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Author Topic: Problem With Importing Audio Files  (Read 1764 times)

rgordonpf

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Problem With Importing Audio Files
« on: April 21, 2013, 04:18:50 pm »

Hello,

I am a newbie with respect to MC 18.  I am switching over from Pure Music and iTunes on a Mac.  My external music library contains 1,556 albums and 17,298 music files and is now on the hard drive of the PC laptop on which I am running MC 18.  Each CD has its separate subfolder and the art work is stored in a JPEG file in that CD's folder.  When I was using iTunes the music library was kept on a PC based NAS that converted the file format on the fly for my Mac computer.  The files copied from the NAS hard drive to my PC laptop without any errors.  I am using MC 18.0.158.

I have three problems/question:
1.  When I import the music files into a new library I get an error message that says xx,xxx files were placed in the library and yyy files were not readable and not placed in the library.  I have discovered that if I reimport the entire external music library again MC 18 will import more files.  As an example, on the latest library that I created 408 files were not added on the first import.  On the second import the non-imported files dropped to 205, though the increase in the number of files in the MC 18 library went up by less than the 408 - 205 = 203 difference.  After the third import the non-imported files dropped to 86 with the increase in the files in the library again less than the change in the number of files not imported.  After the fourth import the non-readable files dropped to 25.  Fifth import unreadable files not imported dropped to 16.  Sixth import the unreadable files dropped to 3.  A further three imports did not reduce the number of the unreadable files below three.  I looked at the import diagnostics.  The diagnostics listed three files 1n three different albums and their location in the external music library.  For these three albums I went into the MC 18 Album view, clicked on the album and then clicked on file.  Inspection of the files showed that one file was missing from one album, two files were missing from the second album, and 16 files were missing from the third album.  I deleted those three albums from MC 18 and the external music library, reripped the three CDs into the external music library, and imported the three separate folders containing the reripped files into the MC 18 library one folder at a time.  MC 18 now reports 17,223 files which is less than the 17,298 files that iTunes had reported. 
Question:  Is there any way to do a match of the files that are in the MC 18 library versus the files that are in the external music library.  I really don't want to call up each album in the MC 18 library and compare the files shown by MC 18 to the files listed on original CD booklet.  That would be a time consuming task that I would like to avoid if possible.
Question:  Why are some of the files in the external music library "unreadable" to MC 18.  Those unreadable files play just fine on two different music players that I have on my laptop.

Having gotten the 17,223 files into the MC 18 library as mentioned in 1. above I then started to look for individual albums that I knew had to have the album genre changed.  I could not find about 80% of the albums in any view.  Even in the file list view the albums were not showing up.  I had an identical problem with a previous library that I had created.  I did a lot of experimentation with that library but could not find a way to have MC 18 display all of the albums in that MC 18 library.  I deleted that library and created a new one by again importing the entire external library.  This new library showed all of the albums, but it was missing several hundred files. 
Question:  I am obviously doing something wrong if the new libraries that I create either can not show all of the albums or do not contain all of the files.  What am I doing wrong and what should I be doing instead?

Sorry to be so long winded.  Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.
     
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whatsup

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2013, 04:37:57 pm »

Sorry i'm not going to be able to help you, but I know someone is going to ask u to tell them what type of files they are mp3, flac , ect....one thing I would check is the check box to ignore files previously deleted from MC. I have been running MC for just a little over a month now and I imported over 1million tracks with out a issue. so it's just a snag somewhere for u...good luck!
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rgordonpf

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2013, 06:23:17 pm »

Thank you for your response.  The files are ALAC.  The computer is a Toshiba laptop, 6GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit with latest updates.  I have tried importing with and without the "ignore files previously deleted from MC" box checked.  It did not seem to make a difference.

I know I am doing something wrong but I can't figure out what.
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rgordonpf

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2013, 08:25:57 pm »

Hello,

I have continued experimenting by creating new versions of the MC 18 library.  In comparing different library versions via restoring backup versions I have noticed that files that are missing in some MC 18 library version are present in other library versions.  This means that when importing MC 18 is reading the files sometimes and but finding the files "unreadable" at other times.  This at least confirms my suspicion that all of the files in the external music library are readable.

The other thing that has been happening occurs with the window that appears in the middle of the screen after importing files.  In the lower left corner of this Summary Report screen is a button which if you press will open another screen with additional details of the files not put into the MC 18 library.  If I press that additional info button MC 18 will crash about 75% of the time.  I have had it crash with as few as 15 non-readable files and not crash with 212 non-readable files.

