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General => MusicBee Wishlist => Topic started by: alec.tron on October 19, 2016, 09:46:24 AM

Title: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on October 19, 2016, 09:46:24 AM
Heya,
as mentioned in this solved feature wish:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=19793.msg118526#msg118526

it would be great if the re-locate function would also work in an album context. Ideally with an additional user defined identifier (although track numbering/alphabetical order should be pretty reliable in a majority of cases...(?) ) in case it was re-located and renamed at the same time...).
Cheers.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on October 30, 2016, 12:47:10 AM
Hm, no one else wanting/needing to re-locate whole albums ?
File by file is quite time-consuming... and it's just a matter of fact that in our vast digital libraries things do change location/name/or both occasionally...
Or does anyone have a good trick for doing a relocate on multiple-files pointing to a new location to look in and do a match by parameter (i.e. alphabetical sorting, wild card from the original name, etc ) ?
Cheers.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: rudolph on October 30, 2016, 06:19:13 PM
bump
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on December 11, 2016, 06:38:38 AM
bumpety bump ?

c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: rudolph on February 03, 2017, 11:11:24 PM
I found a fix... - Use listFix() software to fix .m3u missing song links.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on February 04, 2017, 06:22:13 AM
Thanks for the headsup.
But urgh for Java Runtime requirement... might try it on an old laptop.
Did it work well in your case ?
Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on March 19, 2017, 08:00:05 PM
just bumping this as i plan to have a look at something that helps with locating multiple missing files
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on March 19, 2017, 11:02:03 PM
(http://gifsec.com/wp-content/uploads/GIF/2014/12/Clap-GIF-2015.gif)

Thanks Steven!

Could you please consider making the 'relocate file' functionality accessible actively as well through the GUI/hotkey/right-click-menu so one can swap files in a single playlists and/or all playlists globally (without having to delete the one I want to replace first to get to the 'replace file' dialogue).
That'd be swish.
i.e. this:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=20189.msg120134#msg120134

Cheers.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 03, 2017, 10:27:22 PM
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip

A new main menu command has been added Tools/ Locate Missing Files
- for the files displayed in the main panel, this function will check every file to make sure they still exist at the expected location
- if any missing files are detected, they will be displayed in a grid
- in the background MB will attempt to locate the missing files matching on filename, artist/title or file size
- you can also manually select a file and MB will also attempt to match other files from that folder
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 03, 2017, 11:00:55 PM
Awesome, looking forward to try this tonight!

So many questions though...
When you say "for the files displayed in the main panel" - is this true for (main) Library panel as well as Playlist panels (which can hold files that are NOT in the library) ?
And (I will need to test this to get a clearer picture of the functionality) is there means for a user to have more control over the " in the background MB will attempt to locate the missing files" functionality to trigger replace for a whole set of file (i.e. an album) via a GUI to double check/tweak the suggested matching files before actually applying them ?

Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 04, 2017, 10:20:16 AM
Heya,
just got home and gave this a try, and in case you'd want some feedback (this is just based on my first few attempts - and I changed my naming patterns for files quite extremely over the years... so the only constant & reliable matching patter is quite often the order/ ## or #_## in the filename [usually in the beginning...] - so this is all highly subjective to my case):

- after 2-8 minutes of searching through the complete library for each attempt, the auto matching was wrong 5 out of 5 times unfortunately. And, even more bizarrely, in 3 of the 5 cases (for a full file selection from different albums) it also found the exact same wrong file and suggested it for each entry, i.e. the matching suggestion looked like this:

Code
01 Ode.mp3              |          |     02 ~ salud.mp3
02 Some.mp3             |          |     02 ~ salud.mp3
03 Circling.mp3         |          |     02 ~ salud.mp3
- the [...] button interrupt, by pointing to one of the album files, did not stop the auto search, but seemingly continued to trawl the filesystem if the user suggested location did not yield a match

- that all feels like the current implementation is probably mostly useful for files, with the same name that have been moved to a different path/location (which is rarely the case for me... as - if files move location, I usually take advantage of that and update the file naming pattern at the same time to the latest & greatest (as I need to rebuild other databases (Serato/Traktor that rely on them too... ) so in order to do the 2 birds with one stone, I do both in one go...)


