Topic: Rename, Move and Copy Files Problem (Read 7764 times)

zendoo · « **on:** June 05, 2012, 05:36:23 am »

Hi!
I am trying to change the format of my library from

[name] ([Country], [Year], [Language]).[Subtitle Language]
to
[name] [[Country], [Year], [Language]].[Subtitle Language]

for my movies

and from

[series] S[Season]E[Episode] [name] ([country], [year], [language])[subtitle language]
to
[series] S[Season]E[Episode] [name] [[country], [year], [language]].[subtitle language]

for my tv-shows

this is a huge operation, as i have tons of video files

what happens is that it does the process and then gives me the warning
"Media Center encountered errors while tagging or moving files. Make sure that the files exist, are not read only and are not used by other programs"
and a list of files that is much longer than fits on the screen.

All my files are there and are not read-only. no other program is running, only JR Media Center.

I do this and 3 or so files get renamed, 300 dont. I do it again and another 3 get renamed and 297 dont. I do it again and 3 get renamed and 294 dont... (sometimes 2, sometimes 10, ...) So its always just able to rename very few files. (On the first run it was able to rename loads of files, so now my system is all mixed up between the 2 formats!)

I run an asus 1gb mem netbook, win 7 and the files are on an external disk. I suppose it would be the same on my internal disk, but to be honest I dont want to try and mess up my movie system there too.

Any suggestions?

here are examples:

Avatar The last Airbender S02E19 The Guru & The Crossroads Of Destiny (United States, 2006, English).avi

and i use this rename command
[series] S[Season]E[episode] if(isempty([name, 0]), ,[name, 0]) [[country, 0], [year], [Language, 0]]if(isempty([subtitle language,0]), ,/.[subtitle language,0])

the same happens with this rename command
[series] S[Season]E[episode] [name] [[country, 0], [year], [Language, 0]].[subtitle language,0]

if i only rename one file it works most of the time but did fail as well already

I noticed this happening a few times since one of the versions 17 but now that I want to rename around 6000 files this is a SERIOUS problem ...

thanks!

update: i just tried it on my internal disk - 86 of 87 renamed, one failed
and i tried another run on the external disk - 500 of 609 renamed 109 failed
and if i go on with these 109 i always get 2 - 3 renamed...

and if i do undo (CTRL+Z) ALL the files get renamed back to their original without problem - neither on the external nor on the internal drive (which doesnt help me because i closed mediacenter because i thought restarting it would resolve the problem - so everything is mixed up and undo is impossible)

glynor · « **Reply #1 on:** June 05, 2012, 07:21:21 am »

I've actually seen something like this as well, though not as serious (though I haven't tried any renames as massive as this lately).

Something might be up with this system.

When I recently did a big batch rename to my external drive, I got essentially this same problem. In this case, I wasn't even trying to rename the structure of the files as much. Just going from:

M:\[Media Type]\[Media Sub Type]\[Series]\[Season]\If(IsEmpty([Season],1),,s[Season])If(IsEmpty([Episode],1),e00,e[Episode]) - [Name].extension

to

X:\[Archive Drive]\[Media Type]\[Media Sub Type]\[Series]\[Season]\If(IsEmpty([Season],1),,s[Season])If(IsEmpty([Episode],1),e00,e[Episode]) - [Name].extension

So, basically just replacing M:\ with X:\[Archive Drive] (which is a custom field in my Library), and moving them from the M drive to the X drive.

In my case, I'd get a seemingly random subset of the files that would fail. Then I'd select them, try again, and a few more (but not all) would work. It would take 4 or 5 "tries" to get them to all rename. But, if I tried enough times, eventually they'd all "go".

The files themselves certainly weren't in-use by anything else. The only thing I can think of is that it has something to do with the "cover art" or the tags changing or something. But nothing was playing or being otherwise modified by MC at the time (all previous tagging operations were done).

Scolex · « **Reply #2 on:** June 05, 2012, 07:25:25 am »

The failures may be due to a limit on file path/name length there was a change to the limit at some point during 17's development.
I am not sure which build or the new limit but you may pay attention to the length and see if that is the cause.

zendoo · « **Reply #3 on:** June 05, 2012, 02:34:06 pm »

But if the length were the problem wouldn't continue to fail when I try again? I try again and the file is renamed into the same length that it would have been renamed before when it failed.

And I noted something else - this does seemingly not happen when I import new files, get the tv show's info with image and all, and rename them in batches (I just did that with 200 files: no problem) - it happens to files that are in my library for a while, that are already in the system (maybe the deciding factor is that they already have long filepaths and -names).

