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[Windcrest77]

Hi,

I want to leave Media Monkey and use JRiver instead because it supports higher bit rates PCM and DSD. So I installed MC v20.0.63, then pointed it at my music files. It took about 87 hours but it finally imported my 260,000 songs (I think it was actually looking up each song on the internet as it went along, wish I could turn that "feature" off). Anyway, its imported now, so I go to look at my library and the Rating was imported successfully for MP3 and WMA files. However, the Rating tag failed to import for any of the FLAC or APE files.

About 95% of my songs are either FLAC or APE. I tried to do "Update library from tags" but no luck. When I open up Media Monkey all the Rating tags are still fine there. Other tags like BPM seem to have imported fine for FLAC and APE though, but not the Rating.

How do I get JRiver to import my Rating tags for FLAC and APE files? I've been tagging these songs since 2006 and would hate to think I've lost all that work and might be using Media Monkey forever. 

Thanks
Rick

[dafloydman]

Had a similar issue (this is not unique to jriver by the way) the approach that works across all
 media players is to use the groupings tag . In mm anything with a rating of say 1 put 1 in the grouping tag and so on then jriver will import thru groupings and you can batch rate if you wish a.In my case i just use the grouping tag as my ratings system. This might seem round about but it is super quick do and the good thing is all media players will read it. I learned this the hard way

[Arindelle]

Yes, +1 to dafloyd.

JRiver uses Vorbis Comment as a base (not sure what Media Monkey uses btw, but ratings are often handled differently between programs even if it uses Vorbis which it might)

You can use grouping as well as a number of other fields temporarily. Here's a slightly outdated mappaing list http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Tag_Mapping. Grouping is a good choice if you are not using it already.

First though understand that currently JRiver support 5 stars (numbers 1 through 5, with no half stars) So if you have ratings of 4.5, or 9 you will have issues -- they can be fixed later, but won't work on first import, you'd have to convert the scaling. Make sure that MM is writing the tag to the file. I think it does this but its been a long time since I've used MM.

After you have copied over the ratings to a field like grouping, either you would want to remove the tracks already in your library (MAKE A MANUAL BACKUP of the JRiver Library first File=>Library=>Backup takes seconds btw).  And then redo an autoimport. Probably the easiest if you have not started retagging in JRiver yet. OR Select the files in JRiver and right click choosing Library tools=>Update Library form Tags  If something screws up simply click CTRL+Z or restore the library backup you just made.

Now you can make a bul change by selecting the files you could select them for ALL the files at once or try a couple of albums first and then select the rest  (reminder you do have that backup handy right? )

Open the tag window and make sure you see the grouping field (click on the icon top left corner and you can also show the grouping field and the rating field if need be).

Then simply type this in the [RATING] tag field

Code: [Select]

=[Grouping]

if you have chosen not to use grouping you can just put the name of the field between brackets =[FieldName].

If this works for you, make a second backup of your library giving it a new name. In case you find you made an error you can go back and forth using the two backups.

I'd recommend clearing the Grouping or temporary field later, as you might find some use for it.

Post back if you have problems.

[Windcrest77]

Thanks all,

I tried this cycle with a single file and it worked. However now I have to find an easy way to copy 240,000 rating tags over to the grouping tag of each file (without changing any other tags because the mp3, wma, m4a, etc. files are fine, its just the flac and ape files missing rating).

Does anyone know of a reliable batch program that can do this mass copying of rating to grouping? I'll test it with a single album or two first.

Thanks a lot

[Arindelle]

Does anyone know of a reliable batch program that can do this mass copying of rating to grouping? I'll test it with a single album or two first.

Thanks a lot

Why complicate things? IMHO, the easiest would be just to do it in Media Monkey. To a serach in MM to find find all of your one stars, select them, type in the number 1 in grouping field; do this for each of the five stars and that should be it. Media Monkey can access the grouping field, I used to use it about 5 years ago oops maybe more, back in the day then Maybe you can even map the RATING field in MM now

[Arindelle]

Maybe you can even map the RATING field in MM now

hmm looks like you can indeed do it all in MM it handles Vorbis Comment -- make sure it is writing to the file and you can even skip a step by using the rating field; Maybe it is like JRiver and you have to configure certain tags to embed (write to the file) maybe -- http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.php/About_MediaMonkey have to check on their forum for that one though.

Otherwise I'd just do what recommended just above. Try a few first of course. 250k  tracks shouldn't take very long, unless you are on a slow NAS. 5 - ten minutes maybe depending on your hardware.

[JimH]

I haven't read this entire thread.  Is MM using a non-standard field for ratings?

[Arindelle]

I haven't read this entire thread.  Is MM using a non-standard field for ratings?

Just found this Jim http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/frame/index.html?configuringdirectoryandfileformats.htm. It evidently does write Ratings to the file but in a "non-standard" format, whatever that means 

To the OP:  anything not in this chart will not be written to your files, might want to check it out; the flac files shouldn't pose any problems, might get some inconsistencies with the MP3 files, but nothing major that you couldn't temporarily re-map.

[JimH]

Thanks.

[Windcrest77]

Thanks all,

I have converted over from Media Monkey having fixed the Rating that didn't get imported on FLAC and APE files.

Things to know for anyone else converting from Media Monkey...

When you import your library to JR any ratings created in MM on FLAC or APE files will not be recognized, this is because MM apparently stores the Rating in a different field for these file types. MP3, WMA, etc will be fine though.

To get the Ratings repopulated properly in JR...

• In MM create 5 queries that simply select files by rating 1,2,3,4,5 in the "1 Star" query include all files that are 1 or 1.5 stars, in the "2 Star" query include all files that are 2 or 2.5 stars, repeat for 3,4,5 stars etc.
  
• Run each query presenting the files in the grid "by star", select them all and set the grouping tag to that number of stars 1,2,3,4,5 for each query.
• Now that all of your files have the proper star number in the grouping field, close Media Monkey and open up JR.
• In JR do the inverse, create 5 Smartlists which select files by grouping numbers 1,2,3,4,5
• Click each Smartlist and select all the files in the grid. Right click to bring up the Tag panel and set the Rating tag to "=[GROUPING]" this will cause JR to re-tag all the ratings using the values you stored in the Grouping tag. Repeat this for each star level.
• Now all the Rating fields are updated for both JR and left the same for MM.
• To verify the counts, go to MM and select all your songs, this time by each rating, for each rating the counts should match the same "by rating" counts you get in JR

I am now uninstalling Media Monkey because of the non-standardized Rating columns, if both programs updated the same Rating column I might keep both, but I'd rather not deal with inconsistency. And the improved sound quality with JR over MM with my Teac UD501 DAC is more than enough reason to leave Media Monkey, which has never been able to stream at the higher bit rates. MM is a great program too, but they have not paid enough attention to their sound drivers and I've found their grid loading to be sluggish. I'm hoping JRiver will do the main things really well.

Thanks

[Arindelle]

And thanks for coming back and taking the time to summarize That will be useful to people !


Just one thing, you actually don't have to make the 5 smartlists in JRiver before the bulk fill-in.   the =[Grouping] is done on a track by track basis so once the correct number is in the Grouping field the rating field will "auto populate" with the correct number, so splitting them out before hand isn't necessary.  If you had created a smartlist by number, you could just select and type in 1 for example, but the lini-expression lets you do it in one shot.