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Author Topic: Files all mixed up  (Read 3782 times)

sruddy

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Files all mixed up
« on: February 01, 2014, 02:17:10 am »

I imported my wav music files from my hard drive and they are all mixed up. I have a lot of first songs missing only to find them as unknown all by their self. I also have multiple songs from a single album that are  split off the album and show up by all their self.
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wig

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2014, 07:31:16 am »

Welcome to using JRiver! It's a great program, with lots of support from the developers and enthusiasts like myself.

Your problem most likely has to do with Album Artist field:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Album_Artist_and_Album_Artist_(Auto)

I suggest you add the Album Artist and Album Artist (Auto) fields to your setup so you can see how they are affecting your album grouping.

Don't try to change Album Artist (Auto) directly; any changes you make to Album Artist will be instantly reflected there.

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sruddy

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #2 on: February 01, 2014, 10:57:50 am »

Thanks for the reply. This is actually not the issue I was trying to describe but this info is useful. How do I add these fields. Also should I clear my library first and start over and do I have to manually rename a field on every compilation album?

So here is an image showing the fragment problem my library has. This is a single album with a single artist. As you can see it has been broken into 3 pieces. One of which says unknown. How do I fix this?

 

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MrC

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2014, 11:30:39 am »

The evidence is before your eyes - this is not a single album in MC's eyes, because it is not a single album by your own.  Tracks 1 and 9 at the bottom of the screenshot have different Album values.  Set Album the same as the tracks in the upper grouping.  Also note, you have two track 9 values, and are missing a track 6.  And finally, the two singlets also have different Artist values.

Your paths look good, so use the Library Tools > Fill Properties From Filename tool to grab Album, Artist, Track # and Name for all tracks.  Select them all, right-click and use the tool.
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wig

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #4 on: February 01, 2014, 03:13:12 pm »

Thanks for the reply. This is actually not the issue I was trying to describe but this info is useful. How do I add these fields. Also should I clear my library first and start over and do I have to manually rename a field on every compilation album?

You can add those field by right-clicking on the field name bar; a list of available field will appear; select the one you want to have.

Like Mr. C said, your filenames look good so your can use the Fill Properties from Filename tool instead of clearing your library; it will simply replace the scrambled info in the JRiver database.
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sruddy

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #5 on: February 01, 2014, 03:56:24 pm »

The evidence is before your eyes - this is not a single album in MC's eyes, because it is not a single album by your own.  Tracks 1 and 9 at the bottom of the screenshot have different Album values.  Set Album the same as the tracks in the upper grouping.  Also note, you have two track 9 values, and are missing a track 6.  And finally, the two singlets also have different Artist values.

Your paths look good, so use the Library Tools > Fill Properties From Filename tool to grab Album, Artist, Track # and Name for all tracks.  Select them all, right-click and use the tool.

Well that seemed to work for that particular album but not on any since then. I have several problems with missing info, unknown albums, unknown artist, and dis organized or separated tracks so I'm going to start with the biggest problem first then I'll tell you all about the ones left. First I have over 500 Cd's so re ripping probably won't be the quickest way to fix the errors. The biggest problem is with the first track of an album. This first track has unkown in all fields and the track title just says track one. I have lost of CD files like this. I think it happened for whatever reason when I originally ripped the Cd's using WMP. You can see this in the picture above. Here is what I have been doing to fix it.
  • Find Cd's that have track one separated from Album
  • Highlight albums in left sidebar index
  • do a search for the album
  • highlight the seperated unkown part of the album
  • Right click and do library tools/ look up track info online
  • manually correct any tags usually genre
  • pull up album and resort as track one is now at the bottom

This takes a little bit of time but I think it's quicker than me re ripping. I wonder if there is anyway to do this to more that one at a time. Seems like the program crashes if I ask it to do something it doesn't like. If ther is a better or quicker way to do this please let me know.

BTW is there anyway I can apply these corrections in my original folder? Here is a photo of what my CD folders with this problem look like.

