Messages

1

Questions / Re: Custom Tags when moving to a new PC

« on: June 07, 2025, 02:52:34 AM »

I'm a confessed Installer lover, and whether related or not, what I hate losing when moving/drag-and-dropping my entire library folder contents to one of my DAP's microSD cards, or even the microSD card in the same MB Installer installation on my Surface tablet, is the date-added dates from my source Installer folder. Fortunately, it's mostly only a look-and-feel matter outside the source library folder.     

I don't think that this is related to Installer vs. Portable.  This is a function of changing the location of your library.  Any time that you drag and drop your library, I would expect this to happen.

After moving your library, if you relink music file paths through Musicbee, I would expect the data to pull across, including date-added.

2

Questions / Re: Custom Tags when moving to a new PC

« on: June 06, 2025, 02:21:47 AM »

I bought a new computer earlier this year.  I had been running the Installer version previously (I didn't understand when I first downloaded MusicBee that the Installer and Portable versions had the exact same functionality and features), and amassed a large library with custom tags and other customizations that were going to be a nightmare to bring across or replicate from the Installer version.

Several months prior to purchasing my new computer, I took a deep breath and took the time to implement what turned out to be the best possible advice - I converted to the Portable version.  There are step by step instructions located elsewhere on this forum.  While the conversion needs to be done meticulously (and there were a few minor tweaks after the conversion steps that I still had to discover and fix), once it's done, it's done.  And life is much, much better.

Once I had the portable version installed, as all of my music is on external drives, it's simply a matter of remapping those external drives or using MusicBee's relink music file paths feature (I did the latter, worked perfectly, with a library of 1.5m tracks).

3

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: File Organization - enhanced Preset Management

« on: April 26, 2025, 09:38:55 AM »

2,3 and 4 are done for v3.7
there is a ... button that opens a dialog that enables the presets list to be edited

Awesome.  Thank you!!!

4

Plugins / Re: [PLUGIN] MusicBee QuickTagger⁺ 1.2.1 - Efficient Tag Management for Your Music

« on: April 13, 2025, 02:16:28 AM »

Is there a way to turn off Append to allow a tag to Replace all existing values?

When cleaning up things that are tagged incorrectly, this would be handy, as I don't want to keep the incorrect value.  The previous version of this plugin functioned that way, so hopefully there is a way to do so with the new one.

Thanks for the improved functionality over all!

5

Plugins / Re: QuickTagger v1.0.1 (BETA) - Quickly tag your musics using hotkeys!

« on: March 27, 2025, 04:29:20 AM »

Hello, the below error message appears connected to this plugin (which I find very helpful, btw!).  It's only when this plugin is active that this error message appears, typically every 10-15 minutes.  Any ideas?  I'm using Musicbee v. 3.6.9208 P on Windows 11.

Just in case you didn't realise. There is the original plugin and another version by SpirosG.

I'd start by making sure you are using the SpirosG version as that was updated in November 2024 and the original hasn't been updated since it was released in October 2021.

Edit - replaced with the new version by SpirosG, and unfortunately the error messages have resumed.  They do stop when the plugin is disabled.  I'll continue to monitor tomorrow and, if the behavior persists, I will post a modified version of this in the support forum for the newer version.  Thanks for the advice - at least I'm narrowing down the scope of the problem a bit!

6

Plugins / Re: QuickTagger v1.0.1 (BETA) - Quickly tag your musics using hotkeys!

« on: March 26, 2025, 06:29:19 AM »

Hello, the below error message appears connected to this plugin (which I find very helpful, btw!).  It's only when this plugin is active that this error message appears, typically every 10-15 minutes.  Any ideas?  I'm using Musicbee v. 3.6.9208 P on Windows 11.

2025-03-25 10:26:24 PM - 10.0.26100.0 - 3.6.9208.36860P - System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at MusicBeePlugin.Plugin.ReceiveNotification(String sourceFileUrl, NotificationType type)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethod(Object target, Object[] arguments, Signature sig, Boolean constructor)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.UnsafeInvokeInternal(Object obj, Object[] parameters, Object[] arguments)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)
   at #=zY6hxuRadlhgjKpP6rw==.#=zUs5O3AZqYD_z()

7

Questions / Re: Library selection UI element

« on: February 14, 2025, 07:06:35 AM »

Put everything in 1 library and use filters.

Then, you can set up a filter by Genre, for classical, etc.

You can also set up a filter called Default where Genre is not classical, etc.  Set it up using AND for as many genres as you wish to exclude from the Default filter.

You can literally right-click on the library and select the desired filter.

8

Questions / Re: Using multiple hard disk into one unique library file

« on: December 21, 2024, 05:38:15 PM »

I use 2x 5tb external drives for my collection.  Just add it as a monitored folder, you don't need to change your library file or create a second library - works great.

