Topic: Weird 'empty' duplicate tracks (Read 6878 times)

lisbethfox · « **on:** November 23, 2014, 05:24:29 am »

For the past few weeks I've been at a loss of reasons for this to be happening. Essentially every track in my library now has an unplayable duplicate, with empty path and track title information. The majority of my library is FLAC but about 2TBs is apple lossless from before when I was an idiot and used iTunes. Theres also a bunch of SACD ISOs. Anyways I cannot for the life of me figure out why it keeps happening, Ive started fresh 2 libraries. These auto import from 5 folder locations (due to different drives needing to store all my content), first time Im left with a great looking library but by the third or fourth launch i have a mess of these empty files in addition to the real entires which play. What the heck is going on???

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** November 23, 2014, 06:28:15 am »

Do you use CUE files?
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=93246.0

lisbethfox · « **Reply #2 on:** November 23, 2014, 06:55:06 am »

Quote from: JimH on November 23, 2014, 06:28:15 am

Do you use CUE files?
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=93246.0

I *have* cue files but have never had this issue with them really. Most of my albums do have the files in the folders but they're usually ignored. Even the M4As and few MP3s I have (which have no corresponding cue files) have this same problem. I was actually on that thread earlier but like... its not related to the cues Im pretty sure.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #3 on:** November 23, 2014, 06:58:53 am »

Honestly in like 2 years of using JRiver for my 9TB library, plus all my video playback and DSP needs ( for biamping a large 5.1 surround setup discretely) Ive never had an issue so I'm frankly baffled.

Glad ya'll have prompt support. I was worried Id be waiting weeks for an answer.

JimH · « **Reply #4 on:** November 23, 2014, 06:59:59 am »

You might try restoring a backup. File > Library > Restore.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #5 on:** November 23, 2014, 07:12:02 am »

Tried and didnt help. I've also tried creating new libraries with the same auto-import rules to no avail.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #6 on:** November 23, 2014, 07:13:47 am »

If its any help, my library also grows (in terms of number of tracks) without adding any new files. Im really confused as to where all these duplicates or whatever are coming from.

JimH · « **Reply #7 on:** November 23, 2014, 07:14:22 am »

Check your autoimport settings.

What version are you using?

lisbethfox · « **Reply #8 on:** November 23, 2014, 07:16:12 am »

Is there anything I should be looking for? It looks fine to me.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #9 on:** November 23, 2014, 07:19:29 am »

Current auto import settings.

It says 19.0.163 in the server I use?

JimH · « **Reply #10 on:** November 23, 2014, 07:56:57 am »

Are the drive letters changing from time to time? Windows will do that.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #11 on:** November 23, 2014, 08:28:48 am »

Not possible, this computer is used for other file sharing applications which depend on drive letters to function correctly. This specific computer (my music and half my movie library) has 40 someodd TBs of live storage spread over a large number of drives. It would be really bad if that was happening and something I would notice almost instantly (it happened once about a year back, never had an issue since)

JimH · « **Reply #12 on:** November 23, 2014, 08:37:06 am »

If you haven't changed the software (MC) but it's behaving differently now, it's possible that one or more of your drives isn't doing what you expect.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #13 on:** November 23, 2014, 08:42:38 am »

It happens regardless of which drive the files are on, all the files are affected.
Whenever I open MC, it generally has added these 'empty' files, sometimes a whole bunch in recently added albums (these albums have already been added and recognized long ago). I don't understand. The files are there, they play and show up but then theres all these empty tracks in addition to the valid ones

lisbethfox · « **Reply #14 on:** November 23, 2014, 08:43:37 am »

It started to happen when I went from using 2 drives, to 5 for my music storage (over a very short period of time). However it happens to everything leading me to think that somehow there is a bug in the software??

JimH · « **Reply #15 on:** November 23, 2014, 10:26:09 am »

MC doesn't care whether you have 2 drives or 20.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #16 on:** November 23, 2014, 11:50:05 am »

Exactly what I figured, like I wouldn't be asking if this was a dumbfounding predicament (jesus ya'll have better things to do than provide support)! I'm at an impasse here, I can't nail down what the issue is. Do you have any other ideas?
Is there a way I could even search for these 'empty' (I have no idea what else to call them) entries and remove automatically? At least that would curb the issue for the time being. I can sort by file name in my lists which makes things marginally better (since they go to the end of the list) but its still kinda obnoxious. MC used to work flawlessly, Im at a loss for why this ended up starting LMAO. I may just backup my jriver appdata folders, and reinstall (or possibly buy mc20) hoping that with a fresh install of JRiver (hopefully not of the OS) this issue wont persist.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #17 on:** November 23, 2014, 11:55:53 am »