A few suggestions, in case that's wanted/helpful:
- I would prefer a more manual way as I usually know where things have moved to & trawling the whole library takes a fair bit of time
- I would love to be able to define a matching pattern (especially when helping the match along and pointing to a specific folder where to look for the new files - eg the user should be able to decide on what basis matching happens; either by full file name, or a user defined sub string inside the file name, or even simply by order / by digits/track# in the user suggested target folder).

Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 04, 2017, 06:05:03 PM
- after 2-8 minutes of searching through the complete library for each attempt, the auto matching was wrong 5 out of 5 times unfortunately. And, even more bizarrely, in 3 of the 5 cases (for a full file selection from different albums) it also found the exact same wrong file and suggested it for each entry, i.e. the matching suggestion looked like this:

Code
01 Ode.mp3              |          |     02 ~ salud.mp3
02 Some.mp3             |          |     02 ~ salud.mp3
03 Circling.mp3         |          |     02 ~ salud.mp3
- the [...] button interrupt, by pointing to one of the album files, did not stop the auto search, but seemingly continued to trawl the filesystem if the user suggested location did not yield a match
I will change the behavior so the Auto-matching is initiated from a button click.
However the matching should be reasonably accurate, using the following in order:
1: filename
2: file size
3: artist and title tags

i guess the files in question had the same file size. I will make it a bit stricter by making 2 and 3 compulsory for a match to happen
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 04, 2017, 08:28:53 PM
with changes as described above:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 06, 2017, 11:46:16 AM
Heya.
I just tried the new patch, and this time 3 out of 3 attempts didn't yield any results at all. Maybe I'm approaching this wrong / from an unintended angle, so to confirm:
- I run these on playlists that have missing files.
- only 1 album at a time
- first 'Start Auto-Match' search of the day (after starting MB) takes a few minutes
- consecutive 'Start Auto-Match' searches after the first  are much faster than the first search (does it do some caching now ?)

Unfortunately, among the 3 I tested I was certain it should/would find 2 of them at least, but have a look :

1: filename
see screenshot part 3 - despite the exact same name in playlist and library, it has not found the file althoigh the file in the new location is in the library as well (which is not a given in the way I use playlists... i.e. demos etc I might not add to my library, but they might exist in a playlist... and they might continue to live outside the library or get deleted at some later point in time, after which I still want the dead entry in a playlist to stick around for archival purposes...)

2: file size
see screenshot part 2- it seems to query the missing file for size ? Or how come it's displaying 'original size=0'... ?!

3: artist and title tags
see screenshot part 1 - it seems to get the 'title' from the dead-entry's title field, which when a file missing, this is making title = fileName, which makes a match impossible...?

(http://i.imgur.com/UkUI944.png)



Additionally, I'm not sure what else I could try as even in example 3, when pointing it to the new folder by hand with the exact same filenames, it does not recognize them as the same either... and these are all fairly easy cases (which is unusual for my playlists & library setup as I slowly replace old mp3 rips of my CDs & vinyl with flac rips of the same - but when doing so fileName & fileSize is nearly always different), and on these examples, matching should have been fairly easy with the rule-set you outlined, right ?
It all smells as if MB is expecting to have more data at it's disposal to do the match... any idea what might be wrong in my attempt to use this ?


Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 06, 2017, 07:11:16 PM
i expect what is happening is you have imported playlists where the referenced file doesnt exist and hence the only thing MB knows about the file is the filename. I will make a further tweak to the matching so that in that case, MB only attempts to match on filename and not artist/title and file size
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 06, 2017, 09:48:40 PM
i expect what is happening is you have imported playlists where the referenced file doesnt exist and hence the only thing MB knows about the file is the filename.
Exactly.
But isn't that the idea for having a relocate functionality...? i.e. IF a file is appearing as a dead link in a playlist, which is true for every time when I would need a 'Re-Locate missing files' functionality, isn't it also a given that the file is not to be found under the previous URL anymore...?
I think I don't understand how this is meant to work if you can only use this for files that aren't missing.
Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 06, 2017, 09:54:56 PM
when i say MB matches on filename, i mean MB matches the filename excluding the folder path eg. c:\qwerty\a.mp3 would match to c:\asdfgd\a.mp3

this has the tweak as i described above:
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_1/MusicBee31_Patched.zip
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 07, 2017, 01:20:49 AM
Yea, I assumed it was for fileName.ext pattern only and ignoires the path part for the match (but even that also rules out that it will ever find cases where fileNameA.mp3 is meant to be replace with fileNameA.flac, right ?)

I'll give it a try tonight if it finds the 'easiest assumable case' files for case 3:
1: filename
see screenshot part 3 - despite the exact same name in playlist and library, it has not found the file althoigh the file in the new location is in the library as well

What does it take as a basis for matching ? Library contents that are cached on first match attempt (hence the faster search on second/third/etc match attempt) ?

Also - is no one else interested in this feature ? Would be good to get feedback from other people on this as well!

Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: psychoadept on April 07, 2017, 01:21:40 AM
I'm excited about it but don't have anything to use it with right this second.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 07, 2017, 09:29:57 AM
Heyhey,
I just tried the last MB patch with the same missing files.

First I tried the easiest case, the same files as in screenshot part 3 - and again, despite the exact same name of the missing track in the playlist and the same fileName existing in the library (in a different location), it has not found the files with the same name and the match GUI remained empty.
But.
If I now hand-navigate to the folder and point to the file in the new location for 1 file, it now immediately matches all 13 files of the album correctly (after the match, the matching column of the GUI still lists previous fileName as title, and 0kb size for the missing file, but when hand-pointed to the new locations file it seemed to succeed on fileName match maybe ?).
Success.
Awesome!

So I tried the same on a more difficult case (example 2 in the screenshot) where the fileName has changed (from "01 Ode.mp3" to "01-Nils Frahm-Ode.mp3" ) and in that case it did not find the match obviously, but also after assigning the first match by hand, it did not auto match the rest of the album neither (as missing size [0kb] and actual fileSize were different AND the fileName has changed as well...). Again, not sure how these cases of missing files are meant to work with the currently implemented hard-coded ruleset.

Same for case 1 (example 1 in the screenshot) - no dice.


A thought though - In order to match tracks that lie outside of the matching logic as it is currently implemented, I would really wish you would be willing to expose the match rules in the GUI (via tickboxes maybe ? ) and add a alphabetical / number based matching pattern as well (eg resulting in 2 match lists, source & target or some such, and the user can move items up/down in for quick corrections by hand in each to establish the match quickly themselves) for users to be able to have another option when the 3 that are currently available fail - i.e. for cases with missing files for which fileName and/or extensions change - which for me is the vast majority of cases...

Hope feedback is welcome on this & nice to see this coming together! Thanks!

Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 08, 2017, 09:15:32 AM
i have made one small change for the next update.
If the function is used on a playlist displayed in the main panel, then MB will now attempt matching on valid files already in the library.

