Messages

1

General Discussions / Re: Official MB appreciation thread

« on: May 08, 2024, 04:50:21 AM »

*clears throat* Um, hi. I'm still alive and still using MusicBee. It's still the best.

Thank the Maker! I was a little worried because I didn't see you posting.

I was off chasing rabbits down their holes and only came back in the last week or two since I was forced into buying a new car. Glad to see all the old guard still kicking around.

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Portable Devices / Re: Is there a way to change the default settings for devices?

« on: April 23, 2023, 03:44:03 PM »

That is an excellent solution that worked great. It led me down through a rabbit hole of possibilities that led to something less elegant, but without the extra copy step.

Music Bee does not look at GUIDs for drives; it only uses the drive letter. Last time I setup static drive letters I ended up with several different schemes over a few months using it. The first few would be fine, but I would forget what I did when I would try to add another drive after a few weeks or months. I got frustrated and switched to streaming. Some of my music is just not available to stream, no single service has everything I like, and I was missing some of my favorites. I figured I'd take another jab at it.

I broke into MusicBee3Settings.ini and created a <DeviceSettings> block for each drive letter from G through Z with the base settings I want. Now it doesn't matter what letter the device uses, the basic settings are the same and I can concentrate on what music to put on it. If I don't try to customize settings, I should be all set.

Edit to add; I still don't have a fix for the error I get if the base folder doesn't exist, but that's minor.

3

Portable Devices / Is there a way to change the default settings for devices?

« on: April 22, 2023, 04:16:05 PM »

I consider anything synced from MusicBee to be disposable. I use USB drives and devices as removable discs to sync music for on-the-go listening. The majority of my use is USB drives for the car and stationary portable listening. I don't update libraries on devices very often but when I do, I attach them as a removable disk to sync files over. The drives are often formatted and usually do not have the same letter, so MusicBee sees them as new. In order to keep things working, I have to make the same tedious setting changes and remember to create the storage folders.

Is there a way to change the default settings for removable media?
Is there a fix for needing to create the storage folder in Windows explorer?

4

Questions / Re: Odd behavior when returning to a tab after switching.

« on: December 02, 2022, 05:39:42 AM »

Just venting because this keeps happening.

This issue and my issue with keyboard only navigation is the reason I stop playing with my music for months at a time. Absolutely minor, but man does it trigger my ASD.

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Questions / Odd behavior when returning to a tab after switching.

« on: November 19, 2022, 05:19:17 AM »

I'm in my inbox and using the middle button to open a new tab based on Track Title. I'll make some changes to some tracks and then close that tab to return to the inbox. Usually, the track I had selected is still highlighted, but many times, the track highlighted is one I've selected previously. (See the "Too Short: Need Detail.)

Any ideas on what's going on? I'm trying like heck to find any kind of a pattern and haven't been able to identify anything.

TS:ND
I open the inbox, and track "A" is selected. I scroll through the list and middle click on the Title for track "B" to open a tab with all songs in the library with that track name. I make some changes to some files and close the tab to return to the inbox. Often, "Track B" is selected when the inbox opens. Sometimes, "Track A" is selected and I have to scroll to get back to "Track B." (Clear as mud, right?)

6

Questions / Re: Compilation albums not sorting correctly even with correct "Album Artist"

« on: November 19, 2022, 05:03:49 AM »

No need to apologize, you did some homework and tried to find the solution. That should always be rewarded.

Check the "Sorting" tab in the track properties. I've had this set to some oddball things when tagging from Picard.

I've also found that when I use files of questionable provenance I have to run them through tag fixing software to get everything correct. (I use mp3tag, mp3diags, kid3 and Tagscan)

Good luck.

7

Plugins / Re: Additional Tagging & Reporting Tools

« on: May 15, 2022, 11:15:07 PM »

I use additional tagging tools so much that I forget that it's a plugin and not part of MusicBee. In fact, I was close to ditching MusicBee until I found it. The stuff that works is <Chef's Kiss>. To answer the questions;

I'm never certain about anything, so I removed and reinstalled the latest version.
I think my most recent successful backup was in the beginning of 2021, so it worked at one time.
I use the other features of Advanced tagging constantly. Especially "Advanced Find and Replace," "Reports," and "copy / Paste tags."

I was poking around and created a temporary library to test with. That one worked perfectly. I must be running into a limit based on my library size. It would explain why it worked just fine for a while; my library continues to grow.

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Plugins / Re: Trying to backup my tags and get a system out of memory exception

« on: May 15, 2022, 02:14:23 PM »

I would have sworn I put that in there. I'm using the "Additional Tagging Tools" Backup and restore. I'm trying to create a new baseline.

I was a bit panicked because I could not find my database files. Turns out my Database files are in the Windows "Music" special folder, which maps to C:\Users\<Me>\Music. I now have that backed up to my OneDrive using "MusicBee/File/Library/Backup Library."

9

Plugins / Trying to backup my tags and get a system out of memory exception

« on: May 15, 2022, 05:32:04 AM »

I've been having trouble backing up my tags for a while, but I just had a bit of a scare and feel like I need to fix it. I get this message when I try to backup my tags; (My current signature has been updated to reflect my current setup.) I can't believe my library is too big. In my search I didn't see anything specific to my issue.

