Print

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

[steverosspeter]

Hi, I had just finished tidying up my music library, almost 1TB mostly Flac and some 320 MP3.
I have changed a lot of cover art, renamed albums, artists etc. and created new compilation albums.
Due to lack of space I installed a new Hard disk and copied all the files over and pointed to new location in MC options, and ran Auto import to check for any changes.
Just opened MC and it seems to have forgotten nearly all the changes I made, album art reverted back to original covers, and album name changed back.
This included a 180 Disc Complete Mozart collection that I had changed all the covers individually, and renamed every album!
I would firstly like to know what I did wrong, and what I can do about it.
I love all of MC’s customization features I just hope I haven’t lost all my hard work.
Thanks for any help.
Steve

[6233638]

It sounds like what has happened is that you library was read-only, or a permissions restriction was preventing Media Center from writing to the file tags.
When you moved the files outside of Media Center, it saw these as new files rather than using the information contained in the MC database.

Media Center should automatically create backups of your library every few days, so you should be able to use the File → Library → Restore Library… option to undo your changes.
I would suggest creating a fresh backup of your library before you do this, just in case anything else goes wrong. File → Library → Back Up Library… (obviously use a unique name and do not overwrite any previous backups)
 
Now I would normally suggest that you move your files to the new drive using Media Center's Rename, Move, & Copy Files… tool in the "Rename" mode, but it sounds like you have already moved them to the new drive.
 
 
In your case, what I would suggest you do is:

• Go to Tools → Options → Library & Folders → Auto-import and disable auto-import.
  
• Restore a library backup created prior to copying files over to the new drive. (only restore the library, do not restore settings)
• Select all of the files in your library, right-click them, and select Library Tools → Rename, Move, & Copy Files…
  
• At the top of this dialog box, select the "Update database to point to new location (no file rename, move, or copy)" option.
• Disable the directories and file name options, and enable "Find & Replace"
• In the "Find & Replace" box, update with the new location of your files. E.g. "Find What: C:\Music\ Replace With: E:\Music\"
  

 
Hopefully this will restore all of your lost changes, but it is possible that some of your Album Art may have been lost or overwritten if the only location it was being stored in was Media Center's album art cache rather than being written to the files.

[steverosspeter]

Thank you so much, I did exactly what you said and it worked perfectly, my library is back!

I will move them across to the new disk using your method, when my heart has stopped trying to jump out of my chest!

I am learning about MC as fast as my work/life balance will allow, this forum has up to now answered all my questions with a quick search, but I have obviously misunderstood the Tag/Metadata situation; I had assumed that all the changes I've been making to the album name, artist, artwork etc. were changing the metadata in the actual Flac/mp3, and so even if MC thought the files on the new disk were actual new tunes, the changes I had made would still be reflected in the “new” Library as the Flac’s metadata would have been changed.

If you have the time could you explain where I’ve gone wrong in my understanding of the metadata/MC interaction?

Thanks again, your advice is very much appreciated
Steve

[6233638]

Thank you so much, I did exactly what you said and it worked perfectly, my library is back!

Excellent, I am glad to hear that this solved the problem for you.

…but I have obviously misunderstood the Tag/Metadata situation; I had assumed that all the changes I've been making to the album name, artist, artwork etc. were changing the metadata in the actual Flac/mp3, and so even if MC thought the files on the new disk were actual new tunes, the changes I had made would still be reflected in the “new” Library as the Flac’s metadata would have been changed.

If you have the time could you explain where I’ve gone wrong in my understanding of the metadata/MC interaction?

Media Center should have been writing this information to the files - I'm not sure why it wouldn't have been.
The most likely culprits are that the files were either read-only, your Windows user account does not have permission to change them, or you have disabled writing tags to files.
 
What you can try is to select the files, and use Tools → Library Tools → Update Tags (from library) which should force Media Center to write your changes to the files - but I'm not sure why this did not happen automatically.
Hopefully someone else will be able to help you with that.

[steverosspeter]

I've definitely got all permissions, and none of the files are read only, I will spend some more time investigating this on the forum, unless someone else feels like chiming in?

Will try the tools method as well.

Thanks again
Steve