Author Topic: How to not allow MB to alter music files  (Read 4519 times)

rainio

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Hello,
  I'm trying to set up MB so the original music files aren't altered, yet ratings can be stored alongside music files.
   
In Settings I've Deselected: "embed picture", "store ratings in music file" (not sure where they're stored, then, though), yet I find some files are subtly altered (sizes  I don't know what has been done to them).
 I've tried making the network share with the music read only, but then MB say's it can't scan the folder.

  Are there some settings I'm missing?

  I've searched the forum without finding anything - if this has been answered elsewhere please point me in the right direction.

Thanks.

Pingaware

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This is difficult to do as MB is not designed for it. There used to be a setting, but it was removed due to being underused and difficult to maintain (don't quote me on that, Steven can better explain why he did it).

If you make the files read-only (hopefully just making the folders beneath the network share read-only), I think it should work. It might be necessary to do such an operation through the command line.
Bold words in my posts are links unless expressly stated otherwise.

boroda

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If you make the files read-only (hopefully just making the folders beneath the network share read-only), I think it should work. It might be necessary to do such an operation through the command line.
i asked Steven a long time ago to allow mb to work with files, which are read-only and he started to work on this, but i don't know if this had been implemented ever.

Pingaware

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It's worth noting that MB won't edit any files unless you ask it too. Check auto-lyric saving as well.
Bold words in my posts are links unless expressly stated otherwise.

rainio

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Thank you.
Tried making the files readonly and MB again says it can't scan the directory. That's a shame.
  I'll try again with all the options including turning off lyric saving.
  Is there another reason why MB would be writing to files?
  Do you know where ratings are stored if not in the music files?

Thanks

boroda

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try to make read-write share and read-only files.

Do you know where ratings are stored if not in the music files?
in music library database.

rainio

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Hello,
  Tried making the share read/write and files read only and MB still "cannot scan" the share.

  That's a shame.


rainio

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Good News!
  Figured it out.
  When adding a lot of files the scanner outputs "Scanning..." for a few minutes. I was expecting it to start scanning the files (with the "x of y" output given), so when it continued and didn't seem to be switching to the "x of y" output I though it wasn't working so cancelled the scanner whereupon the log states it can't scan the share, when in fact it was interrupted due to the user.

  I can confirm that if one sets the *** network share to read/write and makes all the files read only***, when trying to edit tags on one of the files MB provies a dialog box "Read only file, are you sure you want to edit the tag". The odd thing is if you say yes, you can edit the tag. It appears that MB doesn't write to the file, but must write within the music library (?).

Anyway, it appears to work well!

Thanks for your help.

Pingaware

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If you click yes, I'm pretty sure Steven implemented a way to remove the read-only property as lots of people were reporting problems with files which were read-only when the user was unaware.
Bold words in my posts are links unless expressly stated otherwise.

Draven

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Hi,

I was wondering the exact same question.  I'm in the process of reinstalling Windows on my computer and I was looking for a good Winamp alternative since the development of Winamp has stopped. A lot of onlines reviews brought me here since MusicBee seems to be the music player and manager of choice for my needs. However, a lot of my music collection are "scene" releases that are already tagged with proper m3u playlist and nfo file so I would clearly prefer to leave all of my files untouched (no retagged, no id3 modification, nothing!). All my music is stored on a 15TB unRAID server with shares and users. So my question is, if I create a read-only user on my unRAID server only for MusicBee, will it works? And if not, what are my others options. I would really like to know how I can accomplish that. So maybe rainio can give me an how-to guide to configure MusicBee so that it doesn't alter my files in any way.

Thank you for your time.

brx

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Hi! (y)

I have a lot of files whose information I don't want to change.
This is what I'm also thinking of, it would be great to have an option that will permanently (or temporarily) disable changing info of files.
But it would change the information in a database (if that is possible) and use that information as proper info of those files.

Thanks! :)