Author Topic: Rescanning potentiall deletes custom tags only stored in library  (Read 1862 times)

Loka

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When i rescan files, and a standard mp3-tag (e.g. artist) in some of that files has been changed outside MusicBee, all values in the custom tags of that files that are only stored in library are cleared.

Is that work-as-designed or can that be considered as a bug? At least this is nothing i would expect and it can delete hours of work.

phred

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If your custom tags are only being saved in the database, then that's not a surprise. You need to make sure they're saved as a tag since tags are saved with the files. Whatever you're suing to change the files has no idea the custom tag exists if it's only saved in MB's database.

Perhaps a screenshot of your custom tags settings would be helpful.
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Loka

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1. I am tagging video files, so these tags are never saved with the file.
2. The questions is, why are the tags - which are stored in the MusicBee library - deleted when rescanning the folders

frankz

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Rescanning a file replaces whatever content exists in your Musicbee library for that file with content from the file itself.

psychoadept

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It's true that rescanning will import whatever's in the file, but I have to agree with Loka that tags saved in the database shouldn't disappear. They should be permanently linked to that file, regardless of what changes in the file itself.

It may be be that there's unexpected behavior related to video files. I'm going to move this to bugs.
Last Edit: October 16, 2020, 05:20:21 PM by psychoadept
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frankz

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What would be the purpose of rescanning if not to replace old information with new information, even if that new information is "this is now blank?"  

Say you have a music file and a tag field that is not native to MB so you've mapped it to a "Database Only" custom tag.  Then you blank out that tag in the file.  Would you expect a file rescan to retain the information for this music file in Musicbee even though you no longer want it and have deleted the data from the file itself?

The root of the problem here is that Loka wants to use this music manager as a video manager.

psychoadept

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Would you expect a file rescan to retain the information for this music file in Musicbee...?

Yes. The idea of "save to database only" is that the tag was never in the file to begin with, therefore there's nothing to rescan and no reason for it to be erased. It would be like play count or date added being erased on a rescan. Those are values that MB tracks independently of the file contents.

MusicBee explicitly supports video and Loka is not trying to do anything it wasn't designed to do.
Last Edit: October 16, 2020, 06:30:58 PM by psychoadept
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frankz

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Play Count and Date Added are not considered tags AFAIK.  They're properties.  Custom Tags are tags.

I just think it would be very odd to do a file rescan and not have all the data reset to match the file that's being rescanned.  That's the purpose of a rescan.

psychoadept

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I just think it would be very odd to do a file rescan and not have all the data reset to match the file that's being rescanned.  That's the purpose of a rescan.

And the purpose of "save to database only" is that it has nothing to do with file contents or rescanning. It was never in the file, therefore there's nothing to match against. If it worked the way you say, then even if the file hadn't changed, rescanning it would erase all the "database only" tags.
Last Edit: October 17, 2020, 12:07:29 AM by psychoadept
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Steven

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1. I am tagging video files, so these tags are never saved with the file.
2. The questions is, why are the tags - which are stored in the MusicBee library - deleted when rescanning the folders
i am not able to reproduce this.
What filename extension do the video files have?
Are the files in the Video tab?
And what do you mean by rescan - can you provide some steps so i can reproduce this
Last Edit: October 20, 2020, 10:10:06 AM by Steven