So I tried renaming my "old" files to simple filenames - but same thing happens - only a few rename. So maybe it has to do with the "original" filename length more than the target filename's length...

zendoo · « **Reply #4 on:** June 05, 2012, 03:04:04 pm »

And a lot of my cover art for the video files disappeared. (I didnt check if it were the same files that failed renaming...)
So I think too that it has something to do with renaming the sidecar files.

(Also sometimes I got weird Windows errors - the file already exists [skip] [cancel]. Either does the same - the jpg disappears completely. And if I check the "do this for all files" box I still have to skip or cancel each single one)

Scolex · « **Reply #5 on:** June 05, 2012, 03:17:32 pm »

When using Rename, Move & Copy the auxiliary files such as cover art and sidecar don't get changed.
A simple file rename should not effect them though since the tag that is used to identify where the cover art is doesn't change.
This is a known issue but I am not sure of the status on a change for the behavior.
Not sure about the errors I have never had such a thing happen and I have used the tool many times for several different reasons.

glynor · « **Reply #6 on:** June 05, 2012, 05:00:21 pm »

Quote from: Scolex on June 05, 2012, 07:25:25 am

The failures may be due to a limit on file path/name length there was a change to the limit at some point during 17's development.

Yeah, that's not it.

Quote from: zendoo on June 05, 2012, 02:34:06 pm

But if the length were the problem wouldn't continue to fail when I try again? I try again and the file is renamed into the same length that it would have been renamed before when it failed.

Exactly. In the case where I encountered this recently (which was May 25-26, but I think I saw it once before as well), this is what I'd do...

1. Select a whole bunch of files to rename (most of which were in the M:\ source directory given above, but a handful of which were actually in my "new recordings" T drive). It shouldn't matter, they were all going to the same "place".

2. Do the Rename, Move, and Copy using a preset I've long-had for renaming TV Shows.

3. All but 20 of the original 200 or so would work, but the ones that failed were seemingly random (some were on the T drive originally, some were on M, and nothing was similar about them tagging or otherwise).

4. Without even closing the view I had open when I started this operation, I'd reselect the files, and do it again. I wouldn't even bother to single out the individual files that were broken, because the Rename tool is smart enough not to touch things already in the right destination. I'd just Control-A, Right-Click. And Rename again. Same exact settings.

5. Five more would "work" but 15 would still fail.

6. Repeat steps 4-5 until they all "went". Usually the last couple would only work one at a time.

There's no way that's from a file name length restriction. Besides, the "problem" with file name lengths was that MC truncates them anyway, not refuses to rename, so that's not relevant in any case.

Quote from: Scolex on June 05, 2012, 03:17:32 pm

Not sure about the errors I have never had such a thing happen and I have used the tool many times for several different reasons.

Oh, me too. This isn't a super-long-standing problem, as I've used this same workflow literally for YEARS without issue. Something seems to be broken.

I'm just totally guessing, but I think it MIGHT have something to do with the cover art and other "sidecar" files. MC does actually, I believe, try to relocate cover art files and JRSidecar.xml files (if it knows about them) when you do a Rename, Move, and Copy on files. I'm making stuff up here, but it seems like it was working fine before the more recent changes in this area were made.

I think something broke, and it only affects files randomly.

I do small Rename, Move, and Copy operations on files at work regularly (twice today), as it is part of an established work-flow I have at the office. But that's always 1-5 files at a time, and I haven't seen any issues. But in this case, I was trying to move a bunch. Maybe it was 80, maybe 200? I didn't write it down. I queued up a whole bunch of TV shows I wanted to move off of my main M drive using a playlist, then opened the playlist, and then renamed them all in one shot. I do this 2-3 times a year. Every previous time it worked fine, but this last time it acted all weird.

glynor · « **Reply #7 on:** June 05, 2012, 05:05:12 pm »

BTW: I never posted about it because when I did this my machine was literally brand-spanking new, and I wasn't sure it wasn't something weird with my filesystem from when the machine was dying.

But, now that someone else is seeing the same thing...

(And, the machine has been fine since and the disk has been checked multiple times.) I do need to do more testing to confirm, but I don't have any more big batches of files to move.

I might make a contrived test up to try it out, but I need more time.

Z0001 · « **Reply #8 on:** June 05, 2012, 05:19:29 pm »

I am getting a similar issue and the same error message using an expression to move and re-file my video. The file does not move, but MC has as its location the intended location I used. I am moving iso files onto a network after converting to mkv. I notice this with larger blu ray rips more than smaller DVD iso files.