I hope this information is helpful.

It is getting late.  For tomorrow I will try installing MC 18 on another computer and see if the problems persist. 

 
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rgordonpf

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2013, 08:08:30 am »

Hello Again,

It is another day.  I copied the music library from my NAS onto a Dell desktop running Windows 7 64-bit with the latest updates.  So far I have imported the external music library into MC 18 seventeen times.  All of the imports have crashed.  In each case MC 18 imported files, though MC 18 reported a different number of files imported at different times:  17,2xx, 18,502, and 15,206.  In each case the crash came when MC 18 was trying to close files after all of the importing and/or additional tasks had been performed.  I tried to eliminate the "updating library to match external changes" task so that only the importing task was being performed.  I was unable to prevent this task from executing with any combination of resetting or not resetting the library to default when deleting a library combined with checking or unchecking the "match library to external changes" under Tasks in the Import Auto-Control setup and also with checking or unchecking the reset library to default on the screen that appears after you restart MC 18 from a crash.

I am beginning to think that MC 18 does not like my external music library.  Do you think converting the ALAC files to FLAC would make any difference?

Any suggestions gladly accepted.


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6233638

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2013, 08:34:53 am »

It definitely seems like there is something causing problems - it may turn out to be a handful of problematic files that were somehow corrupted on the NAS or did not transfer over properly.

17,000 files is a lot. I don't know how you have them organized, but it would probably best to not import all of them at once - at least then if it's a specific file or files that's causing Media Center to crash, it should be easier to narrow it down.

If it crashes consistently, it would probably be useful to save a log file and upload it. This can be done via Help > Logging.
If there are some files that will not play, or do not get imported, but seem to work fine in other players, it would also be useful to upload samples of them for the JRiver team to look at.

While I'm not approaching 17,000 files yet, the majority of my library is ALAC and I have not had any issues with Media Center crashing when importing files, or skipping over them, for what it's worth.
Were your files always ALAC, or were they converted in another program?
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JimH

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2013, 09:18:52 am »

What version are you using?  18.0.171 is at the top of the MC18 board.
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rgordonpf

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2013, 10:41:02 am »

Hello,

Thank you for your responses.

To answer your questions:
1.  The ALAC files were originally ripped into ALAC on my Toshiba laptop using dbPowerAmp.  The ripped files were copied from the laptop to the NAS and imported into iTunes which put the files into the following folder structure:  C:\Music\Artist\Name of CD\tracks.  The files work fine in iTunes.  When I decided to switch to JRiver I ran one of Andy's scripts on iTunes that took the artwork out of the separate iTunes database and placed a copy of the art work into a folder.jpg file in each folder.  I then disconnected the USB drive from the NAS, plugged it into my laptop and copied the files over.

2.  I know that 18.0.171 is available.  However, 18.0.158 is stated as the most stable.  The fixes in 18.0.171 did not seem to be the kind that would have an impact on my problem.  If 18.0.171 is now stable I will be happy to upgrade.

The last few hours I have been experimenting on my laptop with importing just small numbers of files such as just one CD or 4 or 5 CDs from the same artist.  The number of unreadable files may be less, but I am still getting unreadable files.  One very frustrating problem that I have noted is that as I keep reimporting the same folders the number of unreadable files fluctuates.  Sometimes only a few files are readable and occasionally all of the files are readable.  I have also tried importing CDs that I just ripped to ALAC and keep in new folders separate from the external music library.  These files (127 files on 8 CDs) import just fine again and again.  My hunch is that there is something non-standard about some of the ALAC files in the external music library.

I have already invested about 30 hours in trying to solve this problem.  I think enough is enough.  I will just rerip the CDs again. AAArrggghh!!

Should I rerip to FLAC this time?  Not much sense in ripping to ALAC if I my brief sojourn to the Mac side is over.  Oh well, on the bright side I do know a lot more now about how to organize my library and how to tag the files.

You guys helped me crystallize my thoughts.  Thank you.       
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JimH

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Re: Problem With Importing Audio Files
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2013, 10:58:49 am »

2.  I know that 18.0.171 is available.  However, 18.0.158 is stated as the most stable.  The fixes in 18.0.171 did not seem to be the kind that would have an impact on my problem.  If 18.0.171 is now stable I will be happy to upgrade.
Please try it.
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