To summarise the matching process:

1. If the missing file has never been a file that MB has known about and never cached any information eg. a file referenced in an imported playlist that was missing right from the start
   a. - MB will match on filename only, including file extension

2. If the file was known about by MB and hence MB has some information cached then the matching is:
   a. - MB will firstly try to match on filename. If a single file is matched then the following criteria (b&c) must also match and no other files will be considered for matching. If not matched, other files of the same file extension will be considered but the following criteria (b&c) must match
   b. - the file size must match
   c. - the artist and title must match

As mentioned above, the files considered as candidates might include files in the library depending on whether you are running this function against a playlist or not.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 09, 2017, 12:32:25 AM
Sweet. I'll update and give it a try again.
But, as it stands and how I understand what you have implemented, this approach can not work on missing files when:
- the fileName changes
- the file extension changes (from .mp3 to .flac)

For the case when a filePath changes, but fileName & fileExtension stay the same, this is a welcome addition, but this will cover less than 10% of my missing-files-cases as I will continue to switch from mp3 to flac where & when I can, and update the fileName-patterns as I go along as well.

There is a chance to work around this by purely relying on the metadata (artists & title) matching in cases where fileName & extension changes and both new & old are inside the MB library.... which requires the user to be rather rigorous when managing replacing whole albums with different filenames and/or fileExtensions.  So I'll see if that's a path worth taking over the next weeks when I start replacing more things again.
I would still really hope for an additional alphabetical/sorting based batch match to be able to fix cases for missing albums in playlists... but since you never commented on the suggestion, it seems like this is nothing you see value in, so I'll stop mentioning it.

Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 21, 2017, 08:25:25 AM
Heyyeh.
I just changed 2 names of albums (i.e. path/URL changed), no other change - upon restart, MB did the following:

1) flagged the files under the previous path as missing. Since this was as expected & intended, I confirmed to not remove them as I would like to replace them with the files living under a new path.
2) MB's start up scan also found the files under the new name & added them to the Inbox, which is to be expected as well.
So far so good.

I then went ahead and:
3) use 'Locate Missing Files...' to point 1 file to the new location, which then picked up all other files, since neither name or .ext changed, and worked as expected replacing all old URLs with the new.
4) I then removed the previously detected 'new' files from the inbox (as they were added through the 'Locate Missing Files...' action above).

But, to my suprise, when restarting MB, it now still adds the 'new' files to the inbox (despite them having been added to the library via 'Locate Missing Files...' )

I had 2 assumptions here:
- once I pointed missing old files to the new location via 'Locate Missing Files...', these files would fully replace the old files, and therefore would not be considered 'new' after being added to the library via 'Locate Missing Files...'.
And additionally - and please confirm that this is correct (this only occurred to me when the above happened and I assumed this as a given - as if not this could be rather destructive to my 100s of playlists...)  IF I use 'Locate Missing Files...' on an album, and tracks from this album occur in a playlists, when replacing tracks or a full album via 'Locate Missing Files...' this should and will also update each occurence in a playlist with these 'replaced' files.
Correct ?

Cheers.
c.

ps. this is on 3.1.6306, and on previous tests, the replaced-files did not re-appear in the inbox.

pps. turns out, looking some more into this, the replaced files are gone from the library... so it makes sense that the inbox is picking them up again... I'll do the same again and see if I can reproduce any of it...

ppps. looks like this is reproducable...
I added a dummy folder with files.
Added it to MB library,
then renamed the folder,
restarted MB,
which then picked up the changes and suggested them through inbox as new files.
IF I now go to library and point the missing files from the library to the new path/URL,
AND THEN go to the inbox to delete them from the inbox (after which, the relinked files in the library are still there at this point pointing to the new/replaced files),
AND IF I THEN restart MB - the replaced files are gone from the library without a trace, neither new or old are to be found, and the files used for the 'Locate Missing Files...' action, are again added to the inbox.
I might try NOT to delete from inbox, then restart and see if things look more healthy...

pppps.
The trick is indeed - after replacing them in the library, ignore the inbox files & DO NOT delete them from there - this seems to be where MB chokes. IF I do not delete them, but just restart MB at this point, then the replaced files remain in the library and after the restart, the new'old files are not shown in the inbox anymore.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 22, 2017, 12:19:17 AM
And additionally - and please confirm that this is correct (this only occurred to me when the above happened and I assumed this as a given - as if not this could be rather destructive to my 100s of playlists...)  IF I use 'Locate Missing Files...' on an album, and tracks from this album occur in a playlists, when replacing tracks or a full album via 'Locate Missing Files...' this should and will also update each occurence in a playlist with these 'replaced' files.
Correct ?