Scolex · « **Reply #9 on:** June 05, 2012, 05:21:26 pm »

I will be testing this soon, I just bought someones DVD collection and once I am done ripping and encoding them I will be transferring them from my ripping/encoding machine to the server. It will be a few days though since I still have ~60 to go.

I wonder if the "break" occurred with the recent changes to Rename, Copy & Move and Find & Replace.
Is that about the right time frame if you recall.

glynor · « **Reply #10 on:** June 05, 2012, 05:47:38 pm »

Quote from: Scolex on June 05, 2012, 05:21:26 pm

I wonder if the "break" occurred with the recent changes to Rename, Copy & Move and Find & Replace.
Is that about the right time frame if you recall.

Yep. Exactly what I'm thinking.

darichman · « **Reply #11 on:** June 06, 2012, 07:52:20 am »

Any chance this is related to this or this?

zendoo · « **Reply #12 on:** June 08, 2012, 12:15:39 pm »

Sounds very similar, but the error message is a different one. I have just tried another batch of the movies I will rename as soon as I know this works and suddenly all worked fine. It was about 90 files. The next batch of 114 files gave me 1 Error. But as I said its a different error. It does the renaming and after a few seconds, MC realizes it cant rename all the files and gives the error message.

http://www.pix01.com/gallery/26248DAC-074E-4DBF-BF4D-E9F3B4F96C37/rename_error/640587991_orig0.jpg

Again: Before this occured with many more files and I would get a list that would not fit the error message window. And this occured when moving from one disk to another, it occured when not moving out of the directory, it occured with UNICODE characters and without - seemingly randomly.

Usually MC would realize it couldnt rename the file and point back to the old filename - so the file would not appear missing in the library. But this time it did point to the new filename and the file showed up missing - with the nice little explosion star.

glynor · « **Reply #13 on:** June 08, 2012, 12:27:53 pm »

Quote from: zendoo on June 08, 2012, 12:15:39 pm

Usually MC would realize it couldnt rename the file and point back to the old filename - so the file would not appear missing in the library. But this time it did point to the new filename and the file showed up missing - with the nice little explosion star.

Yep. I had this result either way. I'd say it was about 90% MC did the "right" thing (didn't update the Library), and 10% it did the "wrong" thing (broke the link to the file in the Library), but I'm making up the percentages.

zendoo · « **Reply #14 on:** June 08, 2012, 12:28:33 pm »

Quote from: Scolex on June 05, 2012, 03:17:32 pm

When using Rename, Move & Copy the auxiliary files such as cover art and sidecar don't get changed.
A simple file rename should not effect them though since the tag that is used to identify where the cover art is doesn't change.
This is a known issue but I am not sure of the status on a change for the behavior.

In my MC (newest version) this is not true. It does rename the cover image jpg along with the movie (and subtitle files as long as they have the EXACT same name before the extension - which makes a LOOOT of sense and is very cool.

I just did a batch with 623 "data" files (the subtitle files of the 200 or so movies I just renamed - I have moviename.en.srt - so MC doesnt recognize it as "belonging" to the movie file and doesnt rename it along with the movie file - what a pity btw! I posted about this but I dont know if it is being considered) and it worked without a problem. I kind of suspect it happens with bigger files more than with smaller files.

zendoo · « **Reply #15 on:** June 09, 2012, 03:01:53 am »

OK, another little update: It does happen to files that don't have a cover image file or any cover.

And something completely weird happened right now: I renamed 250 movies and some of them my [language] field got CHANGED! These files gave me the windows warning that there are 2 files and I could SKIP or CANCEL (as mentioned above)

Quote from: zendoo on June 05, 2012, 03:04:04 pm

(Also sometimes I got weird Windows errors - the file already exists [skip] [cancel]. Either does the same - the jpg disappears completely. And if I check the "do this for all files" box I still have to skip or cancel each single one)

now what happened is that the language file for the movie file was changed and the movie renamed to "name [country, year, newlanguage].ext" (yes - the language field in the library changed from english to german on its own during the rename process) but the image file on the disk stayed with the old language "name [country, year, language].ext". The library pointed to the newlanguage image file and so it couldnt find the file.

And then something even weirder happened. I did a fill properties from filename to make sure my language fields were correct and would match with the filenames but I used the new "format" on the old format files. Still what happened shouldnt happen.
I used this fill properties line
[Name] [[country], [year], [Language]].[subtitle language]
and got this result

http://www.pix01.com/gallery/26248DAC-074E-4DBF-BF4D-E9F3B4F96C37/fill_properties_error/781348318_orig0.jpg

I posted something similar there before already
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=71244.msg480890#msg480890

I think the changing of the language field in the renaming process could be connected somehow to the error that occured in the fill properties command.

