Author Topic: Podcasts lost - How do I re-register Podcast files?  (Read 6887 times)

esparrow

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It seems that I accidentally disconnected my external HDD on which all my music and podcast files are stored (the library files are, however, on the internal HDD).

As a result, my podcast files are a mess. A part of them is now in the Inbox, one part is within "Unknown subsciptions", and only small parts are still within the correct subscription folders within Musicbee. Many podcast files seem to be not even recognised anymore by Musicbee.

Under the given podcast subscription within Musicbee, most older podcasts are shown as greyed out, despite the fact that they exist within the specified folder on the HDD. Musicbee starts to automatically download these files, and, in doing so, produces duplicate files.

I could now drag and drop all the files from within "Unknown subscriptions" or from the file explorer to the correct subscriptions. This might result in all files being stored under the correct subscriptions. However, Musicbee does not recognise the files as having been downloaded already - it makes no connection between the files and the online info. I should point out at this point that I did not change anything regarding the subscription info, and many downloads are quite recent.

Is there any way to tell Musicbee that all files are back again and that they do not have to be downloaded anymore? Is there, for instance, a way to rescan all podcast folders for already existing downloads? Is there an easier way than to do a big drag and drop action for each folder respectively? I have many subscriptions and many downloaded files, it would take ages!

Thank you so much!




psychoadept

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I have this problem now, too.  All my podcasts got moved to the inbox on my new computer.  I moved them back to Podcasts, but I have 1500 files in "Unknown Subscription".
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Steven

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Given where you are at, i would think you will need to manually drag the files into the correct subscription
or alternatively get your old subscriptions.dat file and manually search/replace the file path
If you go that route, you should take a backup of musicbeelibrary.mbl in case there is something i am overlooking with that method

edit:
thinking about it, i will make a simple change so that MB will attempt to match the Album tag of a podcast to an existing subscription title when an episode is dragged onto the left navigator podcasts node
Last Edit: December 24, 2015, 10:32:54 AM by Steven

Steven

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i have made the change for the next update which i will post later this afternoon:
- when dropping files on the podcasts node (you can drag episodes from "unknown subscriptions") the following logic is used:
- first MB looks at the folder the file resides in. If it is the organised sub-folder of a subscription then it maps to that subscription
- if no match, then MB looks at the album title tag in the file and attempts to match to a subscription with the same name
- otherwise the file will move to/ remain in "unknown subscriptions"

Also i will probably make a change to the file scanner to check if the file location is in a subscription folder and if so add it to the subscription rather than the Inbox

psychoadept

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Awesome, thank you!
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Steven

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changes as described above.
http://musicbee.niblseed.com/V3_0/MusicBee3_Patched.zip
This is musicbee3 !
unzip into the existing musicbee application folder and run musicbee3.exe

i suggest you try it on 1 episode first to make sure it works as you expect
Last Edit: December 24, 2015, 05:10:44 PM by Steven

psychoadept

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As soon as I get a chance (Sat or Sun), I'll try re-importing the podcasts from the backup with this new method.  Part of the problem was that the subscription file also ended up in the wrong place due to MB trying to place it according to the old directory.
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psychoadept

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So it seems to be an issue with having Podcasts in a monitored folder.  I reinstalled everything from scratch, made sure all the paths were working, etc, EXCEPT for the podcasts.  I also turned off automatically sweep and organize new files to make sure they weren't yanked away before MB had a chance to see them.

Then I closed MB, replaced the subscriptions.dat file and placed all the podcasts in their original folders.  When I reopened MB, it showed all the correct subscriptions and about 1600 new podcasts, which was close enough.  I thought: great, problem solved!

Then I went back a couple minutes later, and it showed 6 new podcasts.  Everything else had been moved to the Inbox, even though it had been in the right place to begin with.  The files weren't moved, but it pulled them all out of the podcast node for no good reason.

HOWEVER, the good news is that when I moved them back to the podcasts node, all but a small handful were restored to their correct subscription.  So your update worked!
Last Edit: December 27, 2015, 08:30:12 PM by psychoadept
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Steven

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i had only did the initial file scan logic for the podcast folders in the File Scan dialog.
I will also do it for the folder monitor but good that its been confirmed the manual drag/drop worked

esparrow

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Dear Steven, it is just great that you took the issue so seriously that you would redesign the program in order to solve it. Thank you so much! And it is just wonderful to have a peek at Musicbee 3 already (it's beautiful)!

I think your strategy makes a lot of sense: Musicbee keeps itself updated even in the event that Podcast files are lost - and the strategy to use the folder structure to automatically allocate the podcast files to the correct subsciption is a very good idea.

Unfortunately, the error persists. When I opened the patched Musicbee version, there was no difference to the previsous situation: Part of the files were correctly allocated (ca. 7.000 of 11.000), part of the files was just missing within Musicbee (they were neither in "Podcasts" nor filed under "Inbox", nor "Audiobooks", nor "Music"). I have chosen the option that Musicbee would authomatically scan the library for changes, but all changes within the library are set to manual.

Then I tried to drag single files from the Windows Explorer into Podcasts or into the correct subscription. This sometimes resulted in success and sometimes nothing happened. Then I tried to drag some subsciption folders and finally the whole podcast folder (with all subscriptions in respective sub-folders) from the Windows Explorer into "Podcasts". This took quite a while and produced ERROR MESSAGE 1 (I saved it - how should I send/post it?). In result, nothing (much?) had changed.

Then I searched for all .mp3 files within the Podcast folder and dragged them into "Podcasts". This produced ERROR MESSAGE 2 Now, something has changed: It seems that all the files that had been missing until then (ca. 7.000 files - it should have been 4.000 judging by the Windows search) could be found within the inbox.

From there, I moved all these files into "Podcasts" hoping that they would be authomatically allocated correctly using the newly programmed policy. This produced ERROR MESSAGE 3. Most files seem to not have been moved at all. Some files, however, 144 files ended up under "Unknown subscription" (which had been empty before). This should, however not have happened, since all files were in the correct sub-directories. As a result, ca. 7.000 podcast files are still in the Musicbee Inbox, ca. 7.000 files in the Musicbee Podcast Section, and there, 144 podcasts are filed under Unknown Subscription. To further complicate things, one has to keep in mind here that Windows Search tells me that there are "only" ca. 11.000 podcast files within the windows folder (and not the Musicbee section) "Podcasts" and its sub-folders. Quite frustrating.

I would be glad if you could have another look at the issue. Please tell me (everyone) if you need more information. Thank you so much for your great work!!
Last Edit: January 08, 2016, 01:21:35 PM by esparrow

esparrow

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What I did now is to delete Subscibtions.dat and Subscriptions.bak. I then dragged the Podcasts root folder into "Podcasts" within Musicbee. All files were then registered as Podcasts - and the number now seems to be correct (ca. 12.000). Ca. 1.000 files were filed under "Unknown subscription" despite the fact that they were in the same respective folders as the others that were filed correctly.

I should add that I had set all subfolders manually in the properties for the respective podcast.

I then dragged all unknown subscriptions to the respective folders.

Now everything - apart from several doubletts - seems to be in order for the moment. What did not work, however, is to have every subscription authomatically put in place correctly. Thus, it took a lot of time to rearrange order. And I hope that the Podcasts will remain stable now. I am very interested in your opinion how to proceed! Thank you so much.