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[vicariat]

I have two HDDs of movies and manually update them from time to time.  When I do file-shuffling on the HDD or add new ones, and after than run MC, it finds them easily.  But it leaves behind links to the old movie, even if I move it to a new location.  Presumably this is mainly the xml file, because the movie file has been moved.  But sometimes its not that file, ie nothing I can see on the HDD.  So all these movies show up twice in MC, some 6 times.  Manually deleting them from MC is ok, but there are hundreds.  So, the question, is there an autoclean-up function that will remove those dead links from MC, that are no longer there?  I do NOT want to delete the lot and re-import them  - it takes too much time to fiddle with their tags.

Secondary question.  Am I going about it wrong?  How can I do a rearrangement of files on my HDD so that when I later open MC it finds them without such errors.  Normally, I am careful to keep the XML file together with the movie when  move the movie file, but that does not seem to be enough.  I suspect all this is a button somewhere I cannot find..

[6233638]

Auto-import should do this for you if you have "Fix broken links" enabled.
 
I would recommend using Media Center's "Rename, Move, & Copy Files" library tool to do this in future, rather than moving the files externally.
 
 
If you create a smartlist and paste  [=ismissing()]=1  into the import box, it will list all missing files. (this may take a while)

[vicariat]

Thanks. I was looking for that setting: "Fix Broken Links".  Its only there on auto-import, not on "Import a single folder", which is what it turns out I was doing.

I cant use Media Center's "Rename, Move, & Copy Files" library tool as there are FAR FAR too many files.  MC simply does not have the capabilities of a good file manager for the tasks I want to do.  It takes "forever".

Thanks for the smartlist suggestion.  I've not used them before and will look into this.  It could be a good solution for me.

Thanks for your fast and helpful comments!!

[6233638]

Thanks. I was looking for that setting: "Fix Broken Links".  Its only there on auto-import, not on "Import a single folder", which is what it turns out I was doing.

Without auto-import running to scan the folders, there's no way for Media Center to know what has happened to the files.

I cant use Media Center's "Rename, Move, & Copy Files" library tool as there are FAR FAR too many files.  MC simply does not have the capabilities of a good file manager for the tasks I want to do.  It takes "forever".

Once you have an understanding of the Expression Language, you might find that it takes far less effort than you imagined.
 
A little effort up-front, perhaps, but far less in the long-run.
 
Most of my file moves are handled by one or two presets that I created which automatically sort things as required. (and with a little work, that could be handled by a single expression)
 
It's rare that I have any interaction beyond picking which preset applies to the files I'm moving.

Thanks for the smartlist suggestion.  I've not used them before and will look into this.  It could be a good solution for me.

Thanks for your fast and helpful comments!!

No problem - I'm glad it helped.

[vicariat]

Thanks again.  You are right that some things in MC take more upfront effort.  I am finding it overall worthwhile, but still, its an incredibly complex and feature-rich program.  I will start playing with Expression Language, now that you have pointed it in my direction for this task.