I assume the whole problem might be caused by a memory glitch. Maybe MC doesnt use the memory right and some "residue" values get mixed up when renaming.
Right now I am running an encode and I was rotating a lot of images in the background so my little asus eeepc with 2gb of memory was running on full power. I guess that might have something to do with it!

I wonder about the surprises I will still get about my renaming processes I did before - how many of my language fields are messed up now?... Anywayz... would be nice to see that this is seriously looked into as the renaming function is one of MC main features, the way I see it.

glynor · « **Reply #16 on:** June 09, 2012, 11:37:21 am »

Quote from: zendoo on June 09, 2012, 03:01:53 am

And something completely weird happened right now: I renamed 250 movies and some of them my [language] field got CHANGED! These files gave me the windows warning that there are 2 files and I could SKIP or CANCEL (as mentioned above)

I've seen this Windows file overwrite dialog too (though I don't really make use of the Language field, for anything other than what is auto-filled from metadata lookup). I never know how to answer it. The files certainly should not have existed in the destination ahead of time.

Something is certainly not working quite right in the Rename, Move, and Copy tool.

glynor · « **Reply #17 on:** June 09, 2012, 11:48:57 am »

PS. My system has 16GB of RAM so I doubt seriously that it is hitting any kind of RAM limit because you're running on 2GB.

glynor · « **Reply #18 on:** June 10, 2012, 12:30:11 am »

Okay, I was able to reproduce it a number of times today with a big move of video files just as I described above. I was moving files from the M: drive to a very similar folder structure on X:.

I captured logs including the problems. The logs are fairly long, as I was running MC for a while before I started working on it, but the first log shows moving 180 or so files over. Of these, all worked right except 11 or 12. That's where the first log was captured, just after getting the tagging error dialog.

Then, later tonight, I worked on getting those few problem files to move. This is captured by the rest of the logs. It took a LOT of tries, many repeated attempts on the same files over and over and then eventually it would work and move the file. Moving one at a time seemed to be more successful than moving the whole batch.

Now, what the logs DON'T show is that I was checking the files on disk myself in Windows Explorer in the meantime.
They were not read only, were owned by me, and had proper permissions (as did their parent folders). Everything "looked" fine. I was even able to move the two I tested within Windows Explorer without issue. I'd move them, move them back, and then try again in MC and it would still fail (or at least, only succeed randomly).

Logs:
http://glynor.com/files/jriver/logs/JRiver%20Log%202012-06-09%2013-25-49.zip
http://glynor.com/files/jriver/logs/JRiver%20Log%202012-06-10%2001-17-17.zip
http://glynor.com/files/jriver/logs/JRiver%20Log%202012-06-10%2001-18-57.zip

I'm now almost certain that the problem has something to do with MC moving the cover art files. Watching the process happen in MC as it was throwing the errors, I could see a pattern. MC was "rebuilding" (or refreshing might be a better term) the thumbnails each time I did the Rename, Move, and Copy. You'd see them all switch briefly to the generic video icon, and then back to the proper cover art a split second later.

I suspect that what is happening is this:

I issue the Rename, Move, and Copy command. MC tries to move the video file and its associated cover art. However, the cover art moves "fast" and the file itself moves slow (when you are moving to a separate disk). So, before MC finishes moving the file itself, or maybe before it even gets to start to try, the cover art moves, and then MC updates the tag to point at the new location. This tagging update locks the very file it is trying to move for writing (at least as far as MC is concerned) and so it fails with a Read-Only error.

glynor · « **Reply #19 on:** June 11, 2012, 11:12:45 am »

Post-weekend bump.

Matt, can you take a look at the log files?

JohnT · « **Reply #20 on:** June 11, 2012, 02:47:12 pm »

Looking into it.

Z0001 · « **Reply #21 on:** June 13, 2012, 06:04:01 am »

i have been using the Tag window for using a MC expression to rename and move files on a file by file basis, this is my expression:

=Z:\Media Files\[Media Type]\[File Type]\[Media Sub Type]if(isempty([Artist]),,\[Artist])\[Series]if(isempty([Season]),,if(isequal([Season],Special),\Special,\Season [Season]))if(isempty([Disc #]),,\Disc [Disc #] of [Disc T#])if(isequal([Feature-Extra],Extras),\[Feature-Extra],)if(isempty([Episode]),,\Episode [Episode])\[Name].iso

when I use this to refile a movie, so no [Artist], no [Season], not multiple Discs so [Disc #] and [Disc T#] are unpopulated it generally works ok but is a bit temperamental (there are some issues with the re-name completing as the OP refers to).