Quote from: lisbethfox on November 23, 2014, 11:50:05 am

Exactly what I figured, like I wouldn't be asking if this was a dumbfounding predicament (jesus ya'll have better things to do than provide support)! I'm at an impasse here, I can't nail down what the issue is. Do you have any other ideas?
Is there a way I could even search for these 'empty' (I have no idea what else to call them) entries and remove automatically? At least that would curb the issue for the time being. I can sort by file name in my lists which makes things marginally better (since they go to the end of the list) but its still kinda obnoxious. MC used to work flawlessly, Im at a loss for why this ended up starting LMAO. I may just backup my jriver appdata folders, and reinstall (or possibly buy mc20) hoping that with a fresh install of JRiver (hopefully not of the OS) this issue wont persist.

Thankfully any of my computers that do playback (including my main HT machine which needs a huge set of parametric EQs to mix / move channels to make things work right with my setup) won't need to get reconfigured for their DSP / output settings.

mwillems · « **Reply #18 on:** November 23, 2014, 01:21:03 pm »

You say that the issue happened when you changed from using 2 drives to 5, which presumably required moving files around during the process? That would cause your old library entries to be pointing to locations where files no longer exist, but autoimport would pick up the new locations leading to all those duplicates. In that case, It's possible that the extras are pointing to the old filepaths. That's partly what Jim was getting at with the "drive letters" changing line of inquiry. Anything that causes the files to change their location on the disk will cause issues with MC's database.

In your auto-mport settings, the box at the bottom has a scroll bar, what do the settings not shown in your screenshot look like? I ask because there's an option "fix broken links" that, if I'm right would resolve the issue automatically.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #19 on:** November 23, 2014, 01:40:25 pm »

Quote from: mwillems on November 23, 2014, 01:21:03 pm

You say that the issue happened when you changed from using 2 drives to 5, which presumably required moving files around during the process? That would cause your old library entries to be pointing to locations where files no longer exist, but autoimport would pick up the new locations leading to all those duplicates. In that case, It's possible that the extras are pointing to the old filepaths. That's partly what Jim was getting at with the "drive letters" changing line of inquiry. Anything that causes the files to change their location on the disk will cause issues with MC's database.

In your auto-mport settings, the box at the bottom has a scroll bar, what do the settings not shown in your screenshot look like? I ask because there's an option "fix broken links" that, if I'm right would resolve the issue automatically.

I understand that, however I have created multiple new libraries since. When I first decided to do this, I moved about 2TB of Apple lossless files to another HDD and then used the move / replace command to shift them over without issue. It was only later that these duplicates began appaearing and like I said, I have created multiple new libraries with similar import settings in an attempt to weed out where the problem lies.

I have checked, Fix broken links and will see what occurs.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #20 on:** November 23, 2014, 01:42:01 pm »

Checked that option and no change even on quitting and restarting.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #21 on:** November 23, 2014, 01:43:10 pm »

It happens with EVERY track, not just ones on a specific drive or ones that were moved earlier with now different libraries.

mwillems · « **Reply #22 on:** November 23, 2014, 02:20:06 pm »

Quote from: lisbethfox on November 23, 2014, 01:42:01 pm

Checked that option and no change even on quitting and restarting.

You might need to manually run auto-import to get it to engage ("run autoimport now")

Two questions:

1) Are you in a library server/client setup (i.e. do you have more than one JRiver instance connected as servers/clients?) If so, have you made sure to disable auto-import on all client machines? Leaving autoimport on on client machines can lead to strange results like you're seeing sometimes. There's a bug sometimes where the server will read and attempt to apply the auto-import rules of the client in addition to it's own, which can cause mischief.

2) What happens if you delete one of the "empty" tracks from the library? Does it return? It sounds like it might be the case that they keep showing back up, but I wanted to confirm that removing them from the library manually doesn't work.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #23 on:** November 23, 2014, 02:34:37 pm »

Yes. I am using many many machines to access JRiver LOL. Like 4 at the moment and sometimes more??
I will check those auto import settings.

In the past I believe I have deleted a significant number of tracks during 'troubleshooting' however, I can still find duplicates of all said tracks I assume I deleted (I deleted duplicate entries on one of the drives I believe last week, yet my library still has those back? Unless I somehow didnt)

JimH · « **Reply #24 on:** November 23, 2014, 02:39:36 pm »

You may need to "fix" the library on your server, not on your clients.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #25 on:** November 23, 2014, 02:41:09 pm »

Its doing something. Also any time I hit 'auto import' it says it wants to import '924' files. Every time. Any ideas?

