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[JimK]

My hard drive recently crashed and I am faced with ripping my CD collection all over again.  Fortunately, my database is intact and it knows where the files were located.

I put in my first CD to rip, and instead of looking up the tag information from my database, it went out to YADB.  My database entries differ from YADB, so it didn't match the album name exactly and created a new entry in my database.

I then unchecked the option to lookup up the info from YADB.  When I put in my second CD, instead of lookup up the tag info from my database, it just displayed Track1, Track2, etc.

How can I rip my CDs and force the lookup to come from my database instead of YADB?

One additional question: Currently, all icons for database entries have a red X on them, indicating the files don't exist.  After ripping a CD, the X still appears.  How can I clear the X?

[nila]

Here's what you do.

Right now make a backup of your library just so it's all intact no matter what goes wrong.
Put that somewhere safe so you can always go back to it.

Then re-rip your albums using the exact same naming convention as before and put them in the same place etc.

Not sure how smart MC is but it might be worth NOT doing it with MC in case it realises that these aren't the original files and tries to mark them as new files.

Basically once you get all your files back to where they should be though then just put your main library back in place and it should just think they're the original files.

Once its recognising them again and stuff you might want to right click on your files and chose to Update Files from Library so all the correct tags get written to the files as well.
This will take a LONG time if you had alot of files so leave it doing it overnight.

Good luck - just make sure you get that library backup and U'll be fine

[JimK]

Thanks for the reply.  This would solve the problem of preserving additional tag info from my database.

One of the problems is that all my artist info is "lastname, firstname" and most of the listings in YADB are "firstname lastname".  That would require me to modify much of the info as I'm ripping the CDs.

Another problem is that several CDs are not in YADB and I've added them to my database manually.

Ideally, I would like to insert a new CD and have it find all of the info in my database without having to search YADB.

[KingSparta]

there is also another file you could back up and that is

cdplayer.ini

this contains info from the lookup that can be edited with a text editor

i think it is c:\windows\cdplayer.ini

[MarSies]

Hi Jim,

I also recently had a disk failure, just bought 2 new 250GB SATA drives to start all over again.

All the songs are marked with a red "x" because they aren't there. What I did was just starting to re-rip and all the songs that were physically there were unmarked. If I let MC just play songs random you can see in the list which songs are already there.

I can understand why u don't want to use YADB. In fact it is a good idea not to use it because of performance issues. Nila, I don't understand your way of not using YADB but the local database  ?

It is better, when CD's are not in YADB, to add them. You and others benefit from this. I added a lot and now I'm happy I did this because I can now reuse that information.

My question:
I will make a stripe set (hardware controlled) and use 2*250GB drives. Is there any recommendation on the stripe and cluster size. I use the ape format which on the average is half the size of a wav file.

MarSies .....

[JimK]

I'm trying the approach that Nila suggested earlier:

1. Backup my library.
2. Start with a new empty library.
3. Rip my CDs into the new library using my original file structure.
4. Load the original library and the files should be where they originally were.

When I tried simply ripping them into the original library, I started getting duplicate tracks within an album.  That would have required manually removing the duplicates in the library.

The only problem with the method I'm now using is that my file structure is Artist\Album\Name.  Since I use "Lastname, Firstname" or "Groupname, The" for the artist names, and YADB usually has "Firstname Lastname" or "The Groupname", the file folder names don't match exactly.  I now have to rename them in the library and have it rename the folders with the library tools.

If only it would do a lookup in my library first, before going out to YADB ...

[xen-uno]

MarSies,

You should take a look at the threads contained here...

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=17758

...regarding your stripe set. Accept the default cluster size if you do go with RAID Level 0 (striped, no parity), which should be 512 or 1024 byte for NTFS file systems. I take it you know about the cluster size vs speed vs wasted space scenario.

10^-27

[DJMUK]

JimK,

Note sure if this is of any direct use to you but I have ripped about 600 albums over the last few months and wanted to have this artist structure.

