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[Rizlaw]

I just updated my registered version of 10.0.173 to 11.0.99 registered. I followed the default installation steps for version 11, which advises NOT to delete any MC10 library files if performing an upgrade.

The MC11 update deleted version 10 (except for 10's data folders).

I then took an MC10 library backup file and restored it to MC11. I thought that this would copy all the jpeg's from MC10's "cover art" folder to MC11's "cover art" folder. It didn't, it simply points to the jpegs in MC10's "cover art" folder.

Question: Is there a straighforward way to copy or move the jpeg cover art from MC10's folder to MC11's folder, so that I can delete all of the data folders for MC10?  Or, must I keep MC10's data folders?

I am tempted to simply copy the files over to MC11 and globally replace the drive path of each jpeg filename, but I'm not sure if this is the best way, or correct way to do it.

Thanks for any help.

[Alex B]

1. Make a playlist of the music files.
2. Export that list to MPL format. (Output Range: All)
3. Open the .mpl file with a text editor and do a "find & replace" for the cover art path.
4. Save the file (in plain text format).
5. Move the cover art files to the new folder.
6. Delete the music files from the MC library (not from the disk and keep your library backup in a safe place)
7. Right click the edited .mpl file and select Media Center -> Import.

Test with few files first.

Edit

Something like "C:\Cover art" might be better than the default folder. You must change that in MC options too (for new music files).

[Rizlaw]

1. Make a playlist of the music files.
2. Export that list to MPL format. (Output Range: All)
3. Open the .mpl file with a text editor and do a "find & replace" for the cover art path.
4. Save the file (in plain text format).
5. Move the cover art files to the new folder.
6. Delete the music files from the MC library (not from the disk and keep your library backup in a safe place)
7. Right click the edited .mpl file and select Media Center -> Import.

Test with few files first.

Edit

Something like "C:\Cover art" might be better than the default folder. You must change that in MC options too (for new music files).

Alex, thanks for the help. I have am having a problem with the last step (7).

According to Task Manager, importing the edited "mlp" file seems to cause MC11 to stop responding. MC11 opens in a frozen state and I can't do anything with it. Task Manager shows Media Center taking 25% cpu utilization.

Perhaps I'm missing something?

[Alex B]

It should not do that.

Are you sure you didn't change anything else in the file? Is it still in plain text format? What program did you use for editing? When you open it with Notepad it should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<MPL Version="2.0">
<Item>
<Field Name="Filename">D:\Music\Stravinsky\Concertos Vol.5\Igor_ Stravinsky_Concertos_V5.ogg;3</Field>
<Field Name="Artist">Igor Stravinsky</Field>
<Field Name="Album">Igor Stravinsky edition, vol. 6 of 12, Concertos</Field>
<Field Name="Name">Concerto for piano and wind instruments - III. Allegro</Field>
<Field Name="Band">Columbia Symphony Orchestra</Field>
<Field Name="File Type">ogg</Field>
<Field Name="Genre">Classical</Field>
<Field Name="Date">18328,578125</Field>
<Field Name="Comment">Piano: Philippe Entremont</Field>
<Field Name="Image File">C:\Cover Art\Igor_ Stravinsky_Concertos_V5_Front.JPG</Field>
<Field Name="Media Type">Audio</Field>
<Field Name="Last Played">1097170100</Field>
<Field Name="File Size">2293</Field>
<Field Name="Duration">304</Field>
<Field Name="Number Plays">4</Field>
<Field Name="Track #">3</Field>
<Field Name="Date Created">1097008156</Field>
<Field Name="Date Modified">1097001094</Field>
<Field Name="Date Imported">1097009925</Field>
<Field Name="Replay Gain">-5,9841899999999999</Field>
<Field Name="Peak Level">0,99997</Field>
<Field Name="Intensity">1</Field>
<Field Name="BPM">117</Field>
<Field Name="Composer">Igor Stravinsky</Field>
<Field Name="Playback Range">850160-1154333,333333</Field>
<Field Name="Complete Album">1</Field>
<Field Name="Album Gain">-5,9841899871826172</Field>
<Field Name="Conductor">Igor Stravinsky</Field>
<Field Name="Encoder">OGGenc1.1_q9_in-15</Field>
<Field Name="Comment 2">Remastered CD 1991</Field>
</Item>
</MPL>

Did you try that with a few tracks? You could paste your .mpl file contents here if you don't find anything wrong with it.

[Alex B]

Some additional thoughts:

I have always started MC first before importing MPL files. I don't know if that makes any difference.

If a small sample was OK and you are doing that with the whole audio library it may take some time and there may be nothing wrong.

It depends on the size of your library. I have not imported thousands of files since MJ8 times, because I have managed to save my original library over the years. Perhaps somebody else could tell how it should behave.

[Rizlaw]

Should not do that.

Are you sure you didn't change anything else in the file?

     Yes.  I only changed part of the image file path from \J River\Media Center to \J River\Media Center 11. The rest of the path was left alone since they are identical except for the "Media Center" subfolder.

