Topic: User defined field problem (Read 4677 times)

jeffspl311 · « **on:** August 18, 2013, 02:28:10 pm »

I created a user defined field named "Album ID" which I have been using successfully for months. Then today I opened up Media Center and this field has become Read Only, seemingly all by itself!! None of my other user defined fields are affected. Only this one. Does anyone have any ideas how this happened and how to undo it?

Thanks
Jeff

marko · « **Reply #1 on:** August 18, 2013, 02:34:30 pm »

If you go to the field manager, the place where you created the field, and select "Album ID" in the list on the left, what does it say in the "Edit Type" field on the right?

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #2 on:** August 18, 2013, 03:27:15 pm »

Thanks for the quick response Marko. Well, here's the thing... "Album ID" no longer appears in that list! But obviously the read only data still appears in the tags pane.

marko · « **Reply #3 on:** August 19, 2013, 02:51:28 am »

Something doesn't sound right. I've never lost a library field in over ten years of using MC.

What kind of field was it? A standard data field, or a calculated expression type field?

I've had weird stuff happen in the tag window when I've set a tag in there using the "Also Show.." list, then later deleted the field from my library, but that's another story. The last chapter of which went along the lines of, "in order to remove said tag from the tag window, I had to recreate the field, remove it from the tag window, then delete it one last time.

I would suggest a library backup first, then try recreating your [Album ID] field as you had it before and see if that brings it back to life along with the data you had entered.
If that works... Woohoo!
If not, I think you could be looking through your existing library backups to see how far back you have to go to get your field back.

-marko

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #4 on:** August 19, 2013, 09:19:18 am »

Yes, it's very bizarre. I tried to recreate the field before I posted here. The result was that the list of fields to "also show" had one instance "Album ID" which was unchecked. when I checked it, it I ended up with 2 "Album ID"s in the tag window... one was read only with data in it, and one was editable with no data in it.

JimH · « **Reply #5 on:** August 19, 2013, 09:37:02 am »

Search for the jmd filetype. Find the location. Take a look at the files there.

My location is:
C:\Users\JimH\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 18\Library

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #6 on:** August 19, 2013, 10:45:44 am »

Hi Jim,
Well this is strange... Of the 12 User Fields that appear in the Manage Library Fields dialog, only some of them appear as .jmd files. Here's the list (some of these I think MC adds out of the box):

Album Genre - jmd (I added this a long time ago)
Album ID - no jmd (this is the one I tried to recreate one-for-one for the (now) read only field)
Bios - no jmd
Filename Only - no jmd
Mood - no jmd
New Album ID - no jmd (this is the one I created to move the read only version into, which is working)
Preference - jmd
Provider - jmd (I added this a long time ago)
Rerun - no jmd
Situation - jmd
Tempo - jmd
Tempo Change - jmd (I added this a long time ago)

Now what?

Thanks for the help!

Cheers,
Jeff

JimH · « **Reply #7 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:00:39 am »

Maybe your Explorer is set not to show file extensions. Or something lost the extensions.

Here's how mine look.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #8 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:08:13 am »

Oh, here is something else very strange... I can see the original (now) read only "Album ID" as a column in my view, and on the list of fields that I can choose from. I can also see the new "Album ID" that I created to try to fix the read only one.

This is in contrast to the tagging pane, though, where I can see the original (now) read only "Album ID", but it does NOT appear in the list of fields that I can choose from to Also Show.

OK, and here is something which may or may not be related... In the tagging pane when I choose Show Tags in Current View, a read only field appears called "Artist ID" which does NOT appear in my current view, and doesn't appear in my list of Also Show. Heck, it doesn't show up in the Manage Library Fields dialog either. It's a phantom!

I'm getting a really sinking feeling here...

JimH · « **Reply #9 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:10:32 am »

Why don't you try restoring a backup. MC makes them automatically.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #10 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:11:43 am »

Hi Jim,
Sorry, Maybe I wasn't clear. I can see the .jmd files. My list was indicating which of the User Fields DO or DO NOT have corresponding .jmd files in the directory.

Cheers,
Jeff

JimH · « **Reply #11 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:16:37 am »

Make sure you're looking at the correct location. Search for all jmd files.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #12 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:17:43 am »

Hi Jim,

I really want to avoid a restore because I've been investing tons of hours in housekeeping over the last week, and I've continued using the "New Album ID" which I created, as well as having renamed/moved thousands of tracks each day. So I fear that recovering from the restore may be worse than living with the read only field that I can't get rid of. I just also fear that there is some creeping evil that will strike again and turn other fields into zombies.

Cheers,
Jeff

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #13 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:31:11 am »

OK, I just did a search on my C drive for "type:=.jmd" and found 359 files, but not a single one is for "field (album id)"!

