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[Hebaton]

O.K. I have over 2000 albums in my library and it is a mess. I cannot find anything.
Now I I have a certain number of tags I managed to standardise but a couple of years of "anything goes "needs to be cleaned.
One major problem I have is that if for example, I remove all the album with the tag Genre > Classical > Choral and drop them under just Genre > classical   Next time auto-import runs, it recreates the unwanted genre and assigns the albums back.

So I find myself with over 70 "genres" when 10 would be sufficient for my needs.
How do I prevent JRiver from creating them ? How do I go about cleaning this mess up ?

Thanks for any input, I am very confused and need step by step "hold my hand " instructions :-)

Regards,

Claude

[JimH]

It's probably the files' tags.  Try correcting the tags.

You can also use MC's Library Tools to fill the tags of the files based on the settings in your library.

[tunetyme]

I have had similar difficulties.

First I turn off auto import. The software keeps finding my music in tmp folders and importing it before I have had a chance to clean it up. I will work on 10 to 20 CD'a at a time before finally moving it to my file server and a copy to my external back up disk. It just creates a bunch of unnecessary work. It would be nice if JRiver set the default to off for this feature or give us the opportunity to turn it off during setup.

The second item you should look int is under options/general/online metadata (automatic cd lookup and submission. Turn that off as well. This too should have the default set to off.

I have similar issues with 97,000 Genre tags. I have over 120k tracks and keeping it organized is time consuming.  My hard disk setup is drive letter: Classical, Jazz, Rock, & Music with subcategories like Blues, New Age, Country etc. I am in the process of setting Genre to the general category like ROCK or JAZZ and copying the multitude over to Style so I have ROCK (Genre) Hard Rock (former Genre now Style). I can include multiple Styles using a ; to separate them. It would be nice if the "General" Tag grouping would include all the fields included in file list that is displayed.

As for the tags themselves I have had to use a separate Tag editor to access all the fields. This would certainly be a nice feature to add to MC 25 along with an editor for playlists. I have had to find external programs to do this and it would be so much easier to be able to do it within MC.  That way MC field labels could be coordinated with in the tag itself. I use external programs to store info with the tags as well like the "Key" the song is in which helps me build a playlist.

Another item to watch for is the Artist (auto) that tends to screw me up frequently. I wish I could just delete the field from the database.

By the time you are ready to do an upgrade you will forget about all this and have another mess to clean up. Such is life.
 

[Lefisu63]

I have had similar difficulties.

First I turn off auto import. The software keeps finding my music in tmp folders and importing it before I have had a chance to clean it up. I will work on 10 to 20 CD'a at a time before finally moving it to my file server and a copy to my external back up disk. It just creates a bunch of unnecessary work. It would be nice if JRiver set the default to off for this feature or give us the opportunity to turn it off during setup.

Exactly: + 1 ... I'd the same problem.

It drives me nuts if software is doing things like that automatically before asking.

[blgentry]

One major problem I have is that if for example, I remove all the album with the tag Genre > Classical > Choral and drop them under just Genre > classical   Next time auto-import runs, it recreates the unwanted genre and assigns the albums back.

It's hard to be sure what's going on here.  One guess is that MC is NOT writing the tags back to the files.  So when auto import runs, it updates from the tags in the files and overwrites your changes.  You can check for two settings to see if this is happening.

1. Whether MC writes tags back to the files
Tools > Options > General > Importing & Tagging > Update tags when file info changes
Check that option to write changes to the files.  If it's unchecked, MC will not write changes to the files.

2.  Whether or not MC imports tag DIFFERENCES for files that were already imported
Tools > Options > Library & Folders > configure auto import > Tasks > Update for external changes
Check this option and MC will read all tags from the files every time auto import runs.  Uncheck this option and MC will not check your file tags for changes (new values) after they have been imported.

I suspect that #1 is unchecked and #2 is checked.  I would recommend checking #1.  #2 is up to you.

Brian.

[tunetyme]

It's hard to be sure what's going on here. 

Brian, I have been using MC for a long time. 24 is the most unstable that I have used ever. It hangs frequently and it is not unusual for me to invoke the task manager to kill the program. If I could nail down the problem a little more then I could try to help resolve it.

What this thread is about is that MC does things in the background that we users do not want it to do. I never want MC to search all my drives looking for music, videos or images to import. It should have the default setting to off. I appreciate that MC wants to demo its' capabilities but when it create an Artist called "1-N" and suddenly had 34000+ tracks linked to it. I couldn't find any artist with that name nor anything in my tags. (At least what MC allows me to see) To get rid of it I had to delete all the files from MC linked t it and import them again. The "1-N" is gone but what a pain and waste of time. I have some music that MC refuses to import. I can click on them in their file folders and the play great in MC. What's that all about? There are number of small issues that I can identify for quick fixes and I will post them at a later time.

In a nutshell "Auto" anything creates problems. With over 120,000 tracks little problems become big problems very quickly. Assuming what is good for all users is not in yours or our best interests. They should all be set to off as the default setting. Every time I upgrade I lose something and have to rebuild it. No offense, but it gets old having to do tens to hundreds of hours for every upgrade.

I really don't want to hijack this thread but be aware that there are some problems that exist and they will change and evolve into new problems with each release.  It is the nature of software development.

[DJLegba]

I never want MC to search all my drives looking for music, videos or images to import.

Neither do I. That's why I configured auto-import and told it what folders to search for what file types. I rip CDs without any of the problems you've described, because I spent a bit of time learning how to use the software. I don't have the genre proliferation issue, and neither would you if you spent a few minutes thinking before doing.