I really don't understand why I just can't copy the jpg cover art to the new location and perform a "find and replace" on the "Image File" path. You can do a find and replace on every other data field BUT the image file path. Very odd.

Is it still in plain text format?

     Yes

What program did you use for editing?

     First I tried Notepad and then Wordpad. The mpl file is 10MB.

When you open it with Notepad it should look like this:

     It did.

Did you try that with a few tracks?

      No, since I made a backup of the library, I figured I'd go for broke and if it didn't work, I would simply restore the backup.

[Alex B]

I really don't understand why I just can't copy the jpg cover art to the new location and perform a "find and replace" on the "Image File" path. You can do a find and replace on every other data field BUT the image file path. Very odd.

I asked the same thing a long time ago. I didn't get any answer. Í don't see any reason for keeping that field uneditable.

Could you try now with e.g. one hundred tracks. If it works you will see what happens and how long it takes.

[Rizlaw]

I really don't understand why I just can't copy the jpg cover art to the new location and perform a "find and replace" on the "Image File" path. You can do a find and replace on every other data field BUT the image file path. Very odd.

Could you try now with e.g. one hundred tracks. If it works you will see what happens and how long it takes.

I am wondering, could it be that a 10MB MPL file takes so long to import that it makes it look as if MC11 is not responding, but, in fact, is working to import the data? I did leave it running for about 5 minutes, but I'm not sure how long this import is supposed to take for a 10MB file - a couple of minutes or several minutes.  I have seen where Task Manger reports an application is not responding when, it fact, it's simply very busy working and finally comes back and shows that it is running.

Anyway, I'lll try once more. If it doesn't work, I'll restore the backup.  Thanks for the help.

[Alex B]

I became curious. My Wordpad is now prosessing a 19984 MB .mpl file. It seems to take a while. Lets see what MC says.

[Alex B]

Importing 200 tracks by MPL file took 25 seconds. MC was frozen during the import.

That 19984 MB consists of about 20000 tracks so importing it would take about 40 minutes with my 2.8 GHz P4.


Edit

I shortened the file to 2 MB. It took about 5 minutes.

[Alex B]

And the most important thing:

Every field survived.  

[Jaguu]

Did you save the mpl files in UTF-8 format with notepad? with ANSI format it does not work!

[Alex B]

"Find & Replace" was too slow with Notepad, so I used Wordpad as Rizlaw did too. I saved the files in "Text Document" format. (The options are: "Text Document", "Text Document - MS-DOS format" and "Unicode Text Document".)

It worked for me. I hope also Rizlaw succeeded.

[Rizlaw]

"Find & Replace" was too slow with Notepad, so I used Wordpad as Rizlaw did too. I saved the files in "Text Document" format. (The options are: "Text Document", "Text Document - MS-DOS format" and "Unicode Text Document".)

It worked for me. I hope also Rizlaw succeeded.

As I write this, I am at 1 hour and counting on the import (10MB file - 10,343 files). MC11.0.99 is showing "not responding" in Task Manager. I have no idea if anything is happening. Running on a Supermicro Dual 2.0Ghz Xeon system with 1GB RDRAM.

[Matt]

"Find & Replace" was too slow with Notepad, so I used Wordpad as Rizlaw did too. I saved the files in "Text Document" format. (The options are: "Text Document", "Text Document - MS-DOS format" and "Unicode Text Document".)

It worked for me. I hope also Rizlaw succeeded.

As I write this, I am at 1 hour and counting on the import (10MB file - 10,343 files). MC11.0.99 is showing "not responding" in Task Manager. I have no idea if anything is happening. Running on a Supermicro Dual 2.0Ghz Xeon system with 1GB RDRAM.

It'll finish, but it may take a long time.

You could also break the MPL into multiple smaller MPL files, as speed sometimes degrades exponentially with size.

[Rizlaw]

It'll finish, but it may take a long time.

You could also break the MPL into multiple smaller MPL files, as speed sometimes degrades exponentially with size.

First, why is Task Manger showing that MC11 is "not responding" even though cpu utilization is at a steady 25% for the media center process?

Second, MC11 is essentially frozen during this attempt to import the 10MB MPL file, with no visual feedback from MC11 that anything is actually being imported.

Third, if the speed of the import degrades exponentially with size, as you indicate, how long should I wait (in this state of limbo) before I give up?

Fourth, why can't "find and replace" work on the "image file" path field so that I can simply copy all the cover art to the MC11 cover art folder and globally edit the image file path to reflect the new location. Why must (I) we suffer with a tedious work around method to do what appears to be a simple thing?

Fifth, why can the default/express upgrade installation of MC11 do all of this automatically, instead of pointing back to the old MC10 location for cover art data? The express install of MC11 recommends deleting MC10, but leaving the data if upgrading, it makes no sense for the new install of MC11 to point back to the MC10 cover art data folder if the prior installation of MC10 has been removed. The MC11 installation should automatically copy the data from MC10 to the new MC11 locations. Doesn't this make sense?

