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Author Topic: First impressions with JRiver - Good and Bad (Can Bad be fixed?)  (Read 3080 times)

seiferflo

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Hi Guys,
I've just used JRiver MC 19.0.136 for a couple of days now and I'd like to share some of the good things I like, but also some annoying stuff where you could probably help me to turn into good. Thanks in advance for reading and for your support.

First impressions:
1. Fast, fluid, stable. DSP Studio page is great, very handy features. I'm impressed, it's really good.
2. No crash so far, Asio behaves well, no click in audio. 
Why do I say that? I come from MediaMonkey. I love that software, but I always have problem, hanging, clicks with asio, slow behaviour.

3. I am a massive user of the Panes mode, 95% of the time, but it took me quite a bit of time before getting used to JRiver's one. Not sure why, but MM offers more basic organisation while JRiver allows more powerful ones but hard to understand how it works.
4. I miss the “Now playing” windows in MM. How can I get that in Panes?
5. I miss the half rating from MM. This was very useful to classify things. BTW, it took me a bit of time to figure out properly how to transfer my song with proper ratings back to JRiver as values are different between the two players.
6. I didn’t get properly how the click on a category to display ascending or descending order works? There is a 1 2 3 4 number, but I’m not able to do say “show me album artist first, then album name”. I don’t get it.
7. I really like some tiny customisations, pretty cool.
8. Having the tag section of a song close is great too, however it’s either “the Action windows” or “the cover display”, not both so we need two clicks to get to tags when viewer cover.
9. I love the "black on black" skin, however, I think the grey used for the font is not visible enough in low brightness. Can I change that colour somewhere?

Now some problems I encountered. I'd appreciate some explanation on that.

10. I open JRiver, select an album, go and Analyse Audio for R128 etc.
- Exit and values are tagged in the file. I now exit JRiver.
- I open Foobar and now decide to delete all the new values created via foobar (so right click on the album and I "remove" BPM, DR, R128, PL R128, PL Sample, Tool Name, tool version, R128, Replay Gain. I also right click and select "Remove replay gain info from file".
- The tags are now deleted from the files, foobar and MediaMonkey confirms it when playing files. I close Foobar and MediaMonkey.
- I open JRiver and the values are still displayed showing and still active even if not present in the metadata of the files. I exit JRiver.
- I reopen Foobar and the values came back in the files...
However, this is where it gets tricky. As long as I don't change any tag this album in JRiver after removing the tags from foobar, the values are not written in the files. As soon as I put a rating for example in JRiver on one song, then the whole song gets tagged with volume info again.

Can someone explain me that weird behaviour? Any way to disable that auto save into library or something?
nb: the rating I added with JRiver also remains if I delete it via foobar from the file.

11. Dates appearing 1905
I just imported my whole library into JRiver and I have thousands of MP3 and a few APE tracks which are displayed with the following date XX/XX/1905. I've checked on Google and it seems it's an old problem, apparently not resolved.
nb: MediaMonkey display the dates properly. However foobar shows me a double date, but the correct one.

Can you please help me on that matter? I do not want to edit every file again to change the date.

12. Problem tagging MP3
- Select an "MP3" song tagged previously with Tag&Rename or Foobar or MP3tag or MediaMonkey with tag type:  id3v2.3|apev2|id3v1 or ID3v2.4
- Apply any rating, for example a 5/5 rating.
- Then the tag Album Artist of this song becomes "Album Artist / Album Artist"

This is extremely annoying as every mp3 I modify in JRiver that was previously well tagged is now messed up. What is going on please?

13. Playing Now view in Panes?
In MediaMonkey, there is something I really miss is having the playlist now visible in Panes view. Here I have to go back and forth between "Playing Now" and "Panes".
Is there a way I can get this back in JRiver? It seems it’s only Panes or Playing Now.

14. Select all the tracks from an album in Panes (bottom part)
Again in MediaMonkey (sorry), in Panes view, I could select the cover of the album and it would select all the tracks from this album. Here, even if I select the big title (Album by Artist) or cover, in Panes view, bottom part, it only selects one song. I have to select all the tracks of that album via the categories on top.
Old habits die hard, but it was quite a handy feature. 

15. Clear Library does more than that.
- Images / Video. When I started JRiver, it immediately scanned my images and video folders because I forgot to untick them.
- As I do not want them in JRiver, so I made sure to select only audio and none of the folder containing my images and videos.
- I then hoped it would refresh, but it didn't so I then made the mistaking of clearing the whole library.
- Surprisingly even, the way I organised each widows (albums, artists, files, panes) got back to default. Horrible, I mean, what does it have to do with the library? Its display, organisation. I took me a bit of time to put everything back.
At least the previous Volume tags values from 10. disappeared, ouf.