Anyways now it says updating library to match external changes. and also is complaining about finding cover art. Its not gonna try to embed it into the files right? otherwise Im sitting on 2TB of garbage thats supposed to be seeding LMAO. Like if it tries to change the tags Im screwed.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #26 on:** November 23, 2014, 02:41:41 pm »

Quote from: JimH on November 23, 2014, 02:39:36 pm

You may need to "fix" the library on your server, not on your clients.

Well duh.. obviously I wouldnt use the clients for library operations.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #27 on:** November 23, 2014, 02:48:52 pm »

Honestly I've tried to solve this for two weeks on my own and I'm still at a loss for why it's doing this.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #28 on:** November 23, 2014, 03:03:53 pm »

For the third time I've created a fresh library. It imports from the same folders, only audio is checked, the 'fix broken links' is set to yes.

Now to wait an hour or so and hope it catches everything. I've lost about a year of playlists from the first library but if this can be sorted out I'd be more than happy to move on.

mwillems · « **Reply #29 on:** November 23, 2014, 03:06:30 pm »

Quote from: lisbethfox on November 23, 2014, 03:03:53 pm

For the third time I've created a fresh library. It imports from the same folders, only audio is checked, the 'fix broken links' is set to yes.

Now to wait an hour or so and hope it catches everything. I've lost about a year of playlists from the first library but if this can be sorted out I'd be more than happy to move on.

You made sure to disable auto-import on the clients right?

lisbethfox · « **Reply #30 on:** November 23, 2014, 03:10:10 pm »

10 minutes of vnc'ing and it is on everything LOL

lisbethfox · « **Reply #31 on:** November 23, 2014, 03:12:23 pm »

Quote from: mwillems on November 23, 2014, 03:06:30 pm

You made sure to disable auto-import on the clients right?

All the machines are set up for authentication (to allow me to tag depending on what room I'm in). Is this what possibly caused it in the past (in conjunction with the auto import set on the clients)?

mwillems · « **Reply #32 on:** November 23, 2014, 03:16:44 pm »

I'm not sure it's necessarily related to authentication, I run server/clients with authentication and don't have any issues generally; the issue is related to the client's autoimport rules getting sucked into the server's auto-imports for some reason (even though clients aren't supposed to be able to import anything). It's a bug I think.

The easiest workaround is to go to tools --> options --> Library & Folders --> Run Auto-import in background and make sure it is unticked on each client (but obviously it should still be enabled on the server only). It should cause no change in functionality because clients aren't supposed to be able to import anything to begin with.

All that said, it obviously wouldn't be an issue without authentication as the clients couldn't change the server's library, but all the issues I've seen with authentication are related to auto-import weirdness. I'd advise turning fix broken links back off on the server once you get things fixed by the way; it can be unpredicable with network drives (even with the setting to protect network drives).

lisbethfox · « **Reply #33 on:** November 23, 2014, 04:33:57 pm »

Quote from: mwillems on November 23, 2014, 03:16:44 pm

I'm not sure it's necessarily related to authentication, I run server/clients with authentication and don't have any issues generally; the issue is related to the client's autoimport rules getting sucked into the server's auto-imports for some reason (even though clients aren't supposed to be able to import anything). It's a bug I think.

The easiest workaround is to go to tools --> options --> Library & Folders --> Run Auto-import in background and make sure it is unticked on each client (but obviously it should still be enabled on the server only). It should cause no change in functionality because clients aren't supposed to be able to import anything to begin with.

All that said, it obviously wouldn't be an issue without authentication as the clients couldn't change the server's library, but all the issues I've seen with authentication are related to auto-import weirdness. I'd advise turning fix broken links back off on the server once you get things fixed by the way; it can be unpredicable with network drives (even with the setting to protect network drives).

Done and done. No music is stored remotely, the machine is designed to take all music + some movies so network shares shouldn't be an issue.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #34 on:** November 23, 2014, 04:45:48 pm »

JRiver crashed on auto import. 43k files and 2.2 tb in. Started back, hit auto import again. No issues

PC that serves is an AMD A8, 16GB ram, Win 7 ultimate (heavily stripped down, no vital services missing however), lots of external drives and a bunch of WD REDs inside.

Would any benefit be derived from using a linux box and running the linux version of JRiver as a server? I could transfer the drives I use for music into it (I need madvr on my clients so they're obviously high end HTPCs running windows)

One of my movie serving machines uses linux and its very reliable.

mwillems · « **Reply #35 on:** November 23, 2014, 05:26:07 pm »

MC for linux doesn't transcode video yet, and can't handle TV tuners so it may be a little premature to switch over. Once MC Linux gets closer to feature parity with windows, I'll probably switch my own server, but for now windows it is in my house.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #36 on:** November 23, 2014, 05:40:13 pm »

I don't need to transcode video. I wouldnt *want* to transcode video LMAO!
JRiver just does playback of network shares (the clients other people use also have xbmc on them which scrapes the directories I manually look at) on the clients when it comes to video (I for the most part have BD50s and remuxes so I wouldn't want to transcode)

So like if I used a linux machine running JRiver, I could access the music library as I currently do from all my windows clients?

