Print

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

[ratmice]

SO I'm a new MC user and have been trying to get my files in order. I've been adding cover art and tags with an external tagger (YATE) and everything has been going well. Having a few little issues, however:

1. getting the newly added art to appear. I found that the only way for me to get it to appear is to use the Library Tools -> update library (from tags). Forcing a manual auto-scan does nothing. Is there another way? SHouldn't the aut0-scan see the new tags and update accordingly?

2. I have one album (so far) that will not update no matter what I do. I am adding the tags just like I do with every other file. When I use the update library (from tags) menu item, I get an error message that says the update failed. What causes this to fail? They are the same type of files (FLAC) as all my other ones, tagged the same way, but no matter what I do I can't get the tags to update. I tried clearing the tags and starting over with no luck. Any ideas?

Thanks for helping a new user.

[blgentry]

When I started with JRiver, tagging seemed like something it didn't do all that well.  The interface was just this pane on the side with a big list of tags and it didn't seem to have all of these specialized features that other tagging programs had.  So I used an external tagger for doing cleanup and adjusting filenames based on tags.

Then I started messing around with the tag editor in JRiver MC to fix up some compilation albums that showed as multiple albums.  Pretty soon, tagging seemed pretty easy with JRiver.  All I had to do was select the songs or albums I wanted, using any view I wanted, and then press Tag to work on the tags.  It all seems rather obvious now actually.  Sometimes I'm a slow learner.  A few weeks or so later, I was thinking about the program I had been using to do tags externally and realized I hadn't used it in weeks, despite having adjusted lots of tags to be correct.

Album art was a different story.  From the first try, I really liked JRiver's album art maintenance tools.  Simple, easy, and they just work.

What I'm saying sort of slowly here is that you probably don't need an external tagging program.  JRiver can do *most* of this stuff quickly and easily.  I haven't really given Yate a try, but I also don't really have any need for an external tagger any more.  The only real reason I would see to use an external tagger at this point would be for songs that have no tags, or completely broken tags.  ...and in that case, something like MusicBrainz Picard is going to be the right approach probably.  On the other hand, JRiver can *also* fill in tags from file names, so you can use JRiver for that too if that's part of your tagging needs.

For your problem file that won't update, try editing it's tags in JRiver and see what you get.

Good luck!

Brian.

[JimH]

When I started with JRiver, tagging seemed like something it didn't do all that well.  The interface was just this pane on the side with a big list of tags and it didn't seem to have all of these specialized features that other tagging programs had.  So I used an external tagger for doing cleanup and adjusting filenames based on tags.

Then I started messing around with the tag editor in JRiver MC to fix up some compilation albums that showed as multiple albums.  Pretty soon, tagging seemed pretty easy with JRiver.  All I had to do was select the songs or albums I wanted, using any view I wanted, and then press Tag to work on the tags.

You can also select something and press F2 or use your mouse to "slow" double click on any tag to edit it.  Up and down arrows move to the next file.

[ratmice]

So removing the offending directory, manually auto-sync'ing, re-adding, and manually auto-sync'ing again did the trick. This, however, is WAY too cumbersome.

In another use case, I have a few tracks (on NAS) that have illegal characters in the filename. These tracks do not appear as audio files in MC. Changing the name and re-sync'ing does not make them appear and the only way to get them to show up is doing the file moving and manual auto-sync'ing dance described above.

What we really need is a way to FORCE update the database info for these files. Maybe the problem stems from their location (NAS), or something else. I tried every menu option I could think of, but nothing seems to make these appear once they've been scanned initially.

[mwillems]

What we really need is a way to FORCE update the database info for these files. Maybe the problem stems from their location (NAS), or something else. I tried every menu option I could think of, but nothing seems to make these appear once they've been scanned initially.

Have you made sure that your auto-import settings include the activating the option to automatically update entries for external changes?  I would expect to see the behavior you're describing if that option were de-selected.  If it's selected and you're still seeing this, I'm not sure what to suggest as it works well here.

For example, if I use an external program to change the cover art in a file on my NAS, MC's auto-import picks it up pretty quickly, and a manual scan always gets it.  If I disable the "update for external changes" option, I see the same behavior you're seeing.

[blgentry]

It can't tell for sure, but it sounds like you might have two different problems.

Auto Import is one issue for sure.  I would suggest you test Auto Import first to see if it's working as expected.  Auto Import relies up on file system triggers to tell MC "Hey a file just changed, go check it out."  Some NAS boxes don't support file system "events" so the message never gets to MC, so it doesn't ever check.  In that case running a scan manually should do it.  Note, this is NOT the same as "update library from tags".  That only works on existing files.  To run a manual scan, use Tools > Import > Run Auto Update Now.

A good way to test this is to get some music files that MC has never seen before, and move them into a new directory under one of your Auto Import directories.

This will help narrow down the problem from "weird files", files with illegal characters in their names, and the Auto Import process itself.

Good luck!

Brian.

[ratmice]

Have you made sure that your auto-import settings include the activating the option to automatically update entries for external changes?  I would expect to see the behavior you're describing if that option were de-selected.  If it's selected and you're still seeing this, I'm not sure what to suggest as it works well here.

For example, if I use an external program to change the cover art in a file on my NAS, MC's auto-import picks it up pretty quickly, and a manual scan always gets it.  If I disable the "update for external changes" option, I see the same behavior you're seeing.

I do have auto-update set to 1. create thumbnails, 2. update entries for external changes, and 3. fix broken links (protect offline volumes). Unless I remove the directory entirely and then re-scan I have problems with some files.

It can't tell for sure, but it sounds like you might have two different problems.

Auto Import is one issue for sure.  I would suggest you test Auto Import first to see if it's working as expected.  Auto Import relies up on file system triggers to tell MC "Hey a file just changed, go check it out."  Some NAS boxes don't support file system "events" so the message never gets to MC, so it doesn't ever check.  In that case running a scan manually should do it.  Note, this is NOT the same as "update library from tags".  That only works on existing files.  To run a manual scan, use Tools > Import > Run Auto Update Now.

A good way to test this is to get some music files that MC has never seen before, and move them into a new directory under one of your Auto Import directories.

This will help narrow down the problem from "weird files", files with illegal characters in their names, and the Auto Import process itself.

Auto-import only seems to miss some files. I have definitely tried many, many manual scans, as well as update from tags. I have also tried moving new files into one of the "watched" folders and MC does update. It seems to happen only with changing/adding some cover art and the particular case of changing a filename that was originally skipped on scan (because of an illegal character) Once renamed the file appears normally (that is, to the filesystem), but MC fails to acknowledge it's existence. If I move it out, scan, and move it back in the next scan picks it up. BTW, I think the events are handled correctly because other changes, external, to the NAS, do show up in MC.

I need to do some more testing, this is like day 3 with JMRC