5/14/2022 11:56:54 PM - 10.0.22000.0 - 3.4.8033.18564D - System.OutOfMemoryException: Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.
  at System.Text.StringBuilder..ctor(String value, Int32 startIndex, Int32 length, Int32 capacity)

I have been unable to run a full backup for quite some time, but this is my current status. I was trying to clean up my file structure, and ran into an issue where MuscBee wouldn't start at all. I may not have a fully standard setup, but damned if I know what's really different. I restored an older version of my ini file and I don't see any lost information. I fully admit that I may have caused most of these issues on my own trying to customize file locations, but damned if I can remember doing anything out of the ordinary.

I'm sure I've done something odd but for the life of me, I can't figure out what. Any pointer on where to look are most appreciated. Am I just hitting raw system limitations? I've been looking for an excuse to upgrade, but I am hoping to limp along for at least a few more months so I can buy at least second gen new OS. Thanks, y'all rock!

10

Questions / Re: Can anyone help me with “Best Practice” for Tag Separators….?

« on: October 26, 2021, 12:17:23 PM »

Spend some more time on MusicBrainz Picard. Once I got all the scripting straight, there was no reason to use any other Tagging program, unless the release wasn't in MusicBrainz, and I had to revert to Discogs. Once you embrace the MusicBrainz system, everything else falls into place.

I believe all of your issues are solvable through scripting, or a more thorough understanding of what MusicBrainz is and does. I found that most of my problems were my own creation, because I didn't understand the metadata, or I scripted badly. The genres are a nightmare, but no one has those figured out canonically. I think I finally settled on Artist genre, or only the top genre per song. Anything more than that, and it becomes just about useless.

You might also check into some other apps like TagScanner, and kid3 to make sure you aren't dealing with residual tags from the original source. Might also be issues with the difference between APE, ID3, and Vorbis, depending on your source files.

Good luck.

11

Questions / Re: Can anyone help me with “Best Practice” for Tag Separators….?

« on: October 26, 2021, 02:15:02 AM »

Just my $0.02.

MP3Tag says that the universal separator is " / " (Note the spaces, they are important.) I use Semicolons and I've not seen any issues. Possible they are there but when I play outside of MusicBee I just don't care as much about my tags because when I'm portable, I only care about Album, Artist, and Title. All of the players I can remember playing with either had an option to specify your delimiter or it was just fine with my semicolons. Whatever you use, don't double it up. If you end up missing one of the pair you may not notice the issue until well down the road.


For the love of GOD, do NOT use different separators for different tags. You will very quickly hate your life if you ever try to do any kind of tag based scripting.

On a side note, I've travelled the road you are now on. After a good 15 years of playing around, I started using MusicBrainz Picard for all my tagging needs. With a couple of minor scripting tweaks and ignoring genres, I accept all the tags it wants to give me, without any other checking. In fact I also update them from time to time as the MusicBrainz database is updated. I don't manually manipulate tags anymore.

12

Questions / Re: Specific files don't play in MusicBee, and I can't figure out why

« on: July 16, 2020, 09:14:53 PM »

After much experimentation, I finally found the culprit, and fixed another problem I didn't know I had along the way. The problem was the SkipOverSong plugin. This was causing my Error log to fill up because it was triggering errors every time I started playing a file, or playlist. It was also causing problems with plugins. Removing / configuring plugins did not work consistently, but it worked well enough. I mostly only use the Tagging Tools Plugin, and that was flawless so I didn't care as much as I should have.

* I ran the installer for 3.3.7491, after deleting the offending Dll. This got me to functional in 3.3, and no more errors.
* I ran the update to 3.4.7499, and everything is still fine.

In my Post mortem, I remembered that I had done a restore from local backups a while ago, and according to the errorlog, that was about where my troubles started. If I got popups or errors, I ignored them because everything seemed to be working other than the popups. I just kept rolling with it. All errors should have been resolved, or verified benign.

I had focused on the files as the source of the problem, and kept running into dead ends. Once the Player was identified as the issue, It was easy to find the cause, and implement a solution. Good troubleshooting includes making sure you are trying to solve the correct problem. I got caught with my blinders on again.

I'm not a big deal like psychoadept or phred, but I will concur that the transition from 3.3 to 3.4 was painless.

Nonsense, you're a big deal too. Psychoadept and I just have some history. I don't know exactly what it is, but I know it was positive. I think I remember them leading me away from media monkey.

13

Questions / Re: Specific files don't play in MusicBee, and I can't figure out why

« on: July 16, 2020, 03:55:09 AM »

No sarcasm;

If Psychoadept says it's OK, I'll do it tomorrow.

14

Questions / Re: Specific files don't play in MusicBee, and I can't figure out why

« on: July 16, 2020, 03:02:33 AM »

I updated to 3.3.7491 when I first noticed the issue, and I have now upgraded to 3.3.7499. (I forgot about the latest versions in the forum, and went to the download page for update.)

* I have some other files that are tagged at ID3v2.4, and they play.
* I stripped out ALL tags from the suspect files, and MusicBee has no problems with it.
* I'll play around with the files to see if I can find anything specifc, but in the meantime, I'll probably just re-encode the tags to 2.3 or something. (They aren't part of my core listening library, just some files I use for background noise)

I'll upgrade to 3.4 in a while. I'm not ready emotionally to jump in on the ground floor of a new version.

I always love that I get better support from a free software package than the multi-thousand dollar software I support at work.
Seriously, Thank you. All the love.

15

Questions / Re: Specific files don't play in MusicBee, and I can't figure out why

« on: July 15, 2020, 11:15:31 PM »

I would really appreciate it if you would.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vlFB3CTf4uI4vDIdMX1PQtVdDoHrWD2L?usp=sharing

I'll be curious to know what tools you use. I'm always looking for new tools.