Anyway, go back to the whole image and videos stuff. They are now gone, but it cost me a lot.
Is there any way to remove unwanted thing (tags or folder) just by refreshing that library sometimes instead of having to basically put 90% of JRiver back to default?

16. Drag'n'drop in Playlist from Panes
- In Panes view, I have displayed the list of my smartlists to quick access.
- I created a new playlist called test that I put in the same category as Smarlists
- What I want is to drag'n'drop some songs from the panes view to this test playlist. Simple.
- However when I do that, it says Enable Pane tagging, OK, "Track Data Change", This will change the data associated with the track"? OK
The Enable Pane tagging comes back everytime I exit JRiver or goes to another section.
I just want to put songs in a playlist, then click on that playlist and have all the songs there in just a simple drag'n'drop.

17. Tool Name, Tool Version
Is it necessary to add two tags "Tool Name" & "Tool Version" everytime a file is tagged from JRiver?
I found these two tags unnecessary information that could be misinterpreted by other software.


I hope I can get your feedback on these points. Thanks a lot and great work on that software.
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JimH

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Re: First impressions with JRiver - Good and Bad (Can Bad be fixed?)
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2014, 06:29:03 am »

Just a few comments.

4.  Playing Now -- You can alter the behavior of MC.  Tools/Options/General/Behavior.

10.  Tagging -- Values are stored in the MC database, and optionally in the files themselves.  So using another program, you may not see the same thing.  Use the search window on the options page to find the setting.  You can refresh either location, using the Library Tools.

15.  Clear Library -- Restore an old backup to get your settings back.  MC makes them automatically.  Then just delete what you don't want.  Read carefully and try a few before you do very many.

It might be best to post a few questions as separate topics.  Big complicated topics can get overlooked.  Reading the forum, using search, may also help.
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Matt

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Re: First impressions with JRiver - Good and Bad (Can Bad be fixed?)
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2014, 09:32:59 am »

17. Tool Name & Tool Version
These are required and should not cause well behaved software any problem.  We ID our tagging so that bugs, if they are found, can be fixed.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

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Re: First impressions with JRiver - Good and Bad (Can Bad be fixed?)
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2014, 10:21:05 am »

3. I am a massive user of the Panes mode, 95% of the time, but it took me quite a bit of time before getting used to JRiver's one. Not sure why, but MM offers more basic organisation while JRiver allows more powerful ones but hard to understand how it works.
If you have any specific questions, there are people here to help.
 
4. I miss the “Now playing” windows in MM. How can I get that in Panes?
Can you post a screenshot illustrating what you mean? I've never used Media Monkey.
From doing a quick search on Google Images, it looks like you might be able to achieve what you want by using a split view. (View → Split View)

5. I miss the half rating from MM. This was very useful to classify things. BTW, it took me a bit of time to figure out properly how to transfer my song with proper ratings back to JRiver as values are different between the two players.
Unfortunately I don't think half stars are supported. But is having such a granular rating system useful?
 
There are changes I'd like to see made to the rating system (a "neutral" rating being moved from 3 to 2 stars) but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

6. I didn’t get properly how the click on a category to display ascending or descending order works? There is a 1 2 3 4 number, but I’m not able to do say “show me album artist first, then album name”. I don’t get it.
Sorting can be quite confusing depending on how you have a view set up, if you're new to the program.
What you're looking for might be found if you click the tab at the top and choose "Sort by" if you're looking to sort items in a view, rather than items in a group.

9. I love the "black on black" skin, however, I think the grey used for the font is not visible enough in low brightness. Can I change that colour somewhere?
Skins are relatively easy to edit.
They are stored in C:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 19\Skins\Standard View\
I would create a copy of the "Black on Black" skin rather than editing the default.
You can then open main.xml in Wordpad to edit values in the skin. Give it another name at the top, and then find & replace:
 
d8dbe3 for active text
b4b7c0 for inactive text
 
If you are not familiar with this type of color value, they are hex codes.
This website offers a simple color picker if you want to find specific values: http://www.colorpicker.com/
 
fffff is pure white if you just want to use that, and you might want to use something a little darker like dddddd for the inactive text.