If you use (as you should) Musicbee's organize function (auto or manual), you will want to give a bit of thought to how to manage the files through presets.  I use an organizer preset with exceptions based on location in the file path, to ensure that the files stay on the same external drive when being re-organized (I use an alternate preset if I want to move them over).  In the very likely event that I add another external drive, I would just add another exception to the preset for that file path.

https://imgur.com/a/MlFBZl8

9

Bug Reports / Re: Player Controls In Bottom Panel Freeze When Moving to Now Playing view

« on: November 30, 2024, 07:00:59 AM »

https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee36_Patched.zip
unzip and replace the existing musicbee application files

Worked perfectly.  Thanks so much!!!

10

Bug Reports / Re: Player Controls In Bottom Panel Freeze When Moving to Now Playing view

« on: November 29, 2024, 02:05:11 AM »

can you send a link to your settings file (help/ support/view settings)
if you are using custom tabs or custom views, also send a zip of AppData/Saved Settings and its sub-folders

Thank you, link sent.

11

Bug Reports / Player Controls In Bottom Panel Freeze When Moving to Now Playing view

« on: November 28, 2024, 04:29:35 AM »

I tried this with several different skins, and the bug persists across all skins tested.

I normally have player controls in the bottom panel, with the status bar immediately above the player controls.

https://imgur.com/OJ1mIMY


When I move from the normal view to Now Playing in the same tab (using the navigator pane), the player controls and the wave bar at the bottom both freeze.  This is the only element that freezes.  I can use the side panel controls just fine.  If i shift back to normal view, the bottom panel works like normal.

https://imgur.com/0uICAXP

When I toggle the switches on either side of the status bar to open/hide the right and left panels, this causes the frozen bottom panel to permanently disappear.

https://imgur.com/tPYMoiU

12

Bug Reports / Re: System Out of Memory Error When Converting Tracks

« on: October 30, 2024, 03:06:33 AM »

Do you have "automatically refresh the matching tracks" ticked or unticked on your auto-playlists?  What happens to your memory usage while converting files, if you uncheck that on your auto-playlists?

Not entirely the same thing (but maybe similar?) - I discovered a bunch of songs in certain of my regular playlists that I had previously deleted (through musicbee, not file explorer or another app), which were still showing up with the "missing file" icon.  When i removed these files from the playlist, performance appeared to increase, particularly when first loading the library after the app opens or when accessing the particular playlist that had these "missing" files stored.

13

MusicBee Wishlist / Re: Filter Album/Singles (custom ID3 Tag)

« on: September 12, 2024, 01:51:13 AM »

+1, it would be awesome to filter at least by more of the standard tags, if not custom tags.  I currently have filters set up on the toolbar for Genre and Year, which I use regularly (they are very helpful for cleaning up my genre tags quickly as well as, to some extent, identifying and correcting malformed dates such as Empty, 0, 198, etc.).

However, I have a custom tag that shows the Original Year unless it is blank, in which case it shows the Year.  Having the ability to add this as a filter would be awesome.

Another aspect of filtering that would be intriguing would be create drop down menus from any displayed column heading, in much the same way as Excel does.  Apologies if this idea is too far off from the original request, I will remove if that is the case.

14

Questions / Re: Backups Not Incremental, partially

« on: September 01, 2024, 07:22:17 PM »

I can't say that I have ever used this function as I have my own backup regimen, but it is intriguing.

So Steven's response confirms TateB's claim that an incremental backup is/was/should be performed here. You can also set it up to back up your music files easily enough.


Setting up a backup folder on my C:\ drive and testing myself, this incremental backup is what I am seeing. I do not see any issue with copying files that have not changed.

So what might be the issue? TateB - question for you:
  What is the file system of your backup drive (NTFS or FAT32)?
 
Setting up a backup folder on a local USB drive, I see the exact same issue TateB describes. When using WinMerge (folder compare function set to 'Modified Date') I can see that the modification dates of the backup files are up to two seconds later than the source files. I believe that this is caused by the transfer of files between NTFS and FAT32 formats - the FAT32 system rounds the timestamp up to the nearest even number of seconds.
When formatting this drive as NTFS everything works as expected.

Still not sure about this as the backup file modification date is always later (by up to two seconds) and to quote Steven:

the criteria to re-copy an existing file is when the windows file modification time of a source file is greater than the file modification time of the target file then it gets re-copied

Thank you to Steven for the clarification.

tjinc - my external drive with the music files in use is NTFS.  The external drive that I am using for backup purposes is exFAT.  What you are describing may well be the issue - I never would have figured that one out!  I've since moved over to SyncBack as recommended above.  One thing about SyncBack, under its "Compare Options," that fits with what you are saying, and may be a potential solution for this issue:  SyncBack has an option to "Ignore time & date changes of XX seconds or less" that is set to a 2 second default.

15

Questions / Re: Backups Not Incremental, partially

« on: August 30, 2024, 02:28:10 AM »

Thanks all for your responses, and suggestion of SyncBack.  I will give this app a shot, if it remedies my issues, then I'll continue with that.

That said, I do understand what an incremental backup is, and I have been using MusicBee's native backup function for years for exactly that purpose, successfully, but for the issue in my OP.  Perhaps it wasn't designed for that purpose (maybe it was? nobody seems sure), but it did perform that function notwithstanding design intent, so perhaps it was just a happy coincidence.