JimH · « **Reply #14 on:** August 19, 2013, 11:45:52 am »

Sort by dates.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #15 on:** August 19, 2013, 12:14:46 pm »

OK, I did something better, I searched for "type:=.jmd id" and found 4 hits. My visual scan of the list, sorted by name, failed because the Album ID fields are prefixed by "store field_" Here are the 4 jmd files:

C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 17\Karaoke\field (new album id).jmd - (39 KB)
C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 17\Karaoke\field (store field_ album id).jmd - (41 KB)
C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 17\Stores\Performer Media Center\Library\field (store field_ artist id).jmd - (9,691 KB)
C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 17\Stores\Performer Media Center\Library\field (store field_ album id).jmd - (11,407 KB)

Thanks for walking me through this. What's next?

Cheers,
Jeff

JimH · « **Reply #16 on:** August 19, 2013, 12:19:52 pm »

I can't help with the solution, but you could look at the dates to see which ones are in use.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #17 on:** August 19, 2013, 12:33:20 pm »

Doh! You're a big tease, Jim!

I was really hoping for something like "copy this file to that directory, rename it by removing the "store field_" portion, delete that file, remove these fields from the Field Manager, go to the registry editor and change xyz, etc. etc."

Does anyone know why most .jmd files are in one place and a few others elsewhere? And what's the deal with "store field_" jmd files?

Cheers,
Jeff

JimH · « **Reply #18 on:** August 19, 2013, 12:37:25 pm »

If you have a file that is suddenly read only, that is probably not an MC problem. You could read about read only files by doing an Internet search. If you can learn which file is the problem, you may be able to fix it.

Otherwise, this is what backups are for. When you're doing a lot of work, it's a good idea to make them.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #19 on:** August 19, 2013, 01:21:34 pm »

I checked, and none of the .jmd FILES are read only. The problem is that Media Center thinks that the FIELD is read only. It would be really awesome if one of the developers could shed some light on how the .jmd files relate to the fields, and if there is some simple hackery that could resolve this.

OK, so I just removed the "store field_ " from the jmd file name, and all the data now shows up in the new "Album ID" field that I recreated. I'm still left with a zombie field, now empty, of the same name (Album ID). Any ideas how to kill this off? I'm guessing it's cached somewhere?

Cheers,
Jeff

marko · « **Reply #20 on:** August 19, 2013, 02:03:50 pm »

You need to be careful with those jmd files. Collectively, they make up your library and you could easily inadvertently hose the whole thing.

My advice would be to make a library backup, then open your previous library backups from explorer, using a zip file reader, and find one that contains your missing album id.jmd file. Copy that file into your current library folder (While MC is closed, naturally) then open MC and see what happens. If bad things happen, you can just restore from the backup you made earlier.

To get this working, you may have to bite the bullet and accept some data rollback.

-marko

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #21 on:** August 19, 2013, 04:23:22 pm »

Thanks, caution is the order of the day.

I deleted the cache files in the libray and MC rebuilt them, but it didn't kill off the zombie field. At this point I just need to know how to kill off a field that seemingly has no .jmd file backing it.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #22 on:** August 19, 2013, 10:22:28 pm »

OK, so in looking more deeply at the Manage Library Fields dialog, I notice that if I "Show all fields (including hidden fields)", I see a bunch of fields staring with "Store Field:", including "Store Field: Album ID"! Is the problem that I created a user field the same name as the hidden field?

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #23 on:** August 19, 2013, 10:51:50 pm »

It's confirmed... the Zombie version of the field "Album ID" is the Store Field: Album ID. When restoring a prior version of my library, I noticed that all of the Store Fields show up as User Fields in the Manage Library Fields dialog. I must have decided to use that store field version to keep my data in, but for some reason in the last 2 days MC said NO MORE.

Now the problem appears to be how to get the zombie normally-hidden Store Field off from my tagging window. I don't care about the data in it. It's been safely stored in a new user field.

I hope this is clear.

Cheers,
Jeff

marko · « **Reply #24 on:** August 20, 2013, 12:30:48 am »

Jeff, top marks for perseverance sir.

I don't think there's an easy answer to your question. Perhaps one last bit of off the wall digging...

Make sure MC is closed, including the server in the tray if you use that.
Open the registry editor (regedit.exe) observing all of the usual dire warnings associated with registry editing, and head here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 18\Properties

Now look in the right hand window, scroll down and you should see a bunch of entries starting with "Tag Info - Always show..."
As far as I can tell, the one that ends with (1) refers to an "Audio Only" list, which I assume you're working with. Try double clicking that, then check the string, looking for the Album ID field, and if it's there, delete it, along with its, what looks like, tab delimiter.

Save changes, start MC, did that fix it?
I tested this on an existing field, and it did remove that. I don't have an orphan to test with.

-marko.

jeffspl311 · « **Reply #25 on:** August 20, 2013, 09:19:52 am »

Marko!!! You provided the last critical clue, thank you! Turns out I found "Store Field: Album ID" (as well as some other fields I had created and previously deleted) in 1, 6, & 9. I deleted them and poof, all is well. I will be using a new user defined field named "Album Code" going forward to eliminate the possibility of field name collisions, just to be safe.

Thank you all for your help and patience with me!

Cheers,
Jeff

marko · « **Reply #26 on:** August 20, 2013, 11:26:56 am »

Result. Nice one.

A pleasure working with you Jeff.

-marko.

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Author Topic: User defined field problem (Read 4677 times)