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[snarfo67]

I'm evaluating MC again after trying it a couple years back (I'm running 15.0.122) and so far I've run into a couple snags, but the show-stopper is that all my 28,000+ tracks (all mp3) show up as being dated 6/xx/1905. Every other program I've used sees my tags correctly and as I'm pretty anal about accuracy and proper chronological sorting, I know the tags are correct. I searched a bit on the forums here, but all I found were various expressions to get around it as it appears to be a known issue--- yet some posts referred to older versions of MC.

The other issue would be more of looking for a suggestion. I want to use MC primarily for its theater view in the living room for music and videos. However, I can't seem to massage MC to get my videos to show up the way I want. My video folder is structured by tv series folders and the files in the folder are just numbered and named for the season and episode number and title like this:

Videos\Fringe\301 Olivia.mkv
Videos\Movies\Iron Man 2.mkv

The best I can get to show up is a big wall of episodes sorted by the number. Of course, there are a bunch of things that start with 10x, 20x, 30x, etc., so they all get jumbled together. It wouldn't kill me to add metadata to these files to sort them better but even then I just can't seem to get it to look anywhere near useful. Other similar programs simply read in the directory structure and display it in a pretty way which would be ideal for me as my filenames are fairly unclutterd.

Little help, MC vets and gurus?

[glynor]

For the video stuff I can help you.

You need to set the metadata in MC, but you can do it super-easily if you have a structured directory/filename system.  Simply select the files and right-click -> Library Tools -> Fill Properties from Filename.  This tool can extract into the database fields pretty much any metadata you have stored in the filenames.

For example, if your TV shows are structured like this:

M:\Video\TV\Mad Men\2\204 - Three Sundays.avi

You could use:

Directory: [Series]\Season [Season]
Filename: [Name]

Or, maybe if you have more perfect metadata stored in the filenames:

M:\Video\TV Show\Northern Exposure\Season 2\2e04 - What I Did for Love.mkv

Would translate to:

Directory: [Media Sub Type]\[Series]\Season [Season]
Filename: [Season]e[Episode] - [Name]


You do that with all of your shows selected, then it will import everything with metadata intact.  If you don't want to get so fancy, you don't need to fill as many metadata fields (just dump what you want to sort by in the [Name] field).  But for TV shows it is really nice to have at least the [Series] and the [Season] filled.

Do that.  I'll post more about setting up the Theater View to use this Metadata then.  But to start, check under Options -> Theater View.  You can add "levels" that allow you to browse through your tags, and filters to the view to limit the types of files you see to things like [Media Sub Type]=TV Show, for example.

[rick.ca]

You do that with all of your shows selected, then it will import everything with metadata intact.

And when we get our long awaited Auto Tag on Import feature, even that will happen automatically.

[snarfo67]

Thanks for all the info, glynor. I got it all sorted out by some aggressive restructuring of the Theater View settings (it's more versatile than I had thought) and I used your tagging suggestions as well. Pretty cool and it looks exactly like I want. Now if i can get all my music to not show up as if everything was from 1905 I think I might actually purchase this version of MC...

[Alex B]

I'm evaluating MC again after trying it a couple years back (I'm running 15.0.122) and so far I've run into a couple snags, but the show-stopper is that all my 28,000+ tracks (all mp3) show up as being dated 6/xx/1905. Every other program I've used sees my tags correctly and as I'm pretty anal about accuracy and proper chronological sorting, I know the tags are correct. I searched a bit on the forums here, but all I found were various expressions to get around it as it appears to be a known issue--- yet some posts referred to older versions of MC.

The old "1905" issues were mostly caused by external components or specific tagging procedures that caused a mix-up with the internally used precise date value and the displayed Date field value.

MC can store precise date values to an MP3 files (i.e. when the user decides to tag a value like 10/3/2010 instead of the plain year value. In ID3v2.3 tags a precise value is stored in a custom tag field (TXXX JR/Date) and it is in the "Microsoft" date format. If the file tag format is ID3v2.4 a precise date value is stored in a standard TDRC tag frame.

Standard MP3 tags should not cause this kind of problem unless you actually have a custom "TXXX JR/Date" ID3v2.3 tag with values like 2010, 2009, etc. For instance, 2010 would be interpreted as July 2, 1905.

Could you post a link to a sample file?

