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Author Topic: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)  (Read 3602 times)

JustinChase

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Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« on: June 20, 2014, 06:18:22 pm »

While this is shown along the bottom of Media Center, the information about media files is obscured.  Selecting a new file changes this to show the 'normal' file information, but for less than a second, then this text is back.  This has long been a source of frustration, and has been brought up a few times before, but for some reason, it's been showing for the last 5 hours.

Not only is it frustrating that I can't see the size or duration of video files easily, I have no idea what tags it's trying to change either.  I think one file may have some sort of permissions issue, and the others are just 'backed up' by this one file being 'stuck' for some reason.

I'd like to suggest that this label be moved to one side (the left side) of the lower bar, and the 'normal' file information be allowed to display like it normally does.  There is TONS of free space on this bar, so using it for more than one bit of information makes sense.

In addition to that, I'd really like to know which files are pending tag changes.  Could this text be make into hypertext, so i can click to see the list of files it's changing tags for?  I assume this won't be too easy, so could there be a sneaky smartlist I can create that I can use to see the pending files, if that would be easier?

thanks.
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leezer3

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2014, 07:21:08 pm »

I completely agree :)

On a personal note, I'd remove it entirely, but I can equally see why some people find it useful.

-Leezer-
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6233638

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2014, 08:39:49 pm »

Yes, I'd like to see this moved into the lower left pane too. Perhaps a new "status" section that is minimized by default.
On that note, I'd like to see Media Center to do a better job of informing the user what it's doing in general.
 
When it's doing things like background auto-import, analyzing audio, downloading files, building thumbnails etc. it should be messaged to the user.
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Zhillsguy

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2014, 10:33:19 pm »

Yes, I'd like to see this moved into the lower left pane too. Perhaps a new "status" section that is minimized by default.
On that note, I'd like to see Media Center to do a better job of informing the user what it's doing in general.
 
When it's doing things like background auto-import, analyzing audio, downloading files, building thumbnails etc. it should be messaged to the user.
+1
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Frobozz

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2014, 12:45:07 am »

Media Center has been compared to an OS in terms of the functions that it does.  You could probably study most of what an introduction to operating systems course covers just by studying Media Center.  Perhaps something that logs and monitors events similar to Event Viewer would be helpful?
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glynor

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #5 on: June 21, 2014, 12:55:10 am »

Well... I have some comments on this.

First of all, we absolutely need to have a way to see this information.

I think one file may have some sort of permissions issue, and the others are just 'backed up' by this one file being 'stuck' for some reason.

I have quite a bit of experience with this.  If you see this indicator hang, and stick on files, it means one of three things about the files themselves (and/or their associated sidecar XML files if they're video files and have this enabled):

1. They are in-use.  Either by Media Center itself (playing the file), another client copy of MC (JRemote, Gizmo, etc) elsewhere on your network, or by another entirely unrelated application on your computer or network.

2. Media Center's process (the user you are running it as) does not have adequate permissions to write to the files.  The filesystem isn't granting access, and MC keeps trying (waiting and hoping, really) to get access.  This process is multithreaded (in my experience) and does not get "stuck" with more in queue.  If it lists five files, then five files are read-only or inaccessible for some reason.

* The files themselves may be read-only (or in unusual circumstances on a read-only filesystem of some kind).  Note that folders themselves use the Read-Only NTFS attribute for another purpose, and cannot be "read-only".  The filesystem only obeys the read-only attribute for files.  However, in Windows explorer, you can apply this change globally to a whole structure of files by changing it on a parent directory.  In Windows Explorer, open the Properties dialog for a parent folder and uncheck the greyed out Read-Only box.  It will prompt you to do it only for that folder, or recursively across all sub-folders and files.  However, if you suspect filesystem issues, you should probably check ownership and filesystem permissions first (and then come back and uncheck the read-only box if needed).  That's because if you don't have permission to access the files, you won't be able to modify the read-only attribute for those files either.

* You may not own the files, or have proper permissions to access the files on the local filesystem.  This can occur if you use your PC with multiple users (so some user accounts may own different sets of files, and they may have their own permissions depending on where and how they were created).  It can also occur if you migrate data from another PC (perhaps restoring from backup after a reinstallation of the OS).  It will often, in these cases, manifest with the file or directories being shown as owned by (or having permissions listed for) a big GUID string, rather than a username.  Windows shows the GUID for files owned by a user account in the filesystem that does not have a matching named account on the currently booted OS.  If you have this, you need to take ownership of the files and make sure your user account has full control permissions over the files, and their directory structures.  I often find it is the folders, and not the files themselves, where this goes astray under Windows.

