the error would probably be truncated in the display.

[Alex B]

I hope fixing the problem is a no-brainer to JRiver.

BTW, you may find trying MC11.1 interesting. It was (and still is) an excellent and mature program. As an intermediate step from MJ8 it may help you better understand all the changes in MC12.

The latest MC11.1 version (201) can be installed simultaneusly with MC12 without problems. It even works with the same MC12 license.

[shahrukh]

OK, the two-stage process worked fine. In fact when I brought up MC12, it automatically recognized that I had a previous library from MC11 and prompted me to use it. And I think I'll just stay with MC12; I prefer one steeper learning curve than two intermediate ones.

Now I have another issue about file naming and Vista but I think I should start a new topic for that since it has nothing to do with this original thread on MJ8 libraries.

Thanks for the help.