[timwtheov]

I have to agree with both DJLegba and blgentry here, as there seems to be some fundamental lack of understanding of how MC works regarding tags and import, whether auto- or not.

tunetyme: do some searching here on Interact or via Google for the MC tagging window and how to set that up, and maybe also the "tag dump" (if that's what it's called), which will show you all a given file's tags. Doing so would help you find that "1-N" you mention, which must be in a tag somewhere ([Album Artist], maybe?) and then is reflected in whatever view you've set up and/or what fields show up in the default tagging window (you might do some searching on Views and how to create/manipulate them, too, if you haven't done so already). MC doesn't just "create" new artists or anything else: it just reads the tags that are in the files you have. I have over a million tracks, and I use auto-import and have no problems like these becaue I control my import rules, my tagging, and my views, all within MC.

For both the OP and tunetyme: do what blgentry suggested, too, and make sure you're writing your tags to the files so that they're saved.

[RoderickGI]

I need a like button for the last two posts. 

Plus of course, Brian is correct.

[tunetyme]

Ripped a CD with no tag info beyond file name with EAC. Import into MC24. In the file list display I edit the album field and the artist field on the first record. I highlight the entire album and go to the tag editor Click on album says (varies) and at the top is the one entry and I click on that and hit enter. It populates  all the fields. Next I go to artist and try to do the same thing and nothing at the top. When I look at tag info under album artist (auto) there is Multiple artists. I didn't put that in there. I don't want it in there. I want to turn this feature off. How do I do it?  Or better yet be able to delete this field from the database.

[JimH]

Ripping in MC might be easier, but another way to tag would be to select all files from the CD first, and then edit.

[tunetyme]

Old habits die hard. When I started ripping CD's I had to type everything in. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Jim:
 
You still haven't addressed the issue. How do I turn off all the auto features. I understand that this may be a convenience for some, for others it creates problems.  Frankly, I don't upgrade every year because of the hassles I seem to have. Other software that I own seems to copy all my preferences from the previous version and I don't have an issue doing regular upgrades.

Other than the auto features, 22 has been very stable for me. I am having problems with 24 beyond the fact that I didn't do a manual check between versions to ensure that I maintained all the same settings. I would make an effort to help identify some more of the issues that am having with 24 but 25 is just a few weeks away and I am sure that is where your resources are.

[JimH]

MC25 is available now.

It's in a thread new the top of the respective MC25 boards.  Please chose one of these:

Windows Board

Mac Board

Linux Board

New Features in MC25

[tunetyme]

Neither do I. That's why I configured auto-import and told it what folders to search for what file types. I rip CDs without any of the problems you've described, because I spent a bit of time learning how to use the software. I don't have the genre proliferation issue, and neither would you if you spent a few minutes thinking before doing.

I have built a collection of media from txt to video and everything in-between. I have 7.5 TB on my PC and 16 TB on my file server (need to add 4 TB more). I can manually get to 90% of my files within 5 clicks some txt files are broken down into additional categories that may require 2 more clicks.

[blgentry]

tunetyme:  First, I am just a JRiver user.  I don't work for JRiver, nor do I make any kind of decisions about software features or policies.

What I wrote above was an attempt to help you.  I might not have the right answer; it's hard to tell.

I can tell you are frustrated by what seems like random behavior and situations that are causing you manual work.  That's no fun.  If you have a specific thing you'd like help with, I'll try. You've talked about a bunch of behaviors that I could possibly address.  Are there one or two you would like to start with?

Brian.

Brian.

[tunetyme]

Sorry Brian. You took the brunt of my frustration. I want software to conform to my methods not the other way around. At one time that was exactly what MC offered.  Many many years ago, JRiver really focused on meeting the different user needs. They were primarily music back then. Once they started really developing the video (which I use) the needs of the music focused group was back burner-ed. (around MC 15-16) I was very actively involved with the forum back then.

I promoted MC to everyone I knew that loved music and at least a dozen friends and family signed up. Previously, I had used dbpower amp for years and nothing could compare with MC back then. I think that this was around MC12. Let me give you an example what small changes do. I have over 20 TB of media. I maintain 2 backups 1 on premise and 1 off premise. The on premise back ups  I update quarterly and once a year I swap the quarterly backups with the off premise backups. Every 2 or 3 years I replace my server drives and the use those for more backups.

For a number of years the rule for art that is stored with an album was artist-album.jpg now it is Folder.When I started using MC it really didn't matter. In each of my music folders I have 2 or 3 jpeg's of cover art. It's amazing how much space that actually takes. I use Size Explorer Pro and compare folders, files and bytes to ensure that I have everything backed up. It takes a lot of hours to do this initially to clean up the mess. MC creates new files named Folder rather than renaming them. Even when you move things within MC they don't clean up after themselves. So you have to do it manually, As a result I do all my moves in Windows then import and delete files in MC. If I didn't I would have the same kind of mess Hebaton is writing about.  Eventually all the jpeg's will be renamed to Folder and I will be able to identify and delete the others. From then on it will be easy to do backups by comparing folders and files to see what needs to be copied.

Technology keeps evolving and it is difficult to find CD's anymore. Streaming is the big thing and MC is adapting to it and we are dinosaurs. So I upgrade every few years and spend a lot of time dealing with settings that aren't copied forward and simple things that still haven't been fixed. Taking care of music aficionados isn't on the the list. So, I am frustrated that customer loyalty means nothing.

Sorry to bore you with all this history and I guess I will wait another few years before I check in again with the forum.   

[JimH]

A lot of what you say is just plain wrong.

No software will ever do exactly what you think it should.

Please get down off the soapbox.