Unfortunately, the assumption above I wanted to clarify, that 'Locate Missing Files...' functionality would also correctly replace the playlist entries of replaced files, was wrong from what I can see after testing this.
So in case people are using the 'Locate Missing Files...' functionality on files that are in playlists as well be aware - You will need to fix your playlists by hand after running 'Locate Missing Files...' for the same files as well!!

Interestingly, this seems to be correct at first - i.e. after a running 'Locate Missing Files...' on files that also are in a playlist, and the library files have been replaced with the files (same fileName.ext again to be within the legal scope of how this is implemented) as expected, checking the playlist where they occur also shows them in the 'new'/re-Located path/URL.
BUT - when restarting MB after the above steps, this is where things start to get odd - I then see the files in the library correctly pointing to the new location, whereas the files in the playlists, which were pointing to the new location before the restart, are now pointing back to the old location, and have become missing files again. And I do write all playlists to static .m3u playlists in my MB preferences and this works reliably usually.

See:
(http://i.imgur.com/NtArkTU.png)


Bottom line for me here - since the replace functionality is limited to cases which I do not regularly have in my workflow (i.e. as I mostly update from mp3 to flac files and rename files as well occasionally) - having the replace 'Locate Missing Files...' that also fixes up platylists entries for the replaced files, tjhis was the selling point for me on this despite the limited functionality as is.
Since that does not work, I will not attempt to use this anymore as is.
Sing out if you intend to do more work on this and I'll happily test again.

Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 23, 2017, 10:23:44 PM
it should be updating playlists but i will check that out in the next few days
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on April 24, 2017, 08:22:44 PM
i have confirmed MB should be updating playlists and does so in my testing.
I think in your case you have a huge number of large playlists and it might be the case the library playlist index is corrupted.
I suggest you close MB, delete the file "MusicBeeLibrary.pidx" which is in the root music folder and then restart MB will rebuild it when the file locate command is actioned. It will take some time to rebuild the indices though
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 24, 2017, 10:07:23 PM
i have confirmed MB should be updating playlists and does so in my testing.

Sweet - and that is true pre & post MB restart for you ?
I found it very odd that it adjusts the playlist corretctly first off, but does not manage to write it. That to me, as someone with a lot of as well as large playlists, is worrying that it can choke like this without me as a user being aware that it didn't finish what it was meant to (a completely uneducated guess/hunch was that this might play into it as well - https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=21594.0 ).

I'll flush the playlist index, let it re-index and test it again.
Is there any indication to us end-users that we can use to tell when the playlist indexing process has finished ?
This was another rather opaque thing in MB for me, where I just had to wait and sit to get certain indicators which hint at the process probably having finished (i.e. the indicator for that for me was seeing aggregated playlists in parent folders.... but, that might be a completely wrong assumption ?! Also, since you never commented if the aggregated view [of the playlists inside parent folders] is an intentional feature we can rely on & use, or an unintentional byproduct that's better not to be relied on and used...? [actual case - it's easier to fix missing files in playlists by hand in aggregated view rather than in each playlist...])

Cheers.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on April 25, 2017, 10:16:00 AM
I did the same test twice as well, and after flushing "MusicBeeLibrary.pidx" & recreating it, the replaced files remained in playlist under their new path.

