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[gakaudio]

Hello, My music is located on an external hard drive that is connected to my music PC via USB cable. For better or worse, I changed the location or file path of my music directory. Now I am having some trouble with my music library. For example, in midia center, on the left pannel under Audio/Files is how i sometimes navigate my music files. However, that way of navigating shows my old file path and doesn't show new music i have added.

How can I "tell" media center to recognize my new file path location of my music? Thanks, Garth

[MrC]

You need to use the Rename, Move & Copy tool in Update mode to change the file path.  See:

   http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Moving_Files

You can Find/Replace the drive segment of the path, or whatever you need.

[gakaudio]

Thank you MrC for the reply. From your suggestion and looking at the page you linked I have learned a bit about my problem. All of my lossless music is in the correct file location – D:\Music\Lossless\...

When I view all of my music in Media Center listed by details and sorted by default, the file path under the filename column reads the correct file path as D:\Music\Lossless\Adele\...  for example.  Unfortunately there is a “broken” file(path) right above or below it that reads D:\Music\Adele\... 

So on some level media center knows the new file paths of my music but is confounded with the fact that the old music is not in its old place.

I tried the Rename, Move & Copy tool but was confused as to what to do because the files already had the correct file path and location.

My main issue surrounds my desire to have my music correctly displayed in my Audio/Files “path” on the left hand side of the media center interface.  When I look for my music using the Audio/Files “path”, it only displays music that I had in the file path of D:/Music before I changed the file path to D:/Music/Lossless. All of the new music I have added since changing the file path is not shown or is inaccessible using this search technique. This is a problem for me as this is the way that I most frequently navigate and select music to play.  I did not have this problem on my main computer where I do all of my burning and tagging. The issue only resides on my audio PC reading off of my external hard drive.

So I would like to fix this issue and “fix” or discard all of my broken links that have been caused by my file directory change.

It strikes me that it might be most straight forward to clear or delete my main directory and then create a new one hoping that this will fix my issues as it remaps my files from scratch.
Sorry for the lengthy post. I look forward to any new advice or direction. Thanks, Garth

[MrC]

The easiest way to clear up the missing links, if the files are missing only because you changed paths and MC still has references to the old paths, is to sort by the Filename column and select the missing files and hit Delete, or you enter into the Search box:

  [=ismissing()]=1

and this will show you the missing files (aka broken links) which you can Delete.

[gakaudio]

OK, I will try this. However, how do I get my existing files and my newly added files to display in my prefered method of viewing? If I "Clear" my Main library (I don't seem to be able to delete it) and create a new main library, won't it correct my issuse?

[MrC]

I'm not clear about how you want to view your music.  Can you provide a little more detail?

The left side is the Tree.  The top is either your Panes or Categories, and the bottom is a File List.

Let's also separate the two requests here: 1) removing the no-longer valid entries in MC, and 2) creating the view scheme that supports your choice of music browsing.

[gakaudio]

I will try to be more clear and thank you for your patience.
1) I have deleted the majority of my broken links per your suggestion. I say majority because I have so many I may have missed a few.

2) My view is set to standard. In the Tree (the left side of MC) is the following “list” from top down: Playing Now, Audio, Images, etc…  I left click on Audio to expand and show the subfolders “listed” from top down: Albums, Artists, Files, Genres, Panes, etc…  I left click on Files to expand and show the subfolders “listed” from top down: C:, D:.  My D: drive is my external hard drive. I have lossy music in itunes (D:\Music\itunes) and lossless music in a Lossless folder (D:\Music\Lossless).  My Issue was that no Lossless folder was shown in my D: drive when I expanded the D: folder. However, now that I have cleaned up my broken links, my Lossless folder is now shown in the file structure D:\Music\Lossless. It is possible that because all of these broken links were present and that the file structure looked the same as it did after I moved files to my lossless folder; I just assumed that my changes did not take effect.

At any rate, it appears that my issues are resolved and that I will just need to do some fine tuning. Thank you for your help and again for your patience. Garth

[MrC]

The content of the Tree is based on the actual items in MC.

One of the limiting factors of the tree is that it is not possible to select all content from subservient categories at once.

A generally more useful solution is to use the metadata to drive presentation and filtering.  This gives you flexibility and doesn't force you to be tied to the structure of the file system.

You could instead use a standard panes view that includes Artist, Album, but also includes a column for Lossy and Lossless selection.  Then, by selecting any artist and/or album, you'd see the types of music available for the current selection.  If there was no Lossy, you'd only see Lossless listed in the column.  Or, if you see both, but want to filter on Lossless, only those items will be shown.  The column mentioned above can also be constructed such that it can collect your lossy or lossless media from any and all locations.  It can be based on file type (e.g. flac) and/or bitrate, etc.

With Two Way filtering enabled, you could select first Lossless, and this would filter Album and Artist to show only those albums and artists for which you had lossless content.

You can have the best of both worlds, by adding a tree (a hierarchical presentation) into an pane column.