[Alex B]

My import for 2 MB took 5 minutes, but the CPU usage was about 70% on P4/2.8GHz (1 GB Dual Channel DDR400 RAM/HyperThreading enabled/XPsp1).

I asked to try with a few files first. It is always a good idea, because something unexpected can happen.

If the importing does not end happily, you could just leave your image files in the previous folder. There is nothing wrong with that. Any folder will do if the link is OK. You don't need any other MC10 folders. You can change the covert art location in MC 11 options, but that is not needed. If you don't change it new cover art files will be stored in the new default folder.

If the importing does not work and you really need to get rid of the old folder there is one more thing you could do, but lets hear you first.

I am sure MC team will consider your points, perhaps they do something for those things.

MC11 is not ready yet and there are strong warnings about that. We cannot blame JRiver if everything is not working. MC11 is currently intended for users who willingly take some risks and can and will give feedback.

Edit: That is only my opinion.

[Rizlaw]

My import for 2 MB took 5 minutes, but the CPU usage was about 70% on P4/2.8GHz (1 GB Dual Channel DDR400 RAM/HyperThreading enabled/XPsp1).

I am sure MC team will consider your points, perhaps they do something for those things.

MC11 is not ready yet and there are strong warnings about that. We cannot blame JRiver if everything is not working. MC11 is currently intended for users who willingly take some risks and can and will give feedback.

Edit: That is only my opinion.

Alex,

I agree with everything you said, and I wasn't trying to browbeat anyone at J River. But saying that MC11 is still Alpha software is not, in my judgment, sufficent to explain the odd way they chose to setup the express update installation for MC11 which is separate from the issue of my not being able to import the MPL file. My inability to import the MPL file could be due to things unrelated to MC11, and I can't fault J River for that given MC11's alpha status. But the issue of the installation of MC11 is entirely different, and worthy of some constructive criticism.

It makes no sense to me (at least) why the MC11 express install recommends removing MC10 to save room on the HD, then recommends leaving the library files so that they can be incorporated into MC11 (but in the old MC10 folder locations). This just makes for confusion and unnecessary folders.  Logic suggests that if one is getting rid of the MC10 software, then the data from MC10 should automatically be incorprated into the new MC11 locations with the express install and that it should be stored in the new MC11 data folders. Then the user can be given the option to either go back and simply delete the old MC10 data files and folders or chose to have that done automatically as part of the deinstallation of MC10 and upgrade installation of MC11.

Of course, as we both agree, all of this would be moot if MC11 provided the functionality to perform a global "find and replace" on the "Image File" path.

[Alex B]

That is feedback.


How's the situation with importing?

They other way is this (if needed):

- Backup your cover art files (not to J River folders).
- Install MC10 (custom installation to some temporally folder e.g. C:\MCtemp\)
- Restore your original library backup. Delete the audio files from the library.
- Import the already fixed MPL file to it. MC 10 has different, more straightforward database engine, so the situation can be different. You could try first with a small file. Take e.g. few tracks from the start and few from the end.
- Backup the fixed library (not to J River folders).

Perhaps you could at this stage unistall both MC versions and delete all leftover folders.

- Install MC 11.
- Restore the fixed library backup and the cover art files.

[Rizlaw]

That is feedback.


How's the situation with importing?

They other way is this (if needed):

- Backup your cover art files (not to J River folders).
- Install MC10 (custom installation to some temporally folder e.g. C:\MCtemp\)
- Restore your original library backup. Delete the audio files from the library.
- Import the already fixed MPL file to it. MC 10 has different, more straightforward database engine, so the situation can be different. You could try first with a small file. Take e.g. few tracks from the start and few from the end.
- Backup the fixed library (not to J River folders).

Perhaps you could at this stage unistall both MC versions and delete all leftover folders.

- Install MC 11.
- Restore the fixed library backup and the cover art files.

Alex,

For the moment, I have given up trying to fix MC11 cover art locations. It's taking too long and I think MC11 is crashing when Task Manager says it's not responding and it's not just a matter of taking a very, very, very long time to import the data.

Perhaps, Matt will fix\implement "find and replace" on the image file field or maybe even fix the installer so that in the next update the problem will fix itself (or give me the option to fix it) as I have suggested.

Thanks for your help.

Edit: 10/15/04 at 5:18pm NY.

Alex,

O.K. downloaded MC 11.0.103 about 2 hours ago. Installed update and tried to import my edited 10MB file. After 1hour and 45 minutes of waiting around, it worked!

I guess Matt fixed whatever was broken in version 11.0.99. The fixes in 103 don't reflect that this was a bug in the first place, but I don't care. Thanks and way to go Matt.

[Alex B]

So we got a happy end to this story!  

It's 3:00 am, here in Helsinki, Finland. I was about to go to bed four hours ago, but MC kept me awake again. "Just few more changes to the library." It's like a drug.  


It's gonna end now. I need my beauty sleep.