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Author Topic: MC15 only import music separate files from server not as complete albums?  (Read 1892 times)

larss

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I had no problem with MC14 to import all my files on my music server to MC14 which showed all
my albums including cover art. With MC15 no albums show up,
under ALBUMS. BUT all files are shown under Files randomly order.
How to Import my CD albums from my server to MC15 so the files show up as complete albums with coverart?? 
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MusicHawk

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MC identifies an Album when there are several (or even one) individual files that have the same Album name. The Album name must exist in MC's database for every track, either by typing it in, or by MC getting it from tags embedded in the files -- assuming the music files are of a type that has embedded tags, such as mp3 or flac (but NOT wav).

If the imported files don't show as albums, probably they don't have the Album name embedded in the files so MC doesn't know what it is. Perhaps MC14 was not set to "Update tags when file info changes" (which I believe means, and *should* say something like "Update File Tags when Library info is changed"). If this wasn't set, you will see Albums in MC14 only because the names are in the database. To be portable you also need them in the files. You can also force this in MC14 by selecting the tracks and manually updating tags from library.

Once you have the tags in the files, in MC15 you can get them from tags into to the database when importing, OR later by selecting the tracks and manually updating library from tags. (Use caution, this will overwrite anything you manually typed into the database that differs from what is in the files.) Or, you can type the album name into the tracks in MC15 (select all the tracks of the album, type the Album name into one track, and they will all be updated).

Or... there are other scenarios depending on the state of your MC14 and MC15 libraries vs. the physical files.

Album cover art is a separate matter, but it can't happen automatically unless MC knows the Album name and Artist name.
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Managing my media with JRiver since Media Jukebox 8 (maybe earlier), currently use Media Center for Audio/Music and Photos/Videos.
My career in media spans Radio, TV, Print, Photography, Music, Film, Online, Live, Advertising, as producer, director, writer, performer, editor, engineer, executive, owner. An exhausting but amazing ride.

Vincent Kars

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Might be that the file format is WAV?
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larss

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File format wav. Found the backed up MC14 Library and reloaded it and problem solved so far. All these CDs have previously been imported from the HP Media Server where each CD in a separate Mapp named by the Artist, imported one by one, and than Tagged in MC14.
However, none of these separate music files had the Album or Artist in the File name. To be able to import these directly into the MC15
Library and have these files collected as CDs, the Album and Artist need to be filled in into the File name. Is this how it should be done?
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MusicHawk

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Using wav files makes this harder, because that format can't have embedded tags. You either have to rely entirely on the database, or give the files names that contain all the info you need to transfer. That's a project, and fraught with traps because file names can't be as long as tags/fields, can't contain all the same characters, and might not retain desired capitalization.

Assuming you are using wav to preserve maximum quality, consider using MC to convert to lossless flac or ape (or max quality mp3 or a few others), formats which can have embedded tags, which you can embed (library to file) using MC14 then extract (file to library) using MC15.

But, why not load a backup of the MC14 library into MC15, thereby having the same database records pointing to the same files? No need to import to create a new library. You have to use a MC14 backup --> MC15 restore because the actual library files are not compatible. By using the same library (database), whatever you have in MC14 as track data (and views and other good stuff) you'll still have in MC15.

You won't yet have bolted together the data and the files via embedded tags unless you use a different file format (or perhaps in the future you can use MC15's sidecar mode, which right now seems to be only for video files). Again, there are other ways to go, depending...

As to missing data, you might get lucky with online lookups, otherwise it's just a lot of typing.
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Managing my media with JRiver since Media Jukebox 8 (maybe earlier), currently use Media Center for Audio/Music and Photos/Videos.
My career in media spans Radio, TV, Print, Photography, Music, Film, Online, Live, Advertising, as producer, director, writer, performer, editor, engineer, executive, owner. An exhausting but amazing ride.

Vincent Kars

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WAV can be perfectly tagged but due to a lack of standards portability of the tags is an issue.
MC also supports tagging WAV, you might try this with the MC14 library: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=57036.0

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