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[nila]

Wahoo
I've had a brainwave.
I have them every blue moon just as the sun sets.


Windows has a system restore now to let people restore system changes that caused problems and so gives them a safety net in case of problems.

Recently with v9 with it's inline tag changes and esp. now with the new system we've seen alot of worries about messing up years worth of careful tagging.

All the worries are justified as no one wants to destroy years worth of hard work with many hours of devoted labour - I did it to 10,000 files before the alert was added and it's a REAL heartbreaker.


We can do manual back-up's of the library but we always forget or just space out and dont think about it etc. Even if we do, it means we have to replace the whole library to get the old tags back and its a messy complicated process.


My Idea

Create a System Restore type feature in MC. Once a week/month whatever - we set it via a new pane in the options screen just for this - MC does a backup of our library. There are then options to view a list of 'MC restore points' and to click on any of the ones we want while browsing our files and see the tags change to what they were at that point. We can then choose a tool which resets the tags of the files selected to what they were at that restore point.

We can go up and down the list selecting the different restore points and the files will all change their tags to reflect what they were at that point.

It'd work a bit like Photoshop's 'History' palette so as we go up the list we see all the previous tag states.
The only difference would be that going through the list wouldn't change the tags, it would just show us the previous tag info and if we wanted to we could update the tags on the files selected to what was being shown.



As MC is getting more and more powerful, accidental tag mess up's can totally mess up years of careful tagging and management of our music/videos/pictures/films etc.

I've already had one BIG accident of 10,000 files, I've seen I think two other posts from people who also had pretty big mess up's and I'd imagine that there would be alot more people who have done it but not posted or have done it to a smaller extent.


We all tag our files with sooo much care and attention, it'd be GREAT to have a built in safety net to take care of all that hard work.

Also, if each of our files could have a unique ID number entered into the tags by MC that associated it with it's library info then the tags could be easily reassociated with the files even if they were moved outside of MC etc.

Comments? Suggestions? Hate the idea? Love it?

[Deivit]

I don't know how difficult would be that everytime you close MediaCenter, a pop-up message asked if you want to backup your library... This message, for instance, to have four selectable choices:

1.- Backup library.
2.- Backup always and don't show this message again.
3.- Do not backup this time.
4.- Never backup and don't show this message again.

Probably having a backup of the last time you shut down MC would make things easier. At worse, you would only need to redo what you've modified since last time you closed the program.

For saving space purposes you could also set how many backups do you want to keep in your folder, and new backups would erase the oldest ones when the maximum number has been reached.

Just my 2 cents.

[NoCodeUK]

That sounds like a much better idea.  Sorry Nila!  That way we could always have the last five backups available and then if something did go wrong it would simply be a case of reloading the most recent correct library and then updating tags from library.  Hey this could even be a menu option in itself.  Dialog asking which baqckup you want to use and then automagically reapplying tags from that library.

Any mileage??

Adam

[nila]

Hmm, sounds like an easier idea not better

Mine would let u keep deliberate tag changes since the last backup.

Easier means features can be put into other features though so I dont mind it (even if it's not as good).


I'd love to see any type of automatic backup though.

[NoCodeUK]

Problem is yours could be quite difficult to manage and also involves physically searching through data.  If a lot of changes have been made this could get very tedious....

Adam

[LisaRCT]

Either one has merits, both good ideas and I think one of these (or something similar) is needed.

I tend to prefer the option at the close of MC9. I can't help but wonder though, could there be some integrated method with merits of both?

Glad we have those blue moons  

[Doof]

Microsoft Money has a feature where it just automatically backs up your data file everytime you exit. It works really nice, and is really unobtrusive.

MC could do this and not even bother the user with it at all. MC's backup utility is lightning fast anyway, so there probably wouldn't be much of a noticeable slowdown at exit.

[zevele10]

RealOne backup your data base as you change it - this is set to default

But you can backup it when you want by removing the default setting.
They had it in RealJukebox  as well ,i used it.

ANY kind of backup in MC is VERY welcome.

[nila]

The problem with doing it at shutdown is this:

U start doing something, MC starts doing a BIG file change which u accidentally clicked 'yes' to.

It crashes or you crash it half way through and then restart MC - undo wont work as MC has just restarted, MC crashed so it didn't make the backup and half ur tags are changed.

It'd be better if it did it at the beginning (say with a 1 minute pause just so that it didn't stop MC loading up or starting) so that it would have a fresh backup before any possible session that we could cause problems in

[nila]

Just had my system mess up.
Not sure what happened but I restarted it to find an error about my RAID 1 messed up and a drive failed, restarted to several BSOD's and then finally after ages restarted and got it doing a scandisk and then working.
The scandisk found tons of errors all over my drives.

