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[macdonjh]

I copied a couple of albums from an SD card to my hard drive.  The tagging of all the files was weird, so I had to hunt them down and correct the tagging.  Once I found them, I corrected the tagging so each file had:
Artist: Knopfler, Mark
Album Artist: Knopfler, Mark
Album Artist (auto): Knopfler, Mark (this tag populated itself just like it should have)
Album: Sailing to Philadelphia (for example)

All the tracks played just fine when I got the tagging consistent with the rest of my audio files.  I also added album art, release date and got the track number tag populated.  All simple.

Then I used the Move Copy Rename utility to get the files named consistently with the rest of my library and that's when the weirdness happened.  All of a sudden none of the album tracks would play.  I got this error message, something like, "Something went wrong with playback.  Check the file location to see if it is on the disc."  I went to the Finder and none of the tracks were where they should be.  Then I did a search within MC: looking for a track by the song title within my "Artist" view.  This is what I got:
5TBLibrary/Music/Knopfler, Mark/Sailing to Philiadelphia/Knopfler, Mark - What It Is (my normal convention, would not play)
and
5TBLibrary/Music/Knopfler, Mark/Sailing to Philadelphia/Mark Knopfler - What It Is (not my normal convention, but file plays)

I don't see either file in the Finder.  Can somebody tell me why I suddenly have two copies of the same file, neither of which are locatable in the Finder, one of which plays the other of which won't? 

Could the MCR utility have moved these into some hidden folder?  Why?

[blgentry]

If MC can play it, then the file almost certainly exists. 

Why do you have weird duplicates?  I don't know.  Maybe some leftovers from all of the reorganizing you've been doing the last few months?  Maybe a weird RM&C thing from a failed attempt?  Just not sure.

How to find the file that plays:  Highlight the file > Right click > Locate > On disk (external)

That should pop up a Finder window with the file.

Totally unrelated:  Sailing To Philadelphia is pretty good.  Much better than some other stuff like Golden Heart.  But have you heard "The Ragpicker's Dream" ?  I think that album is totally amazing.

Brian.

[macdonjh]

Thanks, Brian.

My reorganizing is done.  I know you and RodrickGI think I made it hard on myself, but I didn't lose any files, my collection is organized and backed-up.  So my effort was successful.

I agree the file must exist, and MC can be reminded where it is even if it's not in my LIBRARY, since it can be played.  Thank you for the reminder about the ...Locate > On Disk command.  There are too many for me to remember.  I'll try that and see if I can get my wayward files back into a folder they're supposed to be in.

I didn't post this initially, but at first I thought the missing files had simply disappeared.  Turns out they were together in "album" folders, but in my (multiple artists) view.  That, even though [Artist] and [Album Artist (auto)] tags were "Mark Knopfler".  I couldn't figure that out.  As I posted at first, everything was fine manually editing tags, et cetera.  The trouble occurred when I used RM&C.

I've now got a bunch of Mark Knopfler I didn't used to have, including Ragpicker's Dream.  I have only listened through each album once, so I still don't know what I like and what I don't.  Some of it I liked a lot when I heard it, my first impression of some of the other songs was it was boring.

[blgentry]

My reorganizing is done.  I know you and RodrickGI think I made it hard on myself, but I didn't lose any files, my collection is organized and backed-up.  So my effort was successful.

I'm happy to hear that. 

I didn't post this initially, but at first I thought the missing files had simply disappeared.  Turns out they were together in "album" folders, but in my (multiple artists) view.  That, even though [Artist] and [Album Artist (auto)] tags were "Mark Knopfler".

I'm not 100% sure what you mean about a "View" for Multiple Artists.  But you probably mean that when you look under the artist named "(Multiple Artists)" you find the album Sailing To Philadelphia.  This normally happens when there are more than one artist listed for at least one track on an album and the [Album Artist] is not set.  You indicate that [Album Artist (auto)] is set to Knopfler, so this should not be.

But I'll bet that if you look closely at all of the tags, you're going to find that at least one track in that album has the wrong thing (or nothing) for Album Artist.  Note that the title track of this song is a duet with James Taylor.  So the [Artist] field is probably "Mark Knofpler; James Taylor" for that one track.  It might not be, but it's a good guess since that's how it's officially credited.  (Though my own personal copy does not credit James Taylor.  I must have used a metadata source that didn't include that information).

https://www.allmusic.com/album/sailing-to-philadelphia-mw0000098600

Make sure to check all tracks in the album; especially that title track.

Good luck,
Brian.

[blgentry]

I thought I remembered more than one extra performer on Sailing To Philidelphia.  ...and there is!

Van Morrison is on track #5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_to_Philadelphia#Track_listing

He might also be in the Artist field on that track.  So definitely check them all.

Brian.

[macdonjh]

I will, but not likely in this specific case because I manually entered all the [Artist], and [Album Artist] information.  At least, I did the second time I worked with these files after finding them in the (multiple artist) view.