Hi!
I've begun re-ripping albums, which were lost after a hdd failure, but how can i use the MC library, which has all the information of the lost tracks' tags, and copy these tags to the new re-ripped tracks?
I know that in Tag&Rename all you have to do is select the old files, press copy tags, and then select the new files and press paste tags, and all the tags are copied to their respective field, but i can't do this since i no longer have the old tracks (only MC librarys index).
I've tried searching for help on this on the forum and the help file, but haven't found anything. Also, the files aren't identical since i've chosen a lower bit rate for the new files, if that matters.
many thanks
That's okay. It actually should be easy as long as you had a well organized library on disk before. If you rip the new files to the same location as the old ones (same path) then your MC library will just "work". Just make sure if you're using MC to rip them, you don't rip them "into" the old library. Use a separate clean library to do the rips, and then switch to the "broken" one when you're done.
If you can't just put the new rips in the same place as the old ones, you can move the old library's files' "location" manually. Simply load up the "broken" library, and then select the library's representation of the files you just ripped (which will all be "not found") and then do Library Tools --> Move Files and "move" the broken ones to the new files' location.
For example, say you had your old files at C:\music\ in <Artist>\<Album> folders with the filenames set to <Track #> - <Name>. But, for whatever weird reason your new rips are at M:\media\music\ in <Artist> - <Album> folders with the filenames set to <Artist> - <Track #> - <Name>.
After you've finished ripping a couple of albums, switch over to the old broken library (make a backup of it first in case you screw it up so you can start over) and then select all of the files from the albumyou just ripped (one "folder" at a time) and do Library Tools --> Move Disk File and select the new folder as the destination. MC will update the "pointer" for the file and effectively "move" the metadata tags to point at the new rips. You can even then do a Library Tools --> Update Tags (from library) to fix the files so that the embedded file tags match the MC library.
That's just one way of course ... You could also just use expressions on the Filename tag itself to move them (instead of the Move Disk File tool) which would be faster, but more dangerous and harder to understand if you don't have a firm grasp on MC's expressions system.
