New Computer - Need Help

[sveakul]

Personally, I think you should just uninstall whatever you put on the new PC and start all over again with a current version. Go to the first forum topic and download the latest Portable version. Place it in a folder outside of Windows control. I suggest something like C:\MusicBee. Then come back here and download the latest patch version (see my signature below for instructions) and apply the patch.

Thumbs up on that one; still the best way to handle the "unholy mess" scenario when proper backups are not available.  It's not as bad as it sounds, and allows you to discover and take advantage of all sorts of new capabilities and design options on the way.  But this time, I suggest NOT turning on any "auto-organizing/naming" until you've got all your music files moved manually to where you want them on the new PC and done a re-think of how you want things to end up.  Remember that the virtual "Library" will allow you to organize/display at will without actually doing ANYTHING to the music files themselves.

[Zak]

So in terms of the invisible files in music bee I've had some moderate success by selecting my entire library and using Auto Tag: Identify and Update Tracks, selecting update blank fields only. Looks like I'm getting some tracks to update but the tracks that have updated are still missing time information... This is so wild. Hoping there's some recommendations here.

Whoa! Hold up.

My advice to you at this point is to stop taking stabs in the dark with random commands until you know what you are doing.
Otherwise, you are racing towards the precipice that is having to redo all of your previous work again on thousands of files.

The good news is that if you still have the accurately labeled tracks on your old computer, there is no reason to believe it shouldn't be easy to replicate that on the new one, even if it means copying them over again (and honestly, there should be no reason to use any paid software to do this).

First, there seems to be confusion around terminology. You refer to MusicBee renaming files, but as pointed out, the Relink Music File Paths command does not do that. Rather, what you have shown in the video you uploaded is that on the old computer the values for the Artist and Title are correct, and it is these values that have disappeared on the new version. These tag values are stored within each track and is unrelated to the file name of these tracks.

I can't think of any reason the Artist, Title or any other standard tag values wouldn't be saved within each track itself and therefore seamlessly carried over to your new PC regardless of where they are now saved. If you right-click one of the 'anonymous' tracks in your new playlist and select Edit, does the Tags tab show the values you saved for the Artist and Title etc.? Compare that to the values if you do the same on your old PC.

[RICKLER]

So in terms of the invisible files in music bee I've had some moderate success by selecting my entire library and using Auto Tag: Identify and Update Tracks, selecting update blank fields only. Looks like I'm getting some tracks to update but the tracks that have updated are still missing time information... This is so wild. Hoping there's some recommendations here.

Whoa! Hold up.

My advice to you at this point is to stop taking stabs in the dark with random commands until you know what you are doing.
Otherwise, you are racing towards the precipice that is having to redo all of your previous work again on thousands of files.

The good news is that if you still have the accurately labeled tracks on your old computer, there is no reason to believe it shouldn't be easy to replicate that on the new one, even if it means copying them over again (and honestly, there should be no reason to use any paid software to do this).

First, there seems to be confusion around terminology. You refer to MusicBee renaming files, but as pointed out, the Relink Music File Paths command does not do that. Rather, what you have shown in the video you uploaded is that on the old computer the values for the Artist and Title are correct, and it is these values that have disappeared on the new version. These tag values are stored within each track and is unrelated to the file name of these tracks.

I can't think of any reason the Artist, Title or any other standard tag values wouldn't be saved within each track itself and therefore seamlessly carried over to your new PC regardless of where they are now saved. If you right-click one of the 'anonymous' tracks in your new playlist and select Edit, does the Tags tab show the values you saved for the Artist and Title etc.? Compare that to the values if you do the same on your old PC.

Perhaps I'm not explaining the situation properly. When referring to Music Bee renaming files, that's me on the my old PC manually correcting song information etc. Which I expected to be saved when transferring to new computer. The tracks that have shown up within the musicbee application after properly linking file locations has been reverted to the original file names that they were downloaded as. An example would be me having the file in musicbee on the old PC - The orginal file would read as such: Rolling Stones - Can't Always Get What You Want (website.com) I would then delete the (Website.com) to clean up/organize. Just a simple example.  


When I right click an anonymous track and click edit I can see the file path: on new pc: c:\users\dell\desktop\downloads\04 - Bill Withers - Lovely Day.mp3 on old pc it was c:\users\rick gray\desktop\downloads\04 - Bill Withers - Lovely Day.mp3 (I believe I've properly linked the music as it is in musicbee and is playable but all the information, properties, tags etc is missing)
https://imgur.com/i8WnUJy
https://imgur.com/ZgOlp9K

[frankz]

Your files are not tagged with metadata.  Like, at all, from the looks of it.   Do I understand correctly that you didn't tag your files in any way and were instead relying on filenames for the information displayed in MB?

How exactly, like the steps, were you renaming files?

[phred]

Perhaps I'm not explaining the situation properly. When referring to Music Bee renaming files, that's me on the my old PC manually correcting song information etc. Which I expected to be saved when transferring to new computer.

Manually correcting song information means you changed the tags embedded within the files. In MB this means using the Tag Editor It has nothing to do with renaming the files. Tag editing and renaming files are two different things. So tell us how you manually corrected the song information. Or how you renamed the files.