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MrC

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #6 on: February 01, 2014, 04:17:22 pm »

You can probably approach this in a different way, and use MC's view system to help you find what you need.

1. Create a new view under Audio (right-click Audio, and select Add Library View...).  Select Empty View at the bottom of the previews, and name it something like Clean-Up.
2. Under Items to Add, add a new Category, select Type: Expression, and add the expression in the Expression to group by as follows:

   filefolder(,0)

and set the Name to Album (by path), and OK your way out.
3. Add another category, this time of type Library Field: and select the field Complete Album.
4. Add yet another category, again an Expression type, and use the expression [Track #] - [Name], and name it Track/Name.
5. Enable the Advanced > Filter in both directions setting in the view.
6. OK your way out of the view customization dialogs.

Now you have a view that lists your album names based on their folder paths (and assumes those are correct), and a second column that shows either a 1 for Complete Albums (as MC sees them), or an Unassigned value for incomplete albums.  By selecting the Unassigned value, the results will be narrowed to a list of folders (i.e. Albums) which contain incomplete albums, and you can quickly cycle through those using the down arrow key when focused on the first column.  And you'll see in the third column the Track # - Name formatting of your tracks within a given folder.

You can add more columns too if you want, such as an Artist (by path) expression, using FileFolder(,1).  Or even a Name or Track # column, and use those to select any Unassigned value, which will filter out anything that is assigned.

See if this helps, and ask more questions if necessary.

As far as making changes to your folders, MC will by default write the tag values back out to files, so Explorer should just see those values once you've made corrections.  If you've disabled tag writing, be sure to enable it, and write out the tags manually when necessary (using Library Tools > Update Tags (from library).
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sruddy

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #7 on: February 01, 2014, 04:49:28 pm »

Thanks for all the info MrC. I'm starting with trying to transfer the new tag info of the albums I have already fixed to my files in explorer. I have update tags when file info changes checked in the options/general/importing and tagging. I have also tried to highlight the track with all the missing info that I've fixed and right click and library tools/ update tags from library. After that looking at my files using explorer the info is still the same (unkown).
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wig

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2014, 05:08:47 pm »

Mr. C was talking about the tag info contained as metadata in the files.

If you want to rename your files, select them in JRiver and choose Libarary Tools > Rename, Move & Copy Files.

You can select a preset file naming format, or customize one of your own.
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sruddy

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #9 on: February 01, 2014, 06:29:51 pm »

Mr. C was talking about the tag info contained as metadata in the files.

If you want to rename your files, select them in JRiver and choose Libarary Tools > Rename, Move & Copy Files.

You can select a preset file naming format, or customize one of your own.


I don't want to rename the files I just want the detail to mirror the changes I mad in MC. I was assuming this is called tag info. As you can see in my image above the first track has been fixed in MC but look above at the actual file shown in detail view and you can see the first track still says unknown.
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MrC

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #10 on: February 01, 2014, 09:23:41 pm »

WAV files do not have standardized tagging, so you may be out of luck with this format, Windows Explorer and MC.  MC will tag WAV files using an mp3 compliant format, and some other software may also, but without a reliable standard, its a crapshoot as to interoperability.
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sruddy

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #11 on: February 01, 2014, 10:00:36 pm »

The evidence is before your eyes - this is not a single album in MC's eyes, because it is not a single album by your own.  Tracks 1 and 9 at the bottom of the screenshot have different Album values.  Set Album the same as the tracks in the upper grouping.  Also note, you have two track 9 values, and are missing a track 6.  And finally, the two singlets also have different Artist values.

Your paths look good, so use the Library Tools > Fill Properties From Filename tool to grab Album, Artist, Track # and Name for all tracks.  Select them all, right-click and use the tool.

I'm really getting confused and frustrated. I tried the method you said with this and nothing happens. If something like this happens in WMP I just drag the them together and it's fixed. I can't drag anything I'm aware of in MC. So how do I fix this example?