JimH · « **Reply #37 on:** November 23, 2014, 05:41:33 pm »

Quote from: lisbethfox on November 23, 2014, 04:45:48 pm

PC that serves is an AMD A8, 16GB ram, Win 7 ultimate (heavily stripped down, no vital services missing however) ...

Please define "heavily stripped down".

lisbethfox · « **Reply #38 on:** November 23, 2014, 05:51:41 pm »

Quote from: JimH on November 23, 2014, 05:41:33 pm

Please define "heavily stripped down".

Basic stuff, nothing that in my opinion could affect MC19. windows classic theme, no virus scan / firewall, no tablet support, no fax services, no windows media player / media center, no internet explorer, no printer drivers / print support, removed some unnecessary services, no games, no other random bundled crap, pretty sure TCP tunings were tweaked but I can't be sure (I dont think any could affect it, this would have been 18 months ago, no problems since then other than this), I probably did other stuff but its os / software configuration hasn't been touched in like 18 months or so.

Honestly I just took out the things I don't use and that cripple windows.

mwillems · « **Reply #39 on:** November 23, 2014, 05:59:26 pm »

Quote from: lisbethfox on November 23, 2014, 05:40:13 pm

I don't need to transcode video. I wouldnt *want* to transcode video LMAO!
JRiver just does playback of network shares (the clients other people use also have xbmc on them which scrapes the directories I manually look at) on the clients when it comes to video (I for the most part have BD50s and remuxes so I wouldn't want to transcode)

If you're sure you don't need transcoding or TV, it might be a good fit. One caution, if you use gizmo to stream video to tablets or phones, that currently requires transcoding to function (gizmo always transcodes for local android video playback). If you have a PC-only ecosystem and no need for on the fly transcoding, and don't need TV tuner management, MC for linux might work just fine for you.

Quote

So like if I used a linux machine running JRiver, I could access the music library as I currently do from all my windows clients?

I think so, yes. I don't have a linux MC server online right now, so I can't 100% confirm. I have linux clients accessing my windows server, though, and it works perfectly fine in that direction, so apart from the limitations I mentioned above I'm not sure why a Linux library server wouldn't work perfectly for windows clients. That's where I hope to be eventually myself as I'd prefer to have a linux server. Just to be clear, I don't work for JRiver; I'm just a user, but I've had good luck in a mixed windows and linux ecosystem.

JRiver offers a 30 day trial for MC linux, same as for windows, so you could try it out for a month and see if it fits your needs.

JimH · « **Reply #40 on:** November 23, 2014, 06:03:08 pm »

Quote from: lisbethfox on November 23, 2014, 05:51:41 pm

no windows media player / media center, no internet explorer, no printer drivers / print support, removed some unnecessary services, no games, no other random bundled crap, pretty sure TCP tunings were tweaked but I can't be sure (I dont think any could affect it, ...

And things are working well?

lisbethfox · « **Reply #41 on:** November 23, 2014, 06:11:57 pm »

Quote from: JimH on November 23, 2014, 06:03:08 pm

And things are working well?

Of course, its used for being a JRiver Media Server, file serving like 16tb of movies, and I use it for some torrent downloading / seeding. Its not one of my main computers, just a back end. It doesn't even have a monitor, keyboard or anything. Its a server, why would it need any of those things?

lisbethfox · « **Reply #42 on:** November 24, 2014, 09:22:45 am »

12 hours or so into the new library and the issue hasnt appeared, no new empty versions of albums already in the DB showing up at the head of Recent Albums. I don't understand what happened but I'll take it!

Definitely going to investigate the Linux JRiver as a server since long term that would be the way to go (I can condense my library down to 3, 3TB HDDs at the moment, but obviously that wont last forever). A dedicated rackmount for music only is probs what I'll do. Shouldn't be more than 250 for an older 8 bay dell or something.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #43 on:** November 26, 2014, 08:58:01 am »

Alright its happening again. I turned on logging, its on the main server that the tracks are importing from. I see all these entries that are there from very recently and those same tracks are showing up in JRiver as empty duplicates.
Any ideas? Im kind of confused and really have no idea how to proceed since this is making my library very unwieldy.

northnb · « **Reply #44 on:** February 02, 2015, 07:23:41 pm »

Hi;

I am having the same issue, however I am using only one computer with files on an external drive. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks

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Author Topic: Weird 'empty' duplicate tracks (Read 6878 times)