Anyway, I went to load up MC and found that it then said my library was corrupted.
I've spent hours/days working on my library and tagging it all nicely, carefully thinking out the view schemes etc. and it's all lost now due to one file becoming corrupted.

It's way too dodgy to have it set up so all the work we put in is saved purely in one single file that can relatively easily become damaged, corrupted etc.

I dont mind putting my faith and time into MC and spending days sorting out all my pictures/music/video's etc but I want to be fairly secure that this information isn't going to get lost by one single file getting damaged.


Especially with information that isn't saved to tags (video's and to a large extent pictures too) - this means ALL the work is lost and we've wasted all that time and energy.

Please please implement some sort of backup feature or something to make sure our time and effort is better protected. This would also work in instances where we mess up the library ourselves by a tagging accident.

Thanks!

[Tolga]

I use NTCVS + TortoiseCVS to keep backup history of my most critical files, including MC. It keeps only the changes in the library, and you can return to any previous version.

[Tolga]

I use NTCVS + TortoiseCVS to keep backup history of my most critical files, including MC. It keeps only the changes in the library, and you can return to any previous version.

[Doof]

Please please implement some sort of backup feature or something to make sure our time and effort is better protected. This would also work in instances where we mess up the library ourselves by a tagging accident.

There is a backup feature. It's not JRiver's fault if you don't use it.

[Jaguu]

And if you really want to be safe, dismount the Raid 1 and use the free disk as replication disk. Use Karen's Replicator or xcopy or NTbackup or whatever is on the market (some backup tools are even free) to backup your data.

To use a PC without a proper strategy to backup your valuable data is simply foolish! And this strategy needs to be thought of before anything happens! And include worst-case szenarios like disk crashes, mainboard crashes. physical damage, floods, fire, theft, bombing...

Probably best to put it down on paper, so it gets really clear what you do if...

What if I loose my MC library?
What if I loose my ripped cd's?
What if I loose all my images, videos?
What if I loose cover art, lyrics?
What if I loose ....?

[nila]

Doof,
I just found it. I never realised it was there before

This is exactly what I was after - is there any way to set this up to happen on a regular interval? weekly/daily?

Thanks

[LisaRCT]

I cant help wonder what situations may arise where the current JRiver library backup will be inadequate.
Does that not simply back up the library database? What about the actual files? What happens if say some crash caused you to move your library to another HDD, would the database tags still be matched to the files (or is that pinned to the 'path/filename'?
I think my answer it that I want to save all my tags within the files. Dunno if this has any drawbacks, but it seems to make sense to me (less chance of messing-up).  Then regardless of where the files are moved, even if somehow renamed, the tags could be read and the file renamed form the tags, same with audio analysis and cover art.
Maybe I am looking for a cure-all, but I am weary of repairing tags and re-analyzing files due to crashes, bugs, or even  my own stupid fault . . .
Any solutions already available? any way to implement this or something close?

[nila]

Lise,
If you go to options then tree settings u can modify all the fields u want permenantly saved and choose to have them saved inside the files themselves.

I did this a while back then stopped when I realised it was making MC alot slower as each file's tag was being re-written each time (i set it to save number of times placed inside the file).

This should do what u want

The bigger problem is with file formats that dont support tags inside the files.

[LisaRCT]

Thanks Nila,
I had looked at this before.
The checkbox you mentiond actually says 'Store in file tags (when possible) rather than what I expected "Store in FILE (when possible) ".
These were already checkd by default, yet when I tried to re-import my files into a new library they all needed to be retagged   ?

Unless I have missed something in the way I am using MC9 I am thinking of trying a seperate tagging program if I can find one capable of insuring no more lost tags.

[nila]

Lise,
just test it with a few files.

It should be saving them to your tags. I know mine are.

Copy a few files to a seperate dir then use MC to change the tags etc and then delete them from ur library, then re-import them and see if the tags are still there.

[LisaRCT]

Well, it worked.
I don't know what was wrong last time I imported some files which had been previously tagged and the tags were lost,
but the proof is in the pudding and this little test shows you were right.
Thanks  

[nila]

Probably just a few messed up files or it hadn't updated the tag info properly

[LisaRCT]

good point, I usually do not have MC set to update tags automatically, but rather do this once I am done so as not to slow the system with the tag updating.
Quite possible that I had either neglected to update manually, or that MC crashed before this was done.

And again you are correct in that is was a relatively small number of files.  Yet when you have over 15,000 . . . .  a small percentage can be hundreds or THOUSANDS of files to retag.  

LOL, guess thats not much to complain about compared to all the good features which save me much more work that the retagging took.

Irregardless, I Love MC9 . . . awesome, like totally  

Listening to Porcupine Tree's Absentia album, which is also awesome.