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[muttoab]

I frequently make changes to the location of media files and delete /add directly in Windows Explorer. Unfortunately, I find that the "auto import" and "update for external changes" features in MC are pretty hit-and-miss and a lot of files remain that have moved etc.

The workaround is pretty simple though - after I have made a large number of changes, I simply create a new library, re-import the media and therefore create a fresh database. (clearing and then repopulating a library also pretty buggy. Almost always misses a good portion of files for me)

I don't mind the workaround so much but I now have extra libraries that I can't delete. Sometimes it is fine (just right click on a local library that isn't loaded and select delete), other times the option to delete is greyed out and I can seem to figure out why some are not deletable and some are....

This occurs on three different machines running Win7 and MC 18.0.129 or better.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

[kstuart]

What I do to move a folder:

* Turn off "Update Library in Background"

* Select the files in MC18 and press "delete"

* Go to Removed Smartlist and select the items there and press "delete" (Create the Smartlist by pasting " ~d=r " into the Import of a new Smartlist)

* Move the files in Windows Explorer

* Click on "Run Auto-Import Now"

There are ways to do this internal to MC18, but I find some of that to be more flaky than the above.

[MrC]

This seems like a really circuitous way to handle running a re-import.  Why not Run Auto-Import Now?

[glynor]

If the files are all on internal disks*, the Fix Broken Links feature of Auto-Import will automatically do all of this for you (except remove the items from the Removed Items Database).  It will just happen in the background, but if you want to force it...

Run Auto-Import Now?

Also, to be clear:  Removing items from the Removed Items Database is only needed when you want to re-import them from scratch (generally for testing).  Normally, this is not necessary, and MC uses this information to make the second import much quicker.  It also allows MC to preserve metadata not available in the file-tags.  If you're regularly moving things around and re-importing them, it might be helpful to uncheck the Ignore Files Previously Removed option as well (that feature is smarter than you might think, and doesn't just look at the [Filename].  I believe it will recognize the same file that has been removed and then moved around.

If you want to, for some reason, move files to a location not monitored by Auto-Import, then re-importing the files is still simple.  While you still have Windows Explorer open after you moved the files, simply drag-drop the folder or files onto MC's Title-Bar area (where it says "JRiver Media Center 18" when playback is stopped, or the track title when it is playing).  It will pop up a choice to Import the Files.  Pick it, done.  There is also the Shell Extensions in Windows Explorer, if you have those turned on.

Generally, I think you're overthinking it.  Just move the stuff you want to move, and let Auto-Import clean up the mess.

If you have specific examples of where Auto-Import isn't cleaning up the mess, please post details so that it can be fixed.  I'm certainly not seeing it (in fact, I wish there was some way to tune the Fix Broken Links feature to be a little less aggressive).

* Fix Broken Links does NOT apply to network drives and external drives (USB, Firewire, etc) by default.  It also looks at the root of the drive to try to determine if the actual drive itself is gone (in which case it does not remove the missing files), or if the drive is the same and therefore the files have been really moved or deleted.  You can make it "just do it" (without these caveats) by changing the Remove Broken Links setting from Yes (Protect files on missing drives) to just plain-vanilla Yes.  Be wary in this mode, though.  If a file is gone (drive disconnects) for any reason, they get zapped.  Also, note that eSATA drives are considered internal disks because eSATA doesn't provide a mechanism to "tell" that they're external rather than internal.  All SATA disks look the same to Windows.

[glynor]

More importantly, though, save yourself some headache.  You can move files around from within MC using a number of simple and elegant solutions.

1. Go to Drives & Devices > Explorer in the Tree, and move the folders there.

2. Find the files in question anywhere in MC and edit the [Filename] tag.  This is often convenient if you just need to tweak a single file.

3. Find the files in question anywhere in MC, select them (even big batches), right click and choose Library Tools > Rename, Move, and Copy Files.  This is easily the most powerful of the bunch.  You can Find & Replace on the Filename itself (which is handy if you want to move whole directories and their substructures, or even entire drives, from one place to another).  And, you can also build powerful File Renaming schemes driven by the metadata and the tags in the files.

And, lastly, even if you do move them from within Windows Explorer (or some other external application), you can manually fix the broken links using any of these same means.  If you "move" a broken linked file in MC to the location where it really now is, it will "find" it and relink the file.

[muttoab]

Thanks for all the feedback. I do understand the built-in tools with MC but find that in my particular situation they don't work consistently. It's made hard to troubleshoot though because of the fact that I'm storing files on a NAS that is EXTREMELY slow.... Using the explorer in MC it takes upwards of 3-5 min to refresh my "music" directory. This hardware issue may well be a good part of the problem, so I think it best if I fix that with a better solution and re-visit.

(That said, it is still odd that sometimes you can delete a library and sometimes you can't...)