INTERACT FORUM

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Accessed Times of Files Modified?  (Read 1105 times)

bitfidelity

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2
Accessed Times of Files Modified?
« on: January 13, 2013, 03:32:26 pm »

I noticed that JRiver changed the accessed time of all the files in one of my albums. How did this happen? AFAIK, I didn't change any of its tags or wrote to it in any way through the program.
Logged

MrC

  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 10462
  • Your life is short. Give me your money.
Re: Accessed Times of Files Modified?
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2013, 04:14:08 pm »

Do you mean Access time or Modified time?  Every operation that reads a file will affect the access time.

There are options to control if MC writes tags or cover art to files.  In auto-import, see the option:

   Write tags when analyzing audio, getting cover art, and applying folder-based tags

MC does audio analysis on the files, and updates the file tags to include these values.  Also cover art lookup and location may cause file updates.  The above option controls this.
Logged
The opinions I express represent my own folly.

bitfidelity

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2
Re: Accessed Times of Files Modified?
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2013, 05:05:04 pm »

I mean the access time. Does MC default to writing tags or cover art to files upon import? If so, that is a terrible idea. Luckily, I don't think MC changed any of my files, since the timestamps on the majority of files I checked have not changed.

Strangely, it's just one album that had its access time changed by MC.

You say that every operation that reads a file affects the access time, but I don't think this is true. The only times I've witnessed the access time changing is when writing new cover art to a file via Mp3tag (and I don't know why that is). The difference between modified and access time in Windows is a huge mystery to me.
Logged

MrC

  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 10462
  • Your life is short. Give me your money.
Re: Accessed Times of Files Modified?
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2013, 05:29:23 pm »

Access time will ALWAYS change anytime any program just *reads* even a single byte of a file.  This is normal, and you should not be concerned about access times.  If you are, don't have MC import (or look at any files, period).  For FAT file systems, the granularity is 1 day, and for NTFS it is essentially per-hour.

The new install defaults to having tag writing being *disabled*.
Logged
The opinions I express represent my own folly.
Pages: [1]   Go Up