10. I open JRiver, select an album, go and Analyse Audio for R128 etc.
- Exit and values are tagged in the file. I now exit JRiver.
- I open Foobar and now decide to delete all the new values created via foobar (so right click on the album and I "remove" BPM, DR, R128, PL R128, PL Sample, Tool Name, tool version, R128, Replay Gain. I also right click and select "Remove replay gain info from file".
- The tags are now deleted from the files, foobar and MediaMonkey confirms it when playing files. I close Foobar and MediaMonkey.
- I open JRiver and the values are still displayed showing and still active even if not present in the metadata of the files. I exit JRiver.
- I reopen Foobar and the values came back in the files...
However, this is where it gets tricky. As long as I don't change any tag this album in JRiver after removing the tags from foobar, the values are not written in the files. As soon as I put a rating for example in JRiver on one song, then the whole song gets tagged with volume info again.

Can someone explain me that weird behaviour? Any way to disable that auto save into library or something?
nb: the rating I added with JRiver also remains if I delete it via foobar from the file.
Values are stored in both the Media Center library, and in file tags - though not all tags are written to the file.
Tools → Options → Library & Folders → Manage Library Fields will let you enable or disable which tags are written to the file.
You should also do a search for "tag" at the bottom of the options window for additional tagging options, and you may also want to check your "auto import" settings.
 
I would suggest doing your tagging in Media Center rather than externally - the tagging controls are quite extensive.
 
There is also an option under Tools → Options → Library Tools → Update Library (from tags) or vice-versa.
I'm not sure if this will remove tags, or only update tags as I haven't used it.

11. Dates appearing 1905
I just imported my whole library into JRiver and I have thousands of MP3 and a few APE tracks which are displayed with the following date XX/XX/1905. I've checked on Google and it seems it's an old problem, apparently not resolved.
nb: MediaMonkey display the dates properly. However foobar shows me a double date, but the correct one.

Can you please help me on that matter? I do not want to edit every file again to change the date.
Hopefully someone will be able to help you with this. Uploading a sample file may be helpful in solving it.
It does sound like they are tagged incorrectly, or using an uncommon format.

12. Problem tagging MP3
- Select an "MP3" song tagged previously with Tag&Rename or Foobar or MP3tag or MediaMonkey with tag type:  id3v2.3|apev2|id3v1 or ID3v2.4
- Apply any rating, for example a 5/5 rating.
- Then the tag Album Artist of this song becomes "Album Artist / Album Artist"

This is extremely annoying as every mp3 I modify in JRiver that was previously well tagged is now messed up. What is going on please?
That sounds like a bug. Again, a sample file would be useful. You can email logs[at]jriver[dot]com with a sample file to report issues like that.

13. Playing Now view in Panes?
In MediaMonkey, there is something I really miss is having the playlist now visible in Panes view. Here I have to go back and forth between "Playing Now" and "Panes".
Is there a way I can get this back in JRiver? It seems it’s only Panes or Playing Now.
As above, I think split view does what you're looking for.

15. Clear Library does more than that.
- Images / Video. When I started JRiver, it immediately scanned my images and video folders because I forgot to untick them.
- As I do not want them in JRiver, so I made sure to select only audio and none of the folder containing my images and videos.
- I then hoped it would refresh, but it didn't so I then made the mistaking of clearing the whole library.
- Surprisingly even, the way I organised each widows (albums, artists, files, panes) got back to default. Horrible, I mean, what does it have to do with the library? Its display, organisation. I took me a bit of time to put everything back.
At least the previous Volume tags values from 10. disappeared, ouf.

Anyway, go back to the whole image and videos stuff. They are now gone, but it cost me a lot.
Is there any way to remove unwanted thing (tags or folder) just by refreshing that library sometimes instead of having to basically put 90% of JRiver back to default?
You can just delete items from the library.
 

 
As long as you have "Ignore files previously removed from library" enabled in the auto-import options (accessed via Tools → Import → Configure auto-import) they will not be re-imported.

16. Drag'n'drop in Playlist from Panes
- In Panes view, I have displayed the list of my smartlists to quick access.
- I created a new playlist called test that I put in the same category as Smarlists
- What I want is to drag'n'drop some songs from the panes view to this test playlist. Simple.
- However when I do that, it says Enable Pane tagging, OK, "Track Data Change", This will change the data associated with the track"? OK
The Enable Pane tagging comes back everytime I exit JRiver or goes to another section.
I just want to put songs in a playlist, then click on that playlist and have all the songs there in just a simple drag'n'drop.
Try right-clicking the playlist, and choosing "edit playlist in action window"
Or, again, split view might do what you want.
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seiferflo

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Re: First impressions with JRiver - Good and Bad (Can Bad be fixed?)
« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2014, 02:09:31 pm »

Hi quite note to say I'm very pleased by your replies, thank you a lot.
However, I will answer to your feedback later as I am on a business trip.
Thank you again.
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