[Alex B]

I did some testing. It appears that if some other application has written a custom TXXX DATE tag frame and the stored value is in the ISO date format (e.g. 2010 or 2010-10-03) MC will interpret the first four characters as a code for the precise date value and create a date like July 2, 1905).

[snarfo67]

Thanks for the info, Alex B. I'm not sure it's practical for me to re-tag my 28,000 existing files to change the year... it shows up okay in other programs (Windows Media Center, Media Player, Helium, etc.) so i was a bit puzzled. Unfortunately I don't have a hosting site to link a sample mp3, but it seems like you know what the issue is. So solution-wise, is this something tweakable in MC15?

[glynor]

Sounds like a bug that JRiver will need to fix...

[RhinoBanga]

I've just installed MC15 and all my track are appearing as xx/06/1905 ... not good.

[Matt]

I've just installed MC15 and all my track are appearing as xx/06/1905 ... not good.

Could you send a sample MP3 to matt at jriver dot com?

Thanks.

[Alex B]

In addition to a "TXXX DATE" tag frame, MC also converts the value of a possibly existing TDRL frame (e.g. 2010 -> July 2, 1905).

The above mentioned Helium program seems to have a peculiar way to use the TDRL frame as its primary Date tag frame and also write it to an ID3v2.3 tag (which is incorrect because the TDRL frame didn't exist before the v.2.4).

However, independently of the priority order of various "date" tags when tags are read, MC should read only the proprietary TXXX JR/Date tag frame as containing the tag value in MC's internal format.

I attached two sample files in a zip package.


EDIT

snarfo67 and RhinoBanga,

Please send your samples too. The tags in your files may differ from the tags in my sample files.


Log in to the forum if you can't see the attachment.

[RhinoBanga]

Could you send a sample MP3 to matt at jriver dot com?

Thanks.

Sent.

[Matt]

Thanks for the file.

There was a problem with ID3v2 tag reader dealing with the TDRL tag.

We always use TDRC, but some other software uses TDRL.

We'll update the tagger to read either nicely. 

We're still deciding if we'll always write both, or switch to our preferred TDRC at write.

[Alex B]

ID3v1 had only one "date" frame for a four digit year number

In ID3v2.3 the same year value is commonly stored in the TYER frame. I.e. normally a tagger program writes the sandard year value to ID3v1 and to TYER in ID3v2.3.

In ID3v2.4 TYER was replaced with TDRC:

A quote from http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-changes:

Deprecated ID3v2 frames

TYER - Year
    This frame is replaced by the TDRC frame, 'Recording time'.

TDRL is a new frame that doesn't have a predecessor in the ID3v2.3 standard:

New frames
    TDRL   Release time

It might not be a good idea to write the Date library field to TYER and TDRL. Ideally TDRL should be synced with a separate, new library field. However, TDRL should be written only to ID3v2.4 tags because it is not an ID3v2.3 frame. In ID3v2.3 tags you could use "TXXX Release Time" and in other formats just "Release Time" (FLAC/OGG/APE etc)


Matt,

No one has downloaded my samples. You should also fix the "TXXX Date" issue. Maybe read it only if no other date frames exist (as an ISO date value) or ignore it completely.

[Matt]

Dates are read like this, until one is found:
TDRC
TXXX(JR/Date)
TYER
TDRL

Dates are written like this:
v2.3: TYER and TXXX(JR/Date)
v2.4: TDRC

[Alex B]

That seems fine.

I assume a TXXX DATE frame will be ignored. AFAIK, the only program that writes a TXXX DATE frame is foobar2000. It writes the Date value only to TXXX DATE when the value contains something else than just a four digit year number.

[Alex B]

There is a small potential problem with the following read order:
TXXX(JR/Date)
TYER

If TXXX JR/DATE is present in a file that has a changed TYER value MC may ignore the change. I.e. you may get a bug report about MC not reading an external year change. However, this could happen only if a precise date value has been tagged with MC before the external change.

[Matt]

If TXXX JR/DATE is present in a file that has a changed TYER value MC may ignore the change. I.e. you may get a bug report about MC not reading an external year change. However, this could happen only if a precise date value has been tagged with MC before the external change.

That's true.  The corner case is mitigated by the fact that TXXX(JR/Date) is only written if the date contains a month or day.  A year-only tag will use only TYER.