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I noticed that too.

I imagine this would play havoc with a backing up strategy too - requiring lots of unnecessary backing up of files that in reality haven't changed.

I just ran "Update Library from Tags" and it said that out of 6010 files, 6000 needed to be updated

You're forcing MC to update the library, so it'll re-read every file.

There's no reason to do this unless you've done something with another program to make MC and the tags be out of step.

update library from tags," yet it changed the actual files

We'll look into it.

This "Update Tag" behavior in MC is very concerning.

Hopefully I am just not clear on how to turn it off, and prevent MC from touching my MP3 files.

Cleaning up MP3 tags has taken a lot of effort on my part.
I use MP3 Tag Studio to do it. My workflow involves ripping (EAC) and encoding (LAME) outside of MJ.

I picked MJ because it can be used in a way in which it does not write anything to the MP3 file, let alone the tags.

After placing a new batch of MP3 files into my music folder, a simple "Clear Library" and "Import Media" is all that is required to resync MJ.

Many "media" apps write to (and sometimes even re-encode) existing MP3 files without notification of any kind.

I realize that MC may be trying to help, by fixing tags, beacuse most tags require it.

But please tell me that MC can be used in read-only way like MJ.

Michael

Thank you for the quick response.

I have been using older versions of both WMP (7.1) and JRiver (MJ 8.0.382), because I understood their effects on my data.

My previous post resulted from trying out WMP (9.1) and MJ (8.0.400) last night (after Ghosting my system of course). I was willing to try MC, if it worked out.

I am happy to hear that MC will not touch my MP3 tags.

But after my dismal experience with WMP and 8.0.400, my feet may be too cold to try MC.

The dismality is related to WMP "touching" both of the dates (Modified and Created) for each of my MP3 files. And I didn't even "Scan for New Media".

There must be a quiet WMP service running (in the background). Equally discomforting, WMP seems to want access to the Internet randomly.

In any case all of my MP3 files were touched. Their Modified dates were changed to a date&time shortly after I installed WMP (lastnight), and their Created dates to some random (slightly later than their original) Creation date, that has no relavence to anything I can determine.

Incremental backups from my working volume to a backup drive are based on Modified Date (using DirTool). Obviously I cannot have rouge apps "touching" my file's Modified Date attribute.

Can someone verify that setting "Update tags when file info changes" in MC will guarantee that my MP3 files will NOT be "touched", in any way?

And is the Library scheme and approach used in MC the same as in MJ? In other words, will perforimng a simple "Clear Library" and "Import Media" be all that is required to resync (after adding new files and fixing tags externally).

And can I use MC without WMP 9.1? And/or is WMP9 required?

Just like in the beginning of MP3's history, there is again too much activity in the media app arena today.  Each app wants control, you can't browse without all three media applets installed, tags are modified willy nilly. There is little consistency, much incompatibility, and its very time consumming, even for this engineer to figure out which combination of apps will best preserve and serve his data.

Three years ago MJ was like a breath of fresh air.  It knew what it was doing, did it simply, and didn't step on anyone's toes. Is MC really out of Beta yet! Have uncle's Bill and Steve really stabilized there platforms (XP, AAC, directSound, etc.) enough for creative folks like JRiver to begin to give us a smart media app again?

Please say yes, yes, yes , and yes!

Michael