* Likewise, if the files are stored on a NAS or other network storage device, your user account needs to have full read and write access to the file share.  These permissions are combined with the filesystem permissions, so your user account must have permission both places to be able to write to the files.  Many of the "easy turn it on" modes of SMB sharing in Windows do not enable write permissions for shares, and they can be confusing to set properly with embedded NAS devices, so it is worth checking over thoroughly.  This can also be an issue if you don't use the same username across different PCs in your home and are trying to access files over the network.  Without an Active Directory server, Windows relies on the Username matching (the short one) to determine if a particular network user is the "same user" on the filesystem itself.  Internally (for local users) it uses GUIDs.

One good test, is to just try to do something with the files externally from MC.  Open up the folder in Windows explorer, and try to create a new text file in the directory.  Rename it.  Delete the file then, and make sure that works.  Move one of the media files in question (or the whole lot) to your desktop (not copy, move), and then back again.  If you can't do it there, then MC can't do it.

3. Anti-Virus or Network Security Suites could be blocking it, or slowing it down so much that something gets angry and times out and hangs.  Manipulating network files, in particular, is already pretty high-latency compared to working on a local filesystem.  Adding on-the-fly AV to your already-slow network volumes can be very troublesome, especially over WiFi.  Add exceptions, especially if the files are isolated in a "known good" media library location.  Those files are your files, they're safe.  Spend the resources scanning the actual exposure points (new downloads, email attachments, temp locations, user directories, etc).

4. A MC process itself could be stuck.  This most often occurs if you have damaged media files, including ones that were corrupted in an aborted write during an unplanned power loss event on your computer or delayed write failure, for example.

In any case, it is not something that will typically go away on its own (unless the files are really in-use, and then it will when they're no longer in-use), and you should take steps to address the issue.  Because those files are (unless in-use, again) broken and inaccessible in some way.
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glynor

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2014, 01:08:01 am »

I forgot one possible case above... Moving and Renaming files.  If you rename or move a file from one filesystem location on a particular physical volume to a different location on that same volume, this move can be expected to be very quick (it is just renaming the existing file metadata, not doing anything with the file data at all).  However, if you are moving files across physical volumes, or on network shares, this process can be very slow.  So, if you use the Rename, Move, and Copy tool, then MC shows this too as a tagging change and shows this in the same manner.

Obviously, this can take a while, especially if you are moving large video files around.

That all said. I think this reporting could be MUCH improved.

I think that:

Any tag-writing operation that takes more than a few seconds to complete (more than a handful of files) should take place in the Action Window. You don't want this popping up all the time for individual tag writes, of course!  That could happen during playback, as the playstats changed, conceivably.  And, for little one-at-a-time tag changes, you don't want to see it.

But... If the count gets up to 10 or 15 or whatever, or it goes on longer than would be expected for a single file (thinking it was in-use), it should discontinue using the lower status bar and switch to a (slim) Action Window progress bar.  This would, of course, apply almost all the time to uses of the Rename, Move, and Copy tool, which I think is a very good thing.

This Action Window could also have a Details button that would switch the view on the right to a Playlist showing the pending files, and either a Pending Status or a Failure status, so particular troublesome files could be located and dealt with.  From what I know of the way manipulating tags via the COM interface works (which is a good deal), I suspect it wouldn't be practical to display what tags are being changed.  It writes all tag changes instantaneously to MC's Library, marks the file as "dirty", and then flushes all changes to disk.  So, by the time it gets the write errors (or even pending them in a queue) as far as MC is concerned, the change already has taken place, and the file just needs to be "synced" to contain the proper data.  Reading from the files to detect the changes would just slow the whole thing down further.

But still, we could have a Pending/Failed/Retrying status for the files, listed by filename or something.  And MC does seem to track old vs. new filenames for moves (because it can undo them in some cases), so you could display that.  It has to know, internally, which files are being the problem.  It just doesn't tell us about it, other than a raw count.  It can be quite frustrating to track down.

If you haven't opened the Details view, and the writes complete, the Action Window could just auto-dismiss quietly.  It could, also, if technically feasible (with a rename, perhaps) offer a cancel button.

I think that would be a massive usability improvement.
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JustinChase

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2014, 08:51:47 am »

Good posts Glynor!

In my case, it was all 5 files that had permissions issues related to my unRAID server.  I just switched to using SABnzbd in a docker container, and I think it may not have the permissions set quite right, so these files weren't allowed to be moved by Media Center.  It took nearly 8 hours before the message went away, and I was eventually given a 'failure' dialog box in MC, listing the 5 files it couldn't rename/move.

Another frustrating thing is that MC 'did' move them internally, as far as their filenames are concerned, so I was left with 5 files that showed they were in the new location, but all pointed to missing files.  I had to point the 'moved' files back to their original location in MC to 'reconnect' them, then I had to fix the permissions outside of MC, then I was able to move them successfully.

I suggest that if MC knows it was unable to move the files, it should not use the new filename/location for the files, as they are not really there, and MC already knows that.
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MusicBringer

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Re: Saving tag changes (5 remaining)
« Reply #8 on: June 24, 2014, 09:58:28 am »

...we absolutely need to have a way to see this information.

I agree.
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