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[globetrotters1]

Some weeks ago I started to rip my classical music collection and defined special views with special fields for classifying the classical music... up to that point my MC DB had something like 148'000 tracks of modern music listed and worked like a charm

Some days ago my wife showed up and complained about an artist she likes so much, she played so often in the past, but who had simply disappeared - I though wow, impossible!

I checked and found these artist/albums in Windows Explorer

But no trace of them in Media Center

Ouch

First try:
re-importing them - MC tells me that 0 new tracks had been imported and that these tracks had been updated - result: nothing new, they stay invisible (although they are well known to MC DB)

Second try:
I emptied and re-built the whole DB and there the real freaky things happened! The first 500 tracks got imported correctly, all the rest of the 148'000 have "year - nothing(Space)" and all tracks are "00 - real trackname" - all classification is gone, everything is listed under "unassigned" (except the first 500 or so)

My question now (before I start to do all kinds of things and while fiddling around would probably kill my tags somehow... which would be a tedious job to get them back):

My guess is that introducing 4 additional DB fields for classical music generates this problem. Emptying the DB I told the program to just empty the data fields and NOT reverting the DB structure to standard. Can it be that the modern music tags have some nonsense stored in the location where the classical music tags should store their additional information? And that this can generate such a problem?

What to do to get all my data back online?

Revert the DB structure for the modern music to standard? Then importing the 148'000 tracks? And then?

Do I have to define my new DB fields once again and do a special 'cleaning' run on all the modern music tracks first? (before importing the classical music) Re-build the whole tags of 148'000 files?

Or what would be your suggestion?

Help greatly appreciated

PS: I run 12.0.534 and 13.0.062 (for tests, already licensed) on the same machine, but still work with version 12

[globetrotters1]

a short reply would be nice so that I can go on with my rips, thanks

[vbrook]

I have a large classical music collection, with many custom fields, and have not encountered this problem.

My first thought, with regard to the re-importing, was that the "ignore previously imported files" (whatever the exact workding is) option was checked. My next thought was that you'd deleted your custom library fields and views. However, I don't have enough information to know whether that is indeed that case.

Do you have a backup of all of your ripped music? If not, that is the first thing I would do. Always have backup hard drives---not one, but two, and keep the second one anywhere but your own home, in case of fire, et cetera. You can also backup the MC database in order to restore it quickly should anything happen.

In the next step, if I were you, I would load up MP3Tag. I'm not sure whether you're familiar with it, but if not it's a freeware tagging utility. It recognises a wide variety of filetypes as well, including FLAC (not just MP3). www.mp3tag.de

Copy a small, problematic portion of your collection to a new folder. Load it up in Mp3Tag and select "View Extended Tags". Do so for individual files, one at a time. You'll see the raw data in your tags.

Report back here, please.

Good Luck!

[221bBS]

Not sure what happened to your  tags. My guess is that the tags were not stored inside your files.

With your DB being so messed up I would suggest that you restore a backup library which MC does on a regular basis. The Default Path is...

C:\Documents and Settings\USEER NAME\Application Data\J River\Media Center 12\Library Backups

USEER NAME = Your log in name.

[globetrotters1]

Thanks guys for your kind help, although I'm sure that the tags in my music files are ok. And no worries, I have backups of my data on additional hard disks. So there is nothing to be worried about

The main problem lies within the Media Center database that it doesn't show all artists anymore. And that re-creating the database doesn't work like it should.

As long as I used only standard tag fields everything went fine. Then I added several additional custom fields to cater my needs within the classical music and now all of a sudden I can't even re-import my formerly perfectly tagged modern music collection anymore???

If that doesn't sound weird then I don't know

Jim or whoever from JRiver is reading this: could you please be so kind to give me a hint how to resolve this situation!?!

My guess is that I have to set the database fields back to standard, import the modern music (without the custom fields), define the custom fields, run a tag cleaning on the modern music part (so that it cleans out rubbish in the newly defined db fields somehow ?) and re-import the classical music. Do you think that would work? Or do I have to do something else too???

It just can't be possible that it's impossible to re-import a database and it ends up with 147'500 tracks of empty data - without having done anything to the existing tag data !

Thanks,
Martin
(globetrotters1)

btw: I couldn't find a description anywhere within the forum or in the wiki what to do in such a case! no complaint, but this is the reason why I post my question here. So it would be cool to get a response, I'd certainly appreciate any help

[Matt]

Jim or whoever from JRiver is reading this: could you please be so kind to give me a hint how to resolve this situation!?!

I wish I had an answer.  You're seeing something strange that we haven't really heard before.

One trick is that you can view the physical file tag to make sure it contains what you think it should here:
Action Window > Tag > [Click the first line]

My guess is that I have to set the database fields back to standard, import the modern music (without the custom fields), define the custom fields, run a tag cleaning on the modern music part (so that it cleans out rubbish in the newly defined db fields somehow ?) and re-import the classical music. Do you think that would work? Or do I have to do something else too???

Starting fresh or from a library backup is, if nothing else, a good test.  I would focus on one album that MC is not showing information for.  See what the tags contain, and see if "Update Library (from tags)" makes the MC entries match that.

Also, you mentioned MC 12 and MC 13 -- make sure they're not sharing the same library folder, or else you'll get undefined results. (although it should give a nice error message on loading instead of doing something bad)

Let us know what you find.

[globetrotters1]

Matt,

thanks for the response! Really appreciate your support!