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sruddy

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #12 on: February 01, 2014, 10:05:18 pm »

WAV files do not have standardized tagging, so you may be out of luck with this format, Windows Explorer and MC.  MC will tag WAV files using an mp3 compliant format, and some other software may also, but without a reliable standard, its a crapshoot as to interoperability.
 

OK no worries I really only care that all my tracks are in the same album just like in windows explorer folders. Why MC has decided to dissect and separate my tracks from their original folders is a mystery. I just want to fix it so when I pull up an album all the tracks are there. I'm just having no consistent luck in doing that.
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MrC

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #13 on: February 01, 2014, 10:07:41 pm »

I'm really getting confused and frustrated. I tried the method you said with this and nothing happens. If something like this happens in WMP I just drag the them together and it's fixed. I can't drag anything I'm aware of in MC. So how do I fix this example?

The view should be a Panes view, like the attached image.

Customize the view, and change the view type to Panes.  You have it set to Categories.

Ignore the Tree on the left for now - it isn't going to help you here.  Just focus on the panes columns you see in the screenshot.
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MrC

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #14 on: February 01, 2014, 10:14:08 pm »

...Why MC has decided to dissect and separate my tracks from their original folders is a mystery. I just want to fix it so when I pull up an album all the tracks are there. I'm just having no consistent luck in doing that.

MC didn't - the views are showing groupings based on how YOUR tags are set; and your tags are not consistent for all the tracks in an album.  Look at your Chuck Loeb album above, for example.  Track # 1 has a different artist than the other tracks.  If you want Chuck Loeb to be the primary artist in this case, set Album Artist to Chuck Loeb for all the tracks in this album.  It would also help to make the first artist entry in the Artist list field as Chuck Loeb, and set the secondary, etc. artists in the list to the others (Carmen, etc.  Tracks 3 and 9 are fine).  But also again notice you have two of the same Track # values (1, one of which should be 10).
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AndrewFG

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #15 on: February 02, 2014, 03:39:19 am »

^

You may also need the check that none of your tracks are marked as "part of a compilation" too. As MrC has been saying, for tracks to be considered as part of the same album, they have to have the same tag value on Album, AlbumArtist, Disk#, and Compilation tags. Otherwise they are not considered to be part of the same album.
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Vincent Kars

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #16 on: February 02, 2014, 04:25:08 am »

An obvious one: JRiver thinks an album is an album if [Album] and [Album Artist] are the same.
Looking at your screen shot, it looks like you are using [Artist] instead of [Album Artist]

As others mentioned, WMP write a few tracks only at rip time to WAV. The rest is Library only.
Don't know if WMP supports this but if you can convert WAV to WMAL (MS own Flac) there is a good changes it will write the tags to WMAL.
JRiver can read WMAL.

Another option is selecting the tracks and do a "Lookup track info in online database".
If the album is in JRiver's database, you get the tags populated.
My experience is that this database is rather limited.
You might try MP3Tag as an alternative.

As your folder structure is correct, the library tool "Fill properties from File name" will probably cure a lot.
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MrC

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #17 on: February 02, 2014, 01:50:29 pm »

I worked with sruddy remotely, and got him squared away.

Fill Properties From Filename was used, but we had to do two passes, first single-disc albums, and second multi-disc albums.
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JimH

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #18 on: February 02, 2014, 01:54:44 pm »

Thank you.
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MrC

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #19 on: February 02, 2014, 02:04:11 pm »

Sure thing.

It's always enjoyable to see/hear that Aha moment when everything suddenly clicks and the realization takes hold that there's something powerful at ones fingertips.
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sruddy

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Re: Files all mixed up
« Reply #20 on: February 02, 2014, 03:05:10 pm »

Sure thing.

It's always enjoyable to see/hear that Aha moment when everything suddenly clicks and the realization takes hold that there's something powerful at ones fingertips.

Like wise MrC it was very rewarding working with you and seeing how powerful the software is. I thought this was going to take me forever to get the issues solved but it really only took a few minutes if you don't count all the tutoring you gave me. I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can about MC but for now I'm ecstatic that I can pull up an album and all the tracks are there for me to play! Thank you again for your generous support.  :)
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