One oddity though:
- it took 2 MB restarts for MusicBeeLibrary.pidx to be rewritten. After deleting MusicBeeLibrary.pidx & restarting MB I was giving MB time until processor use and disc read seemingly came to a stop (I assumed playlist indexing was finished then), so after restart, I then pointed 'Locate Missing Files...' dialogue to the new file location. Then checked playlist files, and they were replaced as expected & as before. I then shut MB down (again waiting for all read/write activity seemingly having finished). After that there was no MusicBeeLibrary.pidx file in the folder (I assumed it would be written on every MB shut-down just as the iTunes xml is). So I gave it another few minutes, then restarted MB; and to my suprise (since the MusicBeeLibrary.pidx wasn't written to disc) the playlist files kept their new location. I then shut down MB again, and then the new MusicBeeLibrary.pidx suddenly was written & appeared.
Any idea why it wouldn't have written it on first shut-down - and how it still kept the playlist change ?

Also, since this was somewhat erratic and impossible to catch unless one checks all files in playlist before & after the MB restart when using
 'Locate Missing Files...' functionality, which is not realistic imo - is there a chance to have MB flag a corrupted MusicBeeLibrary.pidx file ?

In case this helps you, I still have the previous MusicBeeLibrary.pidx file which as you said might be the culprit. If you want to have a look at that, sing out!

Cheers.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: psychoadept on June 10, 2017, 06:05:07 AM
I just tested this out for the first time, because I had to rerip a whole CD at a higher bitrate.  So I deleted the old files and tried to point musicbee at the new files in the Ripped Files folder.  Well, that way I would have had to do each one manually.  So I moved the files into the folder where the old ones had been, and all but a couple of them had the same filenames anyway so I didn't have to "locate" them.  But the two I did match up with the locate files command lost their play counts.

Could this be adjust to have an option for MusicBee to look in a designated folder for matching files, rather than file by file?  Could be used for mass replace as well as locating missing files.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on June 10, 2017, 10:49:44 AM
for the next update, i have enhanced it to remember play/skip counts, and date added from the original missing file (if that data was cached in the musicbee library)
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: CheshireKat on June 30, 2017, 10:48:23 PM
So, I very dumbly used an external tagger to rename/reorganize my music (I had inconsistent file name patterns that annoyed me and made it hard to match multiple tracks while tagging), not thinking about MusicBee not recognizing the songs anymore. This was awhile ago and I hadn't wanted to deal with it. But since about half my music is now declared "missing", I've finally decided to sort it out so I can listen to music. I spent a couple hours yesterday mindlessly going one-one-by one, locating each file. Fortunately, most were simply renamed and not moved, so the correct folder opened, and I could just select the track. But it's quite daunting to do each one, so I Googled and found this thread.
I patched my MusicBee and used the new Locate missing files function, and it worked great! THANK YOU! There doesn't seem to be any adverse effects for me; nearly all my playlists are auto anyway, and none of the tags had been modified, only file names and, in some cases, locations, so that probably made it easier.
It appears that the play/skip counts and date added remained the same for me. I don't know if that mentioned update was implemented already, or what, but I'm glad.

Edit: after running it several more times (I'm going through by genre), there are some tracks that, for whatever reason, aren't being matched/located. I've no idea why, since the majority of these so far were in the same folder as before the file renames, and the Locate screen opens that folder and I can select the correct track. I don't mind this so much, though, since probably 95% or more are correctly located, so there's a heck of a lot less for me to do manually. Still, it's curious.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: tpkyteroo on July 08, 2017, 01:50:30 AM
What I found really useful, is the ability to do a browse through folders and files to find the track that went missing.  However, I see that ability in MB.  That would really help here when files get moved to locations that MB can't guess at.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on July 08, 2017, 01:56:22 AM
Heya,
If you use Tools -> Locate Missing Files (with a selection of missing files), the GUI shows 'browse' next to each track....?
Even with the old ways - if you just double click a missing file - it will ask 'Do you want to locate the missing file ?' which then opens a file browser for you to point to a specific file....

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you meant though....
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on December 15, 2017, 10:19:58 AM
Could it be mass-relocate & playlist consistency broke slightly with the 3.2 update or behaves differently as well ?

