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[Louis]

Sometimes in sorting through my library it is helpful to know the date when media was imported into Media Center, so in a view I added a column for Date Imported, but to my surprise the vast majority of tracks don't have a date, just "Not Imported", which I gather is a bit of a misnomer since clearly they are in the Library... so what does this mean?  Is this a Library statistic that has been lost, and if so, how best to guard against such loss of libarary data in the future.

Maybe not unrelated, twice I have experienced mysterious data loss on the Number of plays statistic. Is there any way of monitoring the libary integrity for such data loss?
It is hard to know how far back to go for a backup that is complete, and of course the longer it takes to discover this loss of data, the more changes made since are then lost.

[Alex B]

The "Date Imported" values are not supposed disappear in any circumstances. Something must have corrupted your library, assuming the files are "imported" (it is possible to browse unimported files in "Drive and Devices").

Do you have a library backup file that still contains the field values? You could try if restoring an old library and running Auto-Import to update it would be an acceptable "fix" for you. (Create a new backup file of the current library before trying the old backup files.)

My oldest "Date Imported" values are from the year 2003. Each file in my main library has the correct value. I lost my oldest statistics, from 2002 to 2003, because back then I once created a new library from scratch, but since then the date values have survived.

In the attached screenshot you can see some of my oldest statistics. (In case you wonder, the timestamps are in the ISO format. I always set my PCs to use it.)


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

[Louis]

Thank you for your response Alex.
No, they are not unimported files that I'm browsing, despite the "not imported" state the Library reports, they are most certainly imported in the Library.
Since the last imported date is 2010-06-09 it may be around the time I upgraded to MC15. When I have retrieved and tried restoring older Library backups I'll know for sure. Unfortunately that's a long way back so the pain of losing so much work in between maybe greater than is bearable for the sake of an import date, as important to me as that is.
I notice the Library contains a number of files... is it possible to merge "field (date imported).jmd" with the current Library to fix this particular corruption?
Most important for the future is to detect such corruption when it next happens as soon as possible, is there some way of monitoring the library for integrity? At the moment I can only think of creating a view that contains some of the more important fields to check occasionally that they are all still there and intact.

[Louis]

I have now determined that the Date Imported field corruption preceded the upgrade to MC15. Restoring the Library back to  2010-06-09 is more pain than I wish to bear, so the question I have is:
- How can I reset the "not imported" value of this field to something else, such as todays date, or preferaby copy across the Date Created or Date Modified value to the Date Imported field?

I note that the Library Tool Move/Copy... doesn't provide for this.

[Alex B]

If you have MS Excel, MPL export/import and justsomeguy's Excel file might help: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=61935

[Alex B]

... and this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=40963

[Louis]

Alex the links you provided were so helpful and justsomeguy's Excel program "Track Year Lookup" http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=61935 was incredibly helpful.

I've now successfully populated the corrupted Date Imported library field with the same date as Date Created for all but some 500 tracks that have unicode characters in the filename (eg the accent in Ali Farka Touré). These characters are not exported from MC15 using the text delimited file option, and the exported MPL version that has the unicode characters won't import into the TrackYearLookup spreadsheet (an error causes it to go into debug mode).

I found a workaround by exporting in M3U8 format and pasting the filename column into the spreadsheet, but alas the unicode characters are lost on export from Excel to the MPL format. So I don't know if there is any solution to this unicode problem I've run into.

Anyway, thanks so much for your help.

[Alex B]

I just realized that there is an even easier way to copy the field values:

- Create a smartlist or standard playlist that contains the files. Make the list view to show at least the [Date Created] column, but not the [Date Imported] column.
- Export the playlist in MPL format. Select the option to include only the visible fields.
- Edit the MPL file with a text editor: replace <Field Name="Date Created"> with "<Field Name="Date Imported"> .
- Import it back to MC (use File > Import Playlist...). It will update the Date Imported values.

Unicode should not be a problem with this method.

[Louis]

- Export the playlist in MPL format. Select the option to include only the visible fields.

I can see how that would work but the "Only visable fields" option does not appear to be available when selecting export MPL format playlist.

[Alex B]

You are correct. I forgot that an exported MPL file always includes all fields. When an MPL file is imported only the changed fields are needed for updating library data. If I recall correctly, only the Filename field is mandatory (and must contain the correct, unaltered filename).

A workaround is to replace the original "Date Imported" headers with something that MC does not use.

e.g.

1.  replace <Field Name="Date Imported"> with "<Field Name="Dummy">
2.  replace <Field Name="Date Created"> with "<Field Name="Date Imported">

If you want to preserve the old values in a backup field you can actually create a field named "Dummy" before importing the MPL file.

[Louis]

Brilliant! That fixed it and all is good now.
Thanks heaps Alex, your effort is much appreciated.