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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 21 for Windows => Topic started by: Antoine. on August 27, 2016, 01:42:03 pm

Title: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: Antoine. on August 27, 2016, 01:42:03 pm
Hello,

I'm using MC21 on Windows 10 Pro and am encountering a few problems with the library:

Thanks in advance for your help,

Sincerely,

Antoine
Title: Re: A few problems : dead auto-import, device not syncing unless selected, etc.
Post by: blgentry on August 27, 2016, 05:17:20 pm
Hi,

It would seem logical to group all of your problems and concerns into one big post like you've done.  It's also nice that you've got it laid out in a fairly easy to understand way.  However, you should know that large posts like this almost never receive much attention.  I'm not sure exactly why, but probably because it's a little overwhelming to most people to try to help with so many problems all at once.

You'll probably get more attention to your individual issues if you start threads specific to each item.

Keep reading for a response or two to your problems.

Auto-import does not work anymore. This is the most frustrating issue. "Run auto-import in background" is indeed selected in the options. I have to prompt a manual import every time to see the new files! Is there some sort of limit of folder-specific profiles above which auto-import is suspended, because I've got tons of different profiles set up (less than 100, though)

I'm not aware of any limit, but there might be one somewhere that I don't know about.  When did this stop working?  Did you change anything with MC or with your system around the time it stopped working?

NAS devices are notorious for not supporting auto import.  Have you moved your collection to a NAS device?

Quote
On two occasions, there have been giant **-ups among the tags of my audio files (and I didn't do anything particular)! The tags of numerous files belonging to a same playlist have been mixed! I noticed that it happened with Artist adjacent in alphabetical order or really close to each others. The "Album Artist", "grouping" and "rating" fields have been heavily impacted I noticed.

This sounds like you had a bunch of files selected and you didn't know it.  Then you applied a tag or two and the tag(s) went to all of the files.  This is just a guess.  MC's tagging behavior was changed a few months ago for this exact reason:  Several people have reported that they have mistaged thousands of files at once because they didn't know they had files selected.  It's now much harder to accidentally select many files for tagging unless you really mean to do it.

That's all I have time to respond to right now.  Good luck.  :)

Brian.
Title: Re: A few problems : dead auto-import, device not syncing unless selected, etc.
Post by: Antoine. on August 28, 2016, 05:20:42 am
Thanks blgentry for your answer, I'll split the questions, you're right, I actually wondered beforehand if it was against some forum rules to have several topics posted by a single user.

Concerning the auto-import issue: all the data are stored locally, partly on the SSD where the OS is installed (music), partly on a RAID5 array (videos & others).
Also, I didn't notice anything specific related to the emergence of this issue.

About the issue of modified tags: I'm pretty sure it wasn't a case of a whole bunch of files being selected and modified via an accidental command, because, frankly, I can't see the type of command which would have produced these consequences. Files tags were mixed as if the software was considering two different audio files from different artists (adjacent in some alphabetical order) to be from the same artists and then proceeded to mix some fields (not all). Anyhow, I don't have lot of informations to bring, so I'll put this to rest.

Antoine
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: Antoine. on August 31, 2016, 07:16:05 am
Anyone on the dead auto-import? A MC reinstall didn't solve the issue.


Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: Antoine. on September 08, 2016, 04:17:50 am
No clue about the dead auto-import issue? The software is pretty much unusable at this point!
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: JimH on September 08, 2016, 06:48:14 am
You can't delete the default library.  You could add another.

It's possible that files were imported already and are in the wrong place.  Try a search.

It's also possible that you've got MC set to not import files you've previously deleted.  That's an option in the import settings.
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: Antoine. on September 09, 2016, 05:52:01 pm
Thank you for your answer, JimH.

You can't delete the default library.  You could add another.
Okay, too bad (and confusing), but okay.

It's possible that files were imported already and are in the wrong place.  Try a search.
Not the case. Besides, the files appear right where they should when I'm prompting a import manually.

It's also possible that you've got MC set to not import files you've previously deleted.  That's an option in the import settings.
I indeed set MC to not import files previously deleted since I didn't think it would interfere with the auto-import of other files. I just deactivated this option and am now monitoring what is happening. Just to be sure. I'll report the results tomorrow.

I also just noticed that MC is not retrieving the tags & cover from internet as it should (when import prompted manually, again). And it's not because it's not finding information, because when I ask MC to search these infos, it finds them right away.
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: Antoine. on September 10, 2016, 08:54:14 am
Nothing changed, auto-import (and automatic-internet-based-tagging also) still dead despite the deactivation of 'ignore files previously removed from library' option.

Antoine
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: blgentry on September 10, 2016, 01:43:15 pm
I would try building a new library.  Then, import a backup of your original library into that new library and see what happens.  If that still doesn't work, I would again, make a fresh backup of the original library.  Then I would do a clean de-install of MC and reinstall it.  Then import your library backup.  MC will probably find your original library on disk actually.  At some point, I might nuke the whole thing and delete the library directory also.  But NOT the library backup files!  Obviously I would not delete the media either.

Good luck.

Brian.
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: Antoine. on September 14, 2016, 01:39:49 pm
Is there a way of doing this without having to reselect almost every album and movie covers, given the fact that the covers I chose were often not those available by default from an internet search?

Antoine
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: blgentry on September 14, 2016, 03:06:19 pm
Your library backup has all the information in it that your current library has.  This includes the file names of all of the cover art files you have stored on disk.  In the case of videos (movies, TV shows, etc), those files should be sitting right next to the video files themselves.  So "Die Hard 2 Die Harder.mkv" should have "Die Hard 2 Die Harder.jpg" in the same folder.

So you shouldn't lose anything.  Also, my first suggestion is to create a new library, but NOT delete the old one.  So this suggestion is pretty safe.  Make backups as appropriate.

Brian.
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: Antoine. on January 25, 2017, 02:11:15 pm
Hi, thanks for the answer. I did try a start-fresh approach, with no results.

But I noticed that when I reduced the number of folders managed by auto-import to 30 (from approx. 70), it resumed its activities. Is there an actual limit of folders that this tool can manage?

Antoine
Title: Re: Problems with the library: dead auto-import, impossible to delete an old library
Post by: blgentry on January 25, 2017, 04:53:14 pm
Wow, 70 directories for auto import?  Are you aware that auto import can (by default) monitor subdirectories of the directories you select?

At one time I had 8 or 10 auto import directories and I thought that was a lot.

I'm having trouble coming up with a reason why you would use so many individual directories for auto import, rather than a few top level directories.

But I'm glad you have it working now.

Brian.