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More => Old Versions => Media Center 13 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: rsbrux on March 07, 2009, 06:33:21 am

Title: recording audio in mc 13
Post by: rsbrux on March 07, 2009, 06:33:21 am
I'm just trying out mc13 and having trrouble getting started.
My main use for mc13 will be archiving and playing my collection of CDs, tapes and LPs.
I started out by recording a cassette.  Recording seemed to go OK, but the "Tracks" button in the recording dialog is disabled, and after clicking "Exit", I wasn't presented with "Recently imported files", as the Wiki led me to expect.
Navigating to "Audio - Recent Albums" revealed the files, which were all recorded as WMA.
I will probably want to have them as MP3, unless someone here can present good reasons for choosing another format.
I selected the new files and chose "Tag", whereupon mc13 immediatel tried to retag files which I hadn't selected - very unfriendly!
Fortunately I had write protected my existing files.  Obviosly I don't understand how this is supposed to work.
I then tried "Look up from YADB".  I got what looked like a success message, but no information seems to have been added.
Meanwhile MC is still trying to retag files that don't even appear in the UI.
In desperation, I closed MC, but it seems to continue running in the backgroound, attempting to retag files.
Help!
Title: Re: recording audio in mc 13
Post by: JimH on March 07, 2009, 07:02:14 am
Tagging occurs for a lot of reasons, including playback, new cover art, etc.  There's no reason to be concerned about it.  If you are, you could set up a small test libary.  File/Library/Library Manager to start.

YADB probably won't work with a recording from a tape.

The filetype MP3 can be chosen in the encoding options.  There is a different one for each type of media source.  You want to choose Recording"
Title: Re: recording audio in mc 13
Post by: rsbrux on March 07, 2009, 10:31:36 am
Jim,
Thanks for the quick response.  It turned out that MC had in fact retagged one of my newly recorded files:  incorrectly!
MC13 is still trying to retag my previously catalogued files, even after a reboot.
In view of the above-mentioned experience, I find this totally unacceptable!  How can I stop it?
Thanks for your support!

P.S. I just found this Wiki Topic http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Plug-In_Manager (http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Plug-In_Manager) and tried to turn of the taggin in the MP3 plug-in configuration.
The choices there don't make any sense to me.  I have over 300GB of manually tagged MP3s and don't want MC messing around with them.
The only choice which seems to afford this is "Don't save, ignore existing", but I wnat MC to respect and use my existing tags, not ignore them.
Obviously, whatever logic there may be here completely escapes me!
BTW, I got to the above-mentioned Wiki page, which identifies the MP3 plugin as an *Input* plug-in from http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Set_up_the_Playback_Plug-Ins (http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Set_up_the_Playback_Plug-Ins).  How's that for a contradiction in terms?
Title: Re: recording audio in mc 13
Post by: JimH on March 07, 2009, 10:50:25 am
In options, you can turn off some features you don't want.

Cover art lookup
Audio analysis
Title: Re: recording audio in mc 13
Post by: rsbrux on March 07, 2009, 11:00:06 am
Finally found these under "auto-import options".
I looked at these before and foolishly assumed that this only addressed data being written into MC's DB. 
Nowhere did I find an indication that MC would try to modify my previously tagged files based on these settings.

BTW, I had already disabled "also store image in the file's tag" under "File Locations - Cover Art".
Can I safely leave on "lookup cover art" with this setting? 
I set "Folder" ot MC's user data directory, so it won't overwrite my existing covers.
Maybe this way MC could find covers for some recordings that don't have any yet.

P.S. Finally found this: http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Save_File_Properties_in_Disk_Files (http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Save_File_Properties_in_Disk_Files), which seems to describe the culprit.