Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jmone]

I use Synctoy to keep a backup on my WHS from my media share.  It works well but if I make a change in the MC database, in many cases the "Last Updated" value on the file is changed and sync toy then wants to recopy these files.  We discussed Video Tagging specifically awhile ago and Matt gave a couple of solid reasons for using Sidecar files over trying to write tags in the file themselves (eg some don't support tag editing without a complete rewrite and some don't support custom tags at all). anyway.......

Given MC uses Sidecar Files, why is the "Last Updated" value on the video files being changed?

Thanks
Nathan

[rjm]

I find MC writes tags to very few video types. The type I see change most often is wmv. I never see changes to the more common video types avi, mp4, mkv, mov, or vob.

What files types are changing for you?

[jmone]

I just did a test by selecting a sample of the following file types and did an "update tags" from library and found the following:

Files types that were "updated": avi, bdmv, jtv, m2t, m2ts, mkv, mpg, ts, mts, wmv

Files types that were not "updated": ifo

[Alex B]

MC is not designed to write physical tags to video files (except to WMV, if WMV tagging still works...).

I tried a couple of AVI files and I was able to reproduce the problem. I created the "before" and "after" MD5 checksums. The checksums didn't change. In addition the archive bit file attribute was not set (which should have been done if the file was really modified). Only the Date Modified value was updated.

This is a quite nasty bug. If a backup program is set to update the changed files the bug may cause lots of unnecessary updating and of course the original date stamps will be lost.  

For now, as a workaround, you may want to add the "Update Tags When File Info Changes" button to the toolbar and disable tag writing before tagging video files. The button is quickly accessible and it has a visible status indicator.

[rjm]

XP with 17.0.41

I did a couple quick tests on an avi and was unable to reproduce Alex's results:
1) changed field normally saved in tags - no change to modified date
2) update tags from library - no change to modified date

If this bug exists it would be really bad.

[Alex B]

To reproduce the bug you must have sidecar creation enabled.

Options > General > Importing & Tagging > Store tags in external sidecar files if the file type does not support tagging: Video

[rjm]

That explains it. I do not use sidecars.

[jmone]

Thanks Gents for checking.  Sovles my problem why the backups would contain TB of Video already backed up.

[Alex B]

I wonder if the behavior is intentional. I recall that we had some reports of MC not automatically detecting a changed sidecar file (e.g. by another MC instance) and updating the library data accordingly.

AFAIK, the sidecar files do not exist as separate entities in the database and thus directly monitoring the sidecar files' dates is not possible.

An easy way to fix the problem could have been to adjust the video files' dates as well. Of course that is not a good solution for anyone who maintains hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes of video backup data. A better solution would be to add one or more sidecar related tags to the video fields (e.g. sidecar exists, sidecar date modified, etc) and use these fields when monitoring the sidecar files.

[rjm]

In addition, I consider date modified to be a useful piece of personal data that I do not want changed unless I take some action to change it.

[jmone]

Also I never noticed this issue previously so at somepoint it must have changed (I thought it may be that I am now using Drive Bender to create a pool of my drives on both Win 7 and WHS)

[rick.ca]

Also I never noticed this issue previously so at somepoint it must have changed

I'm sure that's so. I had sidecars enabled, thinking I needed that for Sick Beard to work (and maybe I do, but the data is replaced by that from PvdImport anyway). At some point I disabled sidecars, and it appears now none of files have been affected. I see the option is also off in MC16—which I haven't been using since upgrading—so maybe that was some time ago...

I agree this is a nasty bug. It would certainly mess up my backup system. I also change my movie files creation date to the release date of the movie, and rely on the modified date to indicate the date acquired. That's not so critical now that I rely more on MC than the file system for such information. But I'd still be upset if that were messed-up.

[JustinChase]

I've also seen this with Synctoy, so I'm hopeful for a "fix" too.

Also, I didn't realize I didn't NEED sidecar files for video.  I thought they were necessary for proper tagging of videos.  I hate having all the .xml files all over the place.  I'm happy to hear they are not necessary.

Is there any benefit to having them if I only use MC for all my videos?  I'm hopeful I can delete them all when I get home with no real side effects

[Matt]

This is a mostly unintended consequence of this change:

17.0.4 (9/16/2011)
Changed: After tagging Media Center explicitly sets the last modified time of the tagged file instead of assuming the file system will do it automatically (because network file systems are sometimes slow to update automatically).

It was in response to this issue:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=66413.0

We're thinking about how to handle it better.

[Matt]

Next build:
Changed: Tagging a video file where the tag only modifies the sidecar will no longer update the last modified time of the video file.