I tend to have a lot of albums by each artist as well as many compilations and found the YADB naming format a pain.  It was compounded by strange spellings and capitalisations.

In the end I decided to let YADB have its way as any new additions to the library will have the same problem.

When all was ripped I made a custom library field called Artist (sorted) and, having selected all tracks in the library,  copied the artist name field to it, after first having corrected them for spelling and capitalisation.  I then went through and changed the new field to last + firstname.  Finally, I selected all tracks and used the library tools to update the tags and rename the files

At least now I can have view schemes using either of the artist name conventions.  I also bought an external Firewire/USB2 hard disk so I will not have to do it again, I hope!

David

[nila]

So there's two of you with this problem??

Do you both have a lot of albums??


If so I'll try help you out.

I'll make a plugin, you rip the album first - dont bother filling in track names - just make sure it's listed properly track number wise.
It could have any old data.

You then select the album in MC, select the directory where that album is and I'll try make it so it renames all those tracks to match the original file names of the original tracks.


Would that save you guys several years?

[Zarius]

I thought the old cd's were stored in the MC library?  IE if you got the data from YADB before and modified it before ripping, that info would be stored under the  "Media Library/Advanced/ CD&DVD" branch... and would come back up when you put the cd in (turn off lookup from YADB just in case).

However if you changed the artist names/etc -after- ripping the cd, this wouldn't help.

[JimK]

1. Yes, I have around 600 CDs.  It took me about 2 weeks to rip them all the last time.  This time I'm using auto-rip and I have 2 CD drives, so I feed one drive while the other one is ripping, so it's basically a constant rip.

2. The plug-in idea sounds great. I'm not sure I completely understand how it will work, but I'll be happy to give it a try.

3. Unfortunately, not only did I modify the track and album information after ripping, but I also cleared out all the entries under Advanced\CD & DVD.  It seemed redundant to keep the entries since I select all my music from the Audio folder.

But I think you hit the root of the problem with this one.  I was assuming that the CD would be recognized and matched with the entries under Audio when I put in a CD to rip.  Since it looks for a match under CD & DVD instead, I guess I'm out of luck.

[JimK]

Some questions about the CD & DVD folder:

1. Can I add to this folder from the Audio folder by dragging and dropping, so that the CD info is populated the next time I need to re-rip?

2. Is there a way to import the CD & DVD folder content from one library to another?  Since I'm ripping using a temporary library, my originaly library won't have the CD & DVD folder populated.

[nila]

The plugin would be simple.

U'd browse to a newly ripped folder in one pane.

In the other you'd have displayed a bunch of files (it would automatically try to do a search for the album based on the folder name and therefore automatically would show the correct files for that folder if it was named correctly.
Would you be able to change the search string to refine it to the correct files if the wrong ones were shown.
U then just click a button:  Rename files

It would then use the listed mp3's on the right to rename the files on the left.

U follow?

[Zarius]

JimK:

1. Can I add to this folder from the Audio folder by dragging and dropping, so that the CD info is populated the next time I need to re-rip?

2. Is there a way to import the CD & DVD folder content from one library to another?  Since I'm ripping using a temporary library, my originaly library won't have the CD & DVD folder populated.

Not sure about 1, but I find it very unlikely since MC needs an ID to be able to work out which "CD & DVD" folder to pull up for each CD.

As for 2, I can't see any way of doing this at the moment.  If scott_r releases an XML_Import plugin I think it should be possible... but I have no knowledge of when/if that will happen.

[Tangoman]

Hi JimK,
Do you have an old Library backup before you got rid of the CD/DVD under advanced options? That might save you some renaming. Otherwise Nila's plugin is the way to go. I would love that plugin Nila Many times I have lost my CD lists and I have about 300 CD to rerip to ape when I get back home from BsAs.
Hope this helps
Tangodude

[nila]

Ok,
if it'd save alot of time and effort and people think it would actually do alot then go to the plugin forum and post as many idea's and what u'd lilke it to do as possible in a thread there.

I'll try make it asap.
Should be fairly simple!