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[Kazimierz]

MediaJukebox edits tag information for files when you download cover art from the internet.

This has led to files of mine being irrevocably changed as a result, and no longer can be seeded (in an entirely legal way, with free to distribute music). I moved to MJ because of FLAC support, as well as the ability to get info from filename, download cover art, and the rest of the goodies. But there needs to be a way to not edit these files! iTunes never did that to me, why on Earth is MJ doing it?

[JimH]

If you think it's because of cover art, try turning cover art access off in options.

It could also be writing playback info into the tag.  There are other possibilities.  You can turn off writing library changes to the tags in options.

Why do you think this is a problem?

[Kazimierz]

Well, I saw a thread that was locked, regarding files that had used the internet search and download feature for cover art, leading to files no longer being recognized and able to seed in uTorrent, which is what happened to me.

Myself, though, i assumed it was my editing of id3 tags. Though, of course, when i imported all of these new files into MJ the first time, I didn't keep track of which ones i downloaded cover art for, and which ones i used the get info from filename feature for. But shortly thereafter, i noticed that some of my formerly seeded files were no longer seeding. And even relocating the individual files one by one did nothing. The file itself has been modified in some way that prevents it from being seeded any more.

[Kazimierz]

It is definitely a problem when importing cover art from the internet, as well as labeling.

I tested this with uTorrent. I was seeding a folder perfectly fine. I changed the artist/album/track# info, and did a force re-check. I got 97.5% or so. Some end parts of each of the music files was "missing" now, and had to be re-downloaded to make the torrent whole.

However, when I imported cover art from the internet, and did the re-check again, i got 0% for my music files. Not only that, but apparently since i imported cover art at the same time i was downloading data to the file, the files are damaged. I now have a skip in one file that i was opening while downloading/importing cover art on.

MJ's labeling and cover art importing not only changes files, but in my case, also damaged it. This is absurd.

[Alex B]

MJ12 is designed to update the file tags whenever its cover art tools are used for adding or changing cover art. This happens when you have cover art to set to be embedded in the tags and even when it is set to be only external because some users wanted MC12 & MJ12 to be able to always remove possibly existing embedded cover art when the options are set to not save cover art to the tags. The developers' solution was to force a tag update.

The tag update itself does not corrupt files but I can imagine that a bit torrent client could start redownloading a file chunck when it detects a change in the file. In this situation two programs could be trying to edit the same file simultaneously. In any case, as you have found, naturally a changed file will be incorrect for sharing purposes.

As Jim said, a possible solution is to disable file tagging completely in the options (Tools > Options > General > Importing & Tagging > Update tags when file info changes). Unlike some other players MJ12 can work perfectly fine without writing tag changes to the files. It has a very good database that can store all file metadata.

Another solution would be to not use the auto-importer and its automatic cover art feature for the files that you are sharing. This would make possible to keep tagging enabled and tag other files normally. You would still be able to play the shared files in MJ12 if you simply drag the files to Playing Now and disable the "Automatically import files when played" option. Once you have finished sharing you can, for instance, right-click import the files in Playing Now, use the "Rename, Move, & Copy Files" tool for moving the files to your usual media library location and use the cover art tools.

You could also import the files and just be careful that you don't use any features that trigger tagging on the shared files until you have finished, but I think you would be better off if you keep the shared files separate. Could you just create copies of the newly downloaded files to you regular library location before importing them to MJ12?

EDIT

If this wasn't clear, MJ12 is working as designed. You are using your files in an unexpected way, but you can well handle the situation by changing the program options and/or by changing the ways you use the program.