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[skifastbadly]

Some background:  Like most of you, I'm a pretty serious music fan, and have pretty decent equipment.  I also have extensive computer experience, as I started my career as a programmer (we didn't call ourselves software engineers back then) and have had a number of technical positions where I've had to become pretty familiar with different operating systems etc. 

About five years ago, I decided to make the jump into putting all my CDs onto a computer.  I figured if I could do away with searching, sorting, and replacing all my CDs, that would be a major benefit.   

I did a little looking around but didn't research the topic as deeply as I should have, so I made my first mistake:  I selected Windows Media Player as the player, since it was already on the Windows machine and I figured wtf, I could always switch later.

Then I made my second mistake:  Being somewhat unfamiliar with lossless formats, and wanting to lose nothing in terms of sound quality, I decided to rip the CDs as WAV files.   At this point, I was ignorant of two things, the first being WAV had lousy support for tagging and the second being that WMP actually started ripping the CDs as soon as they were put into the drive, BEFORE it had looked up the disc in the online database.  As a result, for awhile all my CDs had as a first, second, and sometimes even third file labled as such.

01 Unknown Name  Unknown Artist etc.

Ok well eventually I wised up and started ripping the files to WMP lossless and waiting until the data showed up before starting the rip.

Recently, the disc I had my files on crapped out and it was at that point I realized that if I was ever to make a change, this would be a good time.  Some research led me to JRiver and I now knew that FLAC was really the best format for me.

Of course, all the files that I imported into MC had all the existing tagging errors that had been inherited, so I spent a ton of time during the Christmas holidays tagging files.   Which made my wife real happy but that's a different story.  I was greatly helped by the Library "get tag from file name" command, except all the file names have the track number as part of them hence I have a lot of files that are "01 Title of the song".  Yes, that was a reference to Davinci's notebook.

I was under the impression that since I had now properly tagged the files and they were FLAC, I was set forever, given proper backup.  And backup I did not only doing a system backup but on a separate network drive creating a duplicate of the directory.

Then I was on another computer and I accessed the backup drive, and wtf?  The same tagging errors that I had thought I fixed were still there.  So now I think that the tag information is actually in the library instead of with the files and I'd better be damned sure I keep a backup of the library somewhere else I'm screwed.

This confuses me because it contradicts what I thought I understood about tagging FLAC files, and I also thought I'd ticked the right boxes regarding associating tags with files.

So here are my questions:
1)  What have I stated above that seems wrong?  Do I understand where the tagging data reside?  And if so, does that mean that when accessing the files remotely I must also provide the library name on the server?
2) is there some batch tag capability where I can take all the files that start with 01 and just remove that bit?

Thanks

[6233638]

To remove the prefix from a filename, you can use the "Fill Properties from Filename" tool, which allows you to create a custom naming pattern.
E.g. for: 01 - Track Name.FLAC
You would use: [Track #] - [Name]

And Media Center will generally figure out what's a track number, and what's a name, and fix it.
You can right-click in the entry box to select what fields you need to use.

The same thing can be done with directories for things like album names as well.
E.g. for: C:\Audio\Music\Artist\Year - Album\
You would use: C:\Audio\Music\[Artist]\[Year] - [Album]\


As for the tags, they should be getting written to the files.
But if they are not, you can select all the tracks, and use the "Update Tags (from library)" command to write them to the file.

I recommend you make a library backup first (File → Library → Backup Library) as these commands do not prompt for confirmation and you will not be happy if you select the "Update Library (from tags)" command by mistake.

[dtc]

The tags that you see in the tagging window are in the MC library. You can check what tags are actually in the file by clicking on the top line in the tagging window - which will something like Flac - 7:23 - 50 MB, where 7:23 is the track duration. and 50 MB is the file size. It is a good check before you make a lot of changes. If you are going to update the files from the library, select a track or album and look at the existing tags in the file, them Update Tags (from library). From your background you know that a few tests are always good before a wholesale change.

[skifastbadly]

Gents,

Thanks for those answers, they will give me some things to chase down and experiment with.

[GeorgeBoles]

This is exactly the topic I wanted, but all is still not clear to me.

If I do a full Auto-Library import and I select the option to "Write file tags", do the File Tags get written INTO the FILES or INTO JRiver's Library?

It appears from the answer above that there are some functions in JRiver which write Tags to the Files, and others which write only to the JRiver Library (database).

How can I tell which is which? (I am using JRiver for Mac, which appears to be different to Normal JRiver lots of times.)

It just seems a bit spooky until I get a good handle on Tags and Tagging that JRiver might change all of the tags in my CD rips, although they are likely to be pretty random, having come from FreeDb on Exact Audio Copy.


Regards,
George.

[ferday]

Tags don't get randomly changed, you have to change them

The exception is if you set auto-tag options during auto import, but those changes shouldn't be random at all since you specify how

The tags should always be written to the files, but you don't have to, you get that option...

Certain things may not be written to a file because it can't.  For example the image size tag can't be written to an audio file, but if you save the image to the file MC can show you that info

[GeorgeBoles]

<<The tags should always be written to the files, but you don't have to, you get that option...>>

Ferday and All,

I think the above line is what I need to know about:

• Which tasks in JRiver write tags to the files?
• Is there only one place in the Options menus where I set this, or are there many?

Regards,
George
[/list]

[6233638]

If I do a full Auto-Library import and I select the option to "Write file tags", do the File Tags get written INTO the FILES or INTO JRiver's Library?

The option is to write those tags to the files.
All changes are always stored in Media Center's library.

It appears from the answer above that there are some functions in JRiver which write Tags to the Files, and others which write only to the JRiver Library (database).

If you manually edit tags, the changes are typically written to the file.
Tools → Options → Library & Folders → Manage Library Fields lets you set which tags are written to the files when edited.

[JimH]

The options page has a search window at the bottom.