What used to work / happen:
- if I rename or move folders/files on disc
- then start MB to let it scan all files and notice the missing files
- then use 'Locate Missing Files'
- point to new location and MB usually found the matches via either Metadata match, or by filename in case that hasn't changed
- after relocate, all playlists the files from the old location were in were pointing to the new files
- the 'double entry' in the inbox would be gone (not even sure if automatically or after a delete from inbox action...)

What I am seeing now:
... all the same until:
- after relocate - it now does not show the playlists in neither the playlists in the playlist field anymore, nor are they shown correctly under Search... -> Locate In Playlist ->  [which states:] "No Playlists".  and after a bit the Auto-Playlists will show up, but never the static playlists these now relocated files do correctly live in still and double checking the playlist itself - the same files in the new location are where they are meant to be in the playlists from what I cans ee...
- the 'double entry' in the inbox is now still around after pointing MB to the new location. And this is persistent even after 'Remove From Inbox' by hand on the duplicates in Inbox.


For the not showing up in the Search... -> Locate In Playlist -> part, I've run a complete rescan, which I thought might help, but that didn't fix it, so I am still seeing these odd conflicting bits of information in MB:

(https://i.imgur.com/7uCeScj.png)

Hope this makes sense.
If you have any idea for either of the 2 issues - double up in Inbox after Locate Missing Files, and/or the wrongly displayed playlist info post relocate, please let me know.

Churs.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: Steven on December 27, 2017, 09:18:26 PM
I am unable to reproduce any issues and i havent touched the code since v3.1

- after relocate - it now does not show the playlists in neither the playlists in the playlist field anymore, nor are they shown correctly under Search... -> Locate In Playlist ->  [which states:] "No Playlists".  and after a bit the Auto-Playlists will show up, but never the static playlists these now relocated files do correctly live in still and double checking the playlist itself - the same files in the new location are where they are meant to be in the playlists from what I cans ee...
For this, I suggest you try deleting MusicBeeLibrary.pidx in the root music folder in case its got corrupted
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: alec.tron on January 04, 2018, 01:33:37 AM
Hah, thanks for the reminder ;)
I occasionally checked if the (in) 'Playlist' column has been repopulated the days after posting this (to no avail and it stuck to only having added the correct playlist for 1 out of the 11 album tracks...) yet, checking now again, these are now again stating the correct playlist for all 11 tracks.
Guess my amount of playlists is the crux here and the reason it takes multiple days to repopulate the playlist field correctly....

So, since 'Rescan All Files' does nothing for the (in) 'Playlist' column/info consistency apparently (as I've had it run multiple times between ~ 15.12. to 20.12 without the playlist field getting populated) - is there anything I can do to force re-scan all playlists/file relationships to re-populate the (in) 'Playlist' column with the latest...?
Or is the only trigger here deleting  MusicBeeLibrary.pidx if one wants the playlist column to display the latest and greatest / correct info...?

Cheers.
c.
Title: Re: Re-Locate missing files for whole albums / multi files
Post by: arielreyes001 on February 25, 2020, 03:49:48 PM
Hello all,

I recently moved some files, others were renamed, and very few had the tags changed because I had the wrong album info. I didn't realize at the time that MB would not automatically be able to "match" files that changed within a playlist. I realize the ones that have different tags won't be matched, but none of the files are being matched and located. 99% of them have the same files size, and same artist and album but when I click on "Start Auto-Match" nothing happens. The first time it took a short while to look through all the files, but after that the search seems to last a few seconds but nothing is matched. In some cases, the file is in the same location as the original but the file name changed to include a featured artist but it does not find it.

I tried one the suggestion to delete the file "MusicBeeLibrary.pidx" but that doesn't seem to make a difference. A new one is recreated very quickly but it doesn't help. Nothing is found. Any suggestions?