The tracks that have shown up within the musicbee application after properly linking file locations has been reverted to the original file names that they were downloaded as. An example would be me having the file in musicbee on the old PC - The orginal file would read as such: Rolling Stones - Can't Always Get What You Want (website.com) I would then delete the (Website.com) to clean up/organize. Just a simple example.

I'm sorry to say this, but count me in as another one who is totally confused by what you say you're doing.

Filenames are not the same as tags. If your music is tagged properly, or at all, the tags are embedded within the music file. Examples of tags are <artist>, <album>, <title>, <album artist>, etc. These are embedded in the file itself.

MB will only rename files if you've enabled reorganizing (there is more than one way to have MB organize your files.) Once MB renames the file (i.e. changes the filename) that is the -new- filename. If you copy a file from the old PC to the new PC the filename stays the same. There is no way the filename will change/revert to the old filename.

I feel you are not telling us exactly what you're doing and what you've done. In a step by step list. Providing incomplete information is only going to frustrate those who are trying to help.

[RICKLER]

Talk about frustrating, I appreciate the help but  I'm donig the best of my abilities to explain the situation here. Taking screen shots and trying to articulate things the best I can. I'm sorry but last thing I need to see is you are getting frustrated helping me. If you think this is a good time for me you're mistaken...

In the music bee playlist im editing the files and they get updated in the app. I don't know how to explain this any better/further. I'm not going in to editing tags or anything of the sort, just general clean up in the main interface where your songs are displayed. Does that make better sense?

You know what, I appreciate the help and those who have reached out but I think I'm at the end of the line here.

[frankz]

Yes, it does make better sense.  You were not using the right words for what you were doing.

You were not renaming the files (renaming the files means changing the actual file name in Windows).  It appears that MB, at some point, inferred basic information about your tracks based on their file names in Windows and that, over time, you corrected this information to display the way you wanted in MB.  This information was not saved to the metadata of the files and now you are back to MB taking the information it displays directly from the names of the files.  You were saying that it had changed the filenames back, which was confusing everyone, but that was not the case.  The filenames never changed. Only what was displayed in the MB interface had been changed.

As for fixing it, the only way I can really recommend that will insure that you don't run into this problem over and over again is to properly tag your files.  I just went over the basics with someone else a little while ago, but there's a whole lot more about tagging here and all over the internet.  It's important for library maintenance.

[RICKLER]

Yes, it does make better sense.  You were not using the right words for what you were doing.

You were not renaming the files (renaming the files means changing the actual file name in Windows).  It appears that MB, at some point, inferred basic information about your tracks based on their file names in Windows and that, over time, you corrected this information to display the way you wanted in MB.  This information was not saved to the metadata of the files and now you are back to MB taking the information it displays directly from the names of the files.  You were saying that it had changed the filenames back, which was confusing everyone, but that was not the case.  The filenames never changed. Only what was displayed in the MB interface had been changed.

As for fixing it, the only way I can really recommend that will insure that you don't run into this problem over and over again is to properly tag your files.  I just went over the basics with someone else a little while ago, but there's a whole lot more about tagging here and all over the internet.  It's important for library maintenance.

Thanks for this, that's what I was referring to in possibly paying for a program/software to do this for me. I'll check in with your post and give it a good look over.

[Zak]

https://imgur.com/ZgOlp9K

And the second screenshot there shows exactly what I was inferring:

This track has no values for Title, Artist, Album... in fact, no details at all.

Also realise that moving files to a different folder structure and MusicBee no longer displaying these values are two distinct issues.
That MusicBee can play the files means it knows where they are - and that is what the Relink Music File Paths command is designed to solve.

That is completely unrelated to the fact MusicBee no longer shows the track details. It reads these from the tags within the tracks themselves, which as noted previously are no longer there. The column headings in the Playlist view show precisely which values it is reading from to populate those columns.
Hence...

Compare that to the values if you do the same on your old PC.

There is no reason for these values not to be present on your new PC if they were present on the old one.
They are saved within the music file which you have assured us you copied from one PC to the other.

Since I can't think of any logical reasons, let's consider some less logical ones:

If the details are present on the old computer, are you sure you have copied over the tracks you updated, and haven't accidentally copied say, a backup of these tracks from before you added these details
to them?
If the details are present on the old computer but not the new one, are you able to delete the new ones and copy them over again? This time don't rely on potentially dodgy paid programs that might deliberately make a simple task look more complicated than it is to justify the cost. A simple copy using Windows File Explorer to - and then from - an external USB drive would suffice.

[RICKLER]

So I was able to come up with a solution, somewhat anyway.

Bit hard to explain, wasn't able to access the forum yesterday so I'm a bit foggy on all the steps. I uninstalled and reinstalled the new version of Musicbee, and transferred over the old application and data. For whatever reason using the musicbee pathing/relink would not work for me. Did the same process again and my library was blank but the interface was mirroring old PC (playlists etc) Did the scan for files and manually added the folders that I was initially trying to link and voila, I was in business. Still have minor issues with tracks missing music time duration but not even close to the extent as I had using the relink tool.

Whole process still seems quite strange to me as I WAS re-linking proper folders/locations etc and not having any success - Songs de-linking after switching windows or everything showing up and no other data present.

Anyways, thanks to those who reached out and attempted to help in the matter.