More > Media Center 12 (Development Ended)
Playlists (Backup discussion)
bunglemebaby:
--- Quote ---My fundamental concern today is that when I make a correction or move files they end up deleted from my playlists. For example, I found that freedb misspells Beethoven, When I corrected it and it’s file folder then re-imported the files including deleting the old files from the database I discovered that they were also deleted from my playlists. My understanding was that these lists are written to separate files. When I open my playlists it should show me all the deleted files. It doesn’t. This is an essential feature.
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--- Quote ---I periodically refine my file system. At first everything was under "music". It became unwieldy for back ups because of the time involved in backing up everything at once (400 GB takes a long time to backup). Now I have it broken into some broad categories like rock, classical, jazz, etc. and I anticipate over time each will eventually have it's own database. I keep refining it because the more I use the system the more I see the need for refinement.
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Are you doing your file modifications from within MC or from an external tool (Windows Explorer, Mp3Tag, etc)? From perusing this posting, I thought that
--- Quote ---You can disable the "fix broken links"
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was your answer.
I would suggest posting here, step by step with as much detail as possible, what your usual work flow is.
I would guess that someone on these forums can help you figure out an acceptable solution without any changes to the MC code. MC is very powerful for these sorts of things, but sometimes it takes a little digging to understand exactly how some of the subtler features operate.
--- Quote ---This isn't a wish list item this is vital to the integrity of the system as a whole.
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Different strokes for different folks... if I delete a file from my system, I don't ever want to see it or hear from it again.
-JB
Alex B:
--- Quote from: tunetyme on April 23, 2009, 02:54:08 pm ---Alex B. I do have the auto import function disabled. It still happens. When you manually clean up your files (deleting listings that have a star burst in the cover art field) it also deletes it from the playlists. If the playlists are independent files stored as M3Us then the missing file is still there on the M3U list. I can then act on it and replace it.
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That's why I specifically said "when accidents happen outside MC". As others have said, you can save playlists manually to disk files.
--- Quote ---What I don't understand is why is this such a big deal to store playlists in an M3U format? All I want to do is protect my work product from me as well as mechanical failures or other acts of God.
I periodically refine my file system. At first everything was under "music". It became unwieldy for back ups because of the time involved in backing up everything at once (400 GB takes a long time to backup). Now I have it broken into some broad categories like rock, classical, jazz, etc. and I anticipate over time each will eventually have it's own database. I keep refining it because the more I use the system the more I see the need for refinement.
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For your sake I hope JRiver will introduce a solution to your problem.
Though, it is a big complex problem. They probably could create a feature that would automatically save new or changed playlists to files, but that would not protect the old playlists on the disk when you delete files inside MC. Also the file deletions would be registered as changes and end up to the saved playlist files.
As the playlists work now, they are index lists that link library files. When a library file is removed it is removed from all places in the user interface because all places show the same file. There are no separate library entries for the files in the playlists.
EDIT
Personally, I never remove library files if my actions make them temporarily offline. After I have done what ever I was doing outside MC I fix the links inside MC. I value my statistics. I imported the oldest files in main library about seven years ago using MJ8. Since then I have always moved the same library to new program versions, drives and PCs.
tunetyme:
bunglemebaby
Your request is reasonable. I will do my best to be brief but complete. If anything is unclear please ask and I will clarify it.
I have an eclectic collection of music. I discovered that when I made backups (copy in windows) to the same backup disk changes in the tag like the addition of lyrics and BPM etc. were not saved to the backup disk. To have these changes in the tags saved I needed to use ”Synctoy” a Microsoft utility. It’s good but takes forever and always leads to a massive defrag afterwards. To streamline the process, I created multiple file folders on 3 different hard disks plus 3 backup disks. I am back down to 2 disks now. In the past 3 years, I have experienced a disk crash and a motherboard died. As you can see, I have experienced a number of the worst nightmare scenarios.
To reduce the time to make backups I created multiple folders to store songs based on genre like rock, classical, jazz etc. This allows me to work on a segment of my collection and then do a backup without taking forever. Yes, I move things around in windows and not in MC. I do this because I can see exactly what is going on. If I screw up I know what happened and how to fix it. I became uncomfortable with MC and specifically with the automatic update feature after I lost a disk and I was restoring files from a backup. This backup was not completely current and some of the music I had ripped was not on the backup and I was counting on MC to identify the missing CD’s. Auto update deleted the files. So instead of being able to identify just the missing ones I had to go through every CD I own and verify that it was in MC. I’ve since learned to turn that default feature off. To the best of my knowledge there is no “undo” feature in MC.
As the saying goes, you have to pay for your education. I don’t like it, but I accept that that is the way it is. A few months ago the motherboard went and I had to do a complete “new” install of Windows XP. That means I have to install all my software as well including MC. Since 12 just finished its development cycle I downloaded and installed it. It would not recognize the previous version database (an earlier version of 12) so I had to import all my files again. No big deal, most of the information was in the tags. Playlists are different matter, they are gone.
Murphy, the optimist, had it right, what can go wrong will. Because of my experience, I do some things manually without relying on MC. I’ve again started building playlists when the current events happened that I believe I’ve outlined completely in the above posts.
Alex_B, I do not use rating or frequency of play to make a playlist. Those stats are not significant for me if they were I would hope they are stored in the tags where you could recover the info in the event of a problem. I certianly hope JRiver will introduce a solution as well.
I love my music and I invest a significant amount of time to put together great playlists and I hate losing all that effort when it could be avoided. That’s why I do backups so I don’t have spend the next 6 months ripping CDs. If the playlist info is stored in the tags or a M3U file is okay with me. I think it is very reasonable to request that the users work product is protected. I've invested 3 years to put put my music on my computer and I don't want to start from ground zero again.
Tunetyme
Matt:
The JRiver solution is to make a library backup. The program even does this for you automatically (albeit to the same drive in some cases).
You can also export playlists (or all playlists) from the File menu.
You mentioned having a problem restoring a library backup, but unless you had drive corruption (i.e. bad backups) this won't happen. And new versions of Media Center can always read old backup.
Spreading library data around to different formats and folders only makes the challenges of backup more complicated in my opinion.
tunetyme:
Thanks for your response Matt.
You can duplicate the problem with the restore by taking a hard disk with its' operating system and MC loaded ( slightly earlier version of the final 12). Install it in another computer that has a different motherboard and chipset. Windows XP will force you to do a "new" install. After you follow the directions reinstall MC (the final version of 12) and try to recover your database. I think you will find the same problem I had.
I am not trying to rag on MC. The majority of the problems I have outlined are not MC's problem. They are however, problems we have all experienced from time to time. I am trying to point out a very important point of great concern that I have become very passionate about.
I've invested thousands and thousands of hours for all the songs I have on my system. That counts initial research to buy, ripping, verifying, importing, rating, and locating and downloading lyrics and a backup. I have invested somewhere between $15,000 to $20,000 to buy CDs plus hardware. MC is a very small part of my investment. I know that there are a number of people here who dwarf my investment.
What I am asking is that JRiver come up with a solution that protects my investment of time to create playlists, like it does with lyrics and other info stored in the tag. My solution is to automatically create and store playlists in an M3U file. That gives it portability as well as a hard copy external to MC. Then in the unfortunate event that a user has a problem they don't have to lose all their efforts. I believe that it is a reasonable request that all your users will benefit from. Reliability still sells product and these kinds of features become real tangible benefits to users and buyers of your products.
Tunetyme
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