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[tseipel]

Good morning,

Please bear with me on this post. My wife and I had our first child on Thursday and sleep has been nonexistent. Which leads me to my problem:

In April 2014, I converted my ALAC/AIFF library to Lossless FLAC and have since then been encoding purchased CDs as Lossless FLAC, ALAC, and mp3 256 kbps (using dBpoweramp). I store these files in separate folders on my NAS, with a backup copy of the ALAC files on a separate hard drive. I have been using using MC to edit the metadata for my FLAC files. I have not edited the metadata on the ALAC files beyond what dBpoweramp allows prior to ripping.

Last night/early this morning (they're the same thing to a newborn) as I was trying to console my son, I inadvertently deleted the FLAC folder from my NAS while attempting to create an internal backup of it (don't ask; it will just make me start crying again). As of this writing, I am re-encoding the Lossless FLAC files from my ALAC files.

When I open MC, all of my (since deleted) FLAC files (or images of them) still show up in my media library. My question is this: Can I reassociate these fields with my newly encoded Lossless FLAC files? I am keeping folder and file structure the same (i.e., the filename [path]). Can I use library tools to update the tags from library?

My apologies for the long-windedness. Any input would be truly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Tim

[Arindelle]

congrats on your 1st!! Yes there are tools that you can use

There are different ways that you can do this.  First make sure you keep your library backups and make a new one before any monkeying around.

You ligh just get lucky and not have to do anything. I would first try and and go into the configuration for autoimport and make sure Fix Broken links is set to YES, protect missing drive. Also I would uncheck ignore files removed from library (at least temporarily) . Also uncheck run autoimport in the background (you cna reset this later).

Then launch autoimport manually. With a little bit of luck, if you kept the same file paths, these should re-associate themselves. Now if you have already imported the flac files or if autoimport was running in the background and the options i mentioned were not set, I'd actually delete the imported files (just from the library!) and rerun autoimport to see if it will sort itself out.

If not no worries, there are 3 other ways to do this  - post back if so (you won't be sleeping much anyways :p )

[tseipel]

I'm in the process of rebuilding the files, of which there are 53,000. I will get back to you in the next few days to update you on my progress.

Sleep? What's sleep?

Seriously, thank you so much.

Tim

[tseipel]

Arindelle,

I rebuilt and reasociated my FLAC files as you suggested. Of 54,000 files, only 497 did not reassociate correctly. Short story: You're a lifesaver.

All the best,
Tim

[tseipel]

So I have encountered a new wrinkle in that my album art appears to have disappeared from my files, despite showing up in MC. I had been using the "Paste from Clipboard" option when tagging the files. Is this data recoverable as well?

As always, I sincerely appreciate the help.

Best regards,
Tim

[Listener]

So I have encountered a new wrinkle in that my album art appears to have disappeared from my files, despite showing up in MC. I had been using the "Paste from Clipboard" option when tagging the files. Is this data recoverable as well?

You'll need to do some homework to find out where you might have copies of the cover art.  Here are some questions:

1. Look at the Covert Art section of the Tools/Options/File Locations dialog.  What is the setting for Audio mode?  What folder is specified for the "folder:" settling?

2. Look in one or more folders that contain your Flac files. Do you see any .jpg files in those folders?  (For example. files named folder.jpg)

3. Now look in the folders that contain your ALAC/AIFF files.  Do you see any .jpg files there?  How about the folder containing .mp3 files?  any .jpg files there?

4. Is the pattern of folder names for the ALAC/AIFF folders and mp3 folders exactly parallelo to that for the folders contaning Flac files?

There are a few more things to research but this is a start.

If you do your homework and come back with answers to these questions, I and others will be better able to help you further.

[tseipel]

Hi Listener,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I will get back to you re: question number one. The answer to questions 2-4 is (unfortunately) no. I had been copying and pasting album art directly into my FLAC files, but had not done the same for my ALAC files, as they were my "nonused/fallback" files. Obviously, experience is a great teacher and going forward I will be pasting the cover art into both sets of files. With that said, if you have any other thoughts on how I might recover (some or all of) my data, I am happy to hear them.

Thanks again,
Tim