Your hint with the MC12 and MC13 library could be the correct trail... I think both are linked to the same DB... although I haven't used both programs at the same time... ok, I try to import a separate MC12 and a MC13 database... and try to find out which album causes this problem

But I'll report my finds, stay tuned

[globetrotters1]

Step 1

I deleted the contents of the MC13 DB and reverted the settings to 'Standard'
Imported tracks from all artists with name beginning with 'A' - 7000 tracks
The result is as expected - PERFECT - no complaints

The DBs of MC12 and MC13 were in different folders, so there couldn't have been any problem

The main problem happened when re-loading the MC12 DB from the disk data (there it ceased working within letter 'A' after 500 tracks!)
Maybe it's the sheer size of 148'000 tracks, importing them at once, which makes it a problem
Interesting fact is that with time it 'lost' somehow several artists (we don't know when though) as we have these tracks on external MP3 players (loaded from MC12!)

anyway, next step: I load the same within MC12 and then load the letter of the artists which have been "lost"

[globetrotters1]

Step 2

MC12: works with letter A, no problem

MC13: added letter 'R' with one of the missing artists - works - no problem - artist showed up again, imported 7600 additional tracks
MC12: same result

BOTH databases hold the standard set of database fields up to here

Next step: I import the whole DB (148'000 tracks) within MC12 with just the standard set of DB fields - and then within MC13

[globetrotters1]

Step 3

MC12: re-loaded the WHOLE 148'000 tracks including setting the library fields back to standard... and the result is disappointing!
         lost almost all album names, although the artists are there completely
         almost all genre definitions are not set in the DB

MC13: re-load in progress (as it takes a lot of time to do it)

My guess is that a re-load of that many tracks results in some overflow or such which is not handled correctly.
My next try will be to re-load the DB three or four characters (A-C, D-F and so on) at a time and backup the library between each run.

Comments?

[JimH]

Depending on the format, there may be no tag information available.  Even in this case, MC can store information in it's library.  I believe this is all you're seeing.  Your album names aren't in the tags, or tags don't exist.

MC has an option to "Also store in tag when possible".  With files that have correct information, if you set this, and then do update tags from library, the tags will be filled in.

It would be wise to learn to use the Library Tools with a small number of files (even problem files) first before doing large scale operations.

[globetrotters1]

Jim,

all tags are there, believe me! I'm a IT pro and I know what I'm doing.

The tags are there, my testing proves it as it works perfectly when I import small batches - not one of the artists/albums/tracks show any error. As soon as I run the big batch (should be possible with 4GB of memory) it shows those errors

Within the letter R we suddenly found out that of 106 artists only 100 showed in Media Center. Importing the other 6 it told us that they are already stored - but they didn't show! So we decided to do a whole new import. With that only 500 tracks showed up correctly in the newly imported library, and 147'500 tracks showed errors. Importing the batch of only one letter (A) and then (R) showed everything correctly.

If you take me seriously (and believe me, I don't play any games with you) you have to admit that something is terribly wrong.

I now do the import (within a clean new library) of smaller batches of 10'000 to 15'000 tracks at a time, check and only move on to the next batch if I checked everything and everything is correct.

I let you know my finds!

Sorry as it will take some time to do all that

Martin

[globetrotters1]

Jim and Co,

I have the proof...

Importing 33'450 tracks (letter A through C of the artists) works just fine! MC12 shows no errors at all...

I'm running now additional 30'000 (letters D through G)...

That at least proves that my tags are in good condition and that the problem has to be somewhere else. Where the problem is located - no idea

Thanks, I post more comments later when I'm done with the next batch

Martin

[globetrotters1]

update:

done with letters A through Z (in seven batches), I have

148'532 tracks - 2122 artists - 10073 albums

checked and they are 100% complete, nothing is missing! (means also that my tags are in good shape)


If I may conclude: problems with really big batches, running ok when done in smaller batches - good to know!
(at least I'm happy that everything is there again - just some thousand classical music tracks are to import)

Remarks?

Now, the next step would be to do the definition of the 4 additional custom DB fields again. I know how to do that. The fields have been defined before as "store in tag if possible". So I assume they are not lost and can be imported again when doing the classical music import.

Question 1: after defining my 4 additional DB fields, do I have to do a special "cleaning run" on my modern music part? Like "build new tags" or such. I don't want to run into the same problem again, now that I have a complete DB of my modern music part again.

Question 2: How comes that several artists simply silently disappear? Is it possible that your DB can go corrupt one day without telling me that something is wrong? I find something like this honestly very scary...

Question 3: Why is it possible that the import function can tell me that the data is already stored and the GUI doesn't show them? Do you have any hints where the problem might be located?

Thanks

Martin

PS: this is by no ways a complaint, just wanted you to be aware that there is a problem here somehow - I do now a re-import on a MC13 library

[Matt]

Media Center 12 didn't like doing 150,000 track imports into a fresh library.  There were no data loss issues that we're aware of, but memory consumption could be high.

Media Center 13 optimizes this.

[globetrotters1]

Ok, now I got everything back in again...

Importing in batches of 20'000 to 30'000 tracks per import run runs just fine and like that I could restore my library.

I also imported the first 25'000 classical music tracks (all with much more complex tag data!) and it's all there, the program behaves as expected. So far everything ok.

Only open question is:
How is it possible that the library silently "lost" whole artists? Is there any way to find out that a database/library got into a corrupt state? How?

(At least I now know how to re-build/fill a fresh empty library without losing information)
Thanks
Martin

[JimH]

Don't forget to back up your library.