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!!