When you're viewing files in Explorer, I'm not certain that what you're seeing is the metadata. Maybe someone else can answer that.
There are also file permissions to consider. Files transferred from a USB stick might be affected.
I know you believe there is a bug there, but it would be very surprising if it were the case.
Maybe someone who uses a different tag editor could help.
Yes I am ABSOLUTELY positive I am looking at the meta data.
Let me characterize this issue very specifically.
1. It only happens during the import process.
2. The MetaData is in the filesystem data, but JRiver doesn't see it for a small number of files. Which files it can not see the MetaData for "appears" random and is a small percentage.
3. At this point JRiver has blank MetaData associated with some files in its library and it will not recognize the metadata for those files.
4. If I change one meta data field in the tag editor, JRiver writes all the MetaData fields down at once. Unfortunately it thinks most of these fields are blank so it ends up clearing the MetaData at the filesystem level.
The tough part about an issue like this is that I can guarantee that the specific code that reads the Meta data from the file system is very straight forward and looks absolutely perfect. The problem is going to be somewhere after that when the file information is buffered/cached and sorted. Under some odd circumstances JRiver is losing the metadata associated with some of the files(only during the import process).
Would you like me to zip up the folder with Alice In Chains Unplugged from the original source and also the intermediate copy of the source?
This will only prove that the metadata is intact. The question is why JRiver not recognizing the meta data during the import process in what seems like random behavior. Once JRiver decides it can't read the meta data it stays in that state and won't re-import those files. So it knows it already has them and doesn't refresh the meta data at that point.
I could save my current library, create a new one and reimport all the files again. It should get confused on a few albums worth of files that may be useful for diagnostic work. It would be interesting to repeat that process and see if it picks the exact same files to put in unassigned each time or if it picks different files.
I have a lot of time invested in organizing my music, so I just want to make sure that I can easily switch back to the current library before I start.