But when I use the Library tool Rename, Move, & Copy Files, instead of the correct folders being created the dialogue creates an "Unknown Artist" folder, a "Season Unknown Season" folder and a "Disc Unknown Disc # of Unknown Disc T#" - see attached screen shot.

Any bright ideas?!

Thanks
Z

zendoo · « **Reply #22 on:** June 13, 2012, 10:21:40 pm »

Quote from: JohnT on June 11, 2012, 02:47:12 pm

Looking into it.

THANKS A LOT !

Little update:
I just did another try - I downgraded to 17.0068 and used the find and replace command on the filename field. This let me "rename" 6000+ files with just 4 not working! Way better rate than with the newer versions rename tool!

Now my library is in the new format, I am all happy, long nights and weird posts have ended and I wish you all the best for resolving!

take care

glynor · « **Reply #23 on:** June 14, 2012, 12:06:23 am »

Quote from: zendoo on June 13, 2012, 10:21:40 pm

THANKS A LOT !

Agreed.

Let me know if you need additional logs or details. I'm happy to provide anything I can. It is relatively easy to reproduce the problem.

JohnT · « **Reply #24 on:** June 21, 2012, 09:22:47 am »

The latest dev. build has a fix for the problem of moving/renaming video files which share the same cover art in the same folder as the video files. When you see this in the history, please test it and let us know. Thanks!

glynor · « **Reply #25 on:** June 21, 2012, 09:44:32 am »

Quote from: JohnT on June 21, 2012, 09:22:47 am

The latest dev. build has a fix for the problem of moving/renaming video files which share the same cover art in the same folder as the video files. When you see this in the history, please test it and let us know. Thanks!

HUZZAH!

Z0001 · « **Reply #26 on:** October 13, 2012, 09:10:35 am »

Quote from: Z0001 on June 13, 2012, 06:04:01 am

i have been using the Tag window for using a MC expression to rename and move files on a file by file basis, this is my expression:

=Z:\Media Files\[Media Type]\[File Type]\[Media Sub Type]if(isempty([Artist]),,\[Artist])\[Series]if(isempty([Season]),,if(isequal([Season],Special),\Special,\Season [Season]))if(isempty([Disc #]),,\Disc [Disc #] of [Disc T#])if(isequal([Feature-Extra],Extras),\[Feature-Extra],)if(isempty([Episode]),,\Episode [Episode])\[Name].iso

when I use this to refile a movie, so no [Artist], no [Season], not multiple Discs so [Disc #] and [Disc T#] are unpopulated it generally works ok but is a bit temperamental (there are some issues with the re-name completing as the OP refers to).

But when I use the Library tool Rename, Move, & Copy Files, instead of the correct folders being created the dialogue creates an "Unknown Artist" folder, a "Season Unknown Season" folder and a "Disc Unknown Disc # of Unknown Disc T#" - see attached screen shot.

Any bright ideas?!

Thanks
Z

This problem with the Rename, Move & Copy Files dialogue still exists with the latest version, which means bulk refilling based on my tags is not possible. Are there any ideas for a solution?

Thanks

bnick · « **Reply #27 on:** October 19, 2012, 07:30:22 pm »

this is kind of the same issue, but not really.
My computer crashed, but the data drive was ok.
when the computer guy re-setup the OS, he put the CD in the D: spot where my data drive used to be. now the data is in E:

When I restored my library, the paths are all no good.

What is the easiest way to fix this?

Thanks ? ?

JimH · « **Reply #28 on:** October 20, 2012, 07:46:40 am »

On our wiki, there is a topic called Moving Files. You can use MC's tools to rename D: to E:.

marko · « **Reply #29 on:** October 20, 2012, 09:40:56 am »

Quote from: bnick on October 19, 2012, 07:30:22 pm

this is kind of the same issue, but not really.
My computer crashed, but the data drive was ok.
when the computer guy re-setup the OS, he put the CD in the D: spot where my data drive used to be. now the data is in E:

When I restored my library, the paths are all no good.

What is the easiest way to fix this?

Thanks ? ?

See here ---> http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=74060.msg502512#msg502512
Find D:, replace with E:

-marko

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Author Topic: Rename, Move and Copy Files Problem (Read 7764 times)