Recently,
fitbrit and I were having a discussion about some issues getting MKV files to build their thumbnails and the topic shifted a bit to reference a serious problem I've been struggling with for quite some time (effectively since MC12's Auto-Import tool reached its current design). Here's my new thread detailing this problem... I've mentioned this before but never got much traction.
The problem is that if all of these things are true:
(1) You do
Rename Files From Properties on a large batch of files.
(2) The result of the Rename will move the said files from one drive to another (meaning it is more appropriately a "move" operation than a "rename" operation).
(3) The tagging operation (move) takes a
long time to complete. This can be caused by a number of factors: Either the source or the destination drive are slow (external or network).
OR you are simply moving a whole bunch of big files. Both of these factors are
extremely common with my video files (which are often big, and often need to be moved from one drive to another).
(4) Auto-Import is
enabled and is monitoring the destination folder.
The result is:
Everything gets all messed up. A seemingly random selection of the files will get "Auto-Imported" by Otto in the new Destination directory, while the Rename From Properties tool is still running in the background. This causes large numbers of the files to lose
ALL of their tag data, because it effectively re-imports them from scratch (and MC does not support saving tags in-files for videos). When this happens, only some of the files get broken. I think the ones "early" in the move operation work fine, but all of those that take longer to finish moving than whatever the Auto-Import trigger "time out" is get re-imported and therefore "broken" (all tag data erased).
There is no way to undo this, once it happens (because even restoring a backup library is useless because the files in question were
moved). Often, when you first realize that it is happening, you can sit there and watch the problem get worse and worse. I've had Auto-Import "import" 50 or so files, realize that it was happening and messing my files up, and not being able to do anything because the Rename Files From Properties tool still had 400 more files to "move", and I know it is going to break them too! I've only personally experienced this using the Rename Files from Properties tool, but I'd guess that it would apply equally to any slow Move operation, including manually tagging the [Filename] field, or using the Library Tools --> Move/Copy File tool.
This CONSTANTLY is a major pain. The only work-around is to manual disable Auto-Import before I use the Rename Files from Properties tool. I try, but it never fails that when I'm tagging my video files, and I finish tagging a whole series full of TV shows and then go to move them to their "final destination" using Rename Files from Properties, I forget and I end up having to start essentially all over again.
The solution seems simple. MC should automatically suspend Auto-Import whenever a tagging operation that affects the [Filename] tag is still in progress, re-enabling it only after the tagging is completed. This would solve this problem completely.