Music Collection Weirdness

[Da Floyd]

I just renamed my parent folder that contains all my music (50gb) and went into poweramp "music collection", selected "collection" and selected "highlight missing files". Sure enough none were there, so I selected "locate missing files" and selected sub-parent folders to find the music, all seemed to go well. I just noticed today that MMC found other files that had same (or similar) file names that were in totally different folders. For example, I have an artist, lets say Mr. Big, they put out a lot of live albums, I have each of these live albums in different folders. They also put out studio albums, and 2 or 3 greatest hits albums, each of these are in their own folder. The first song on each of their live albums was the same song, so in the folders they each read "01 Mr. Big - Large One". Same holds true for one of their studio albums and each of their greatest hits albums, same file name, but in a different folder. So I might have 100 "01 Mr. Big - Large One", but each was part of a different album. Now, MMC has selected incorrect files that correspond to the songs. Kinda confusing, hope I explained things correctly for you. I now have about 500 songs that are now linked to the wrong spot. How can I (easily) get these files to point to the correct folder?? The information in MMC didnt change, it still says the correct album name, artist, etc., but when I click on it to play, it goes to the "wrong" file and plays it. The only thing that changed in MMC is the "filename", which tells me where the file is stored. I have over 6000 files in MMC, doing this one at a time would be impossible, there has got to be a way to correct this (hopefully). Anyone got some insight?? Thanks a bunch. (PS, getting late here, wont be back till tomorrow night, but if someone could answer or has a question for me to clarify, it would be good)

[LtData]

Re: Music Collection Weirdness

Mabye wipe your MMC and have it scan your main music folder? It takes a while, but it does work.

[xoas]

Re: Music Collection Weirdness

The Locate Missing Files routine seems to take up and use a lot of resources. Somy first advice is restarting the computer to clear your cache with the hope that the glitches will go away.
Nest, I might adise that you check a few of these files to make sure that some of these files tha appear to be misplaced in MMC are not misplaced in your actual folder structure (I don't think this is likely, but one never knows). If the actual folder structure is corrupted please let us know.
Another idea is to recommend that you change your display preferences in MMC (if you have not already done so). Open MMC, click on Collection, click on Preferences. Place Album in position 3 (after icon and artist but before track, genre and so forth).
You will need to reassign positions for other items (track, genre, preference, length) to assure that each item keeps a column all to itself. This should assure that MMC sorts by artist and album. However, this may not work if MMC has somehow gotten its track information all messed up.
Another thing you could try is to open MMC, click on the column header for album. This should sort MMC so that all tracks from album are displayed together. This may make it easier to see whether your tracks are still jumbled within MMC but might also make it easier to fix. In any case you may need to remove the jumbled files from MMC (and if you have entire albums placed in MMC rather than a few tracks from album a, a few from album b, etc, it may be easier just to remove entire albums from MMC) and then reload them (which would be a bit quicker if you could do entire albums rather than isolated tracks-assuming the folder structure itself has not been corrupted).

Keep us posted.
Best wishes,
Bill

[donny]

Re: Music Collection Weirdness

I had the same problem when I tried to move my music around...
sorry to say that I haven't resolved it --- I kept the music where it was....

the problem is that dbpoweramp just checks the file name... as I said I had the similar problem mine with Queen -imagine the number of 'queen- we will rock you' tracks

ah maybe if we had an option to check for file size also or something...

[Da Floyd]

Re: Music Collection Weirdness

Thanks for the tips guys, appreciate the help. I'll try to explain things and answer what you have written.
1) I did already check to make sure the files that play are actually the wrong file. In MMC, artist is correct, song name correct, album name correct, the filename which shows the full path of where it is located is wrong. The files are not misplaced in the folder. When I told MMC where to find the files, it just found the first one with the same file name, not all the rest of the idv 1 or 2 tags being correct. If I right click and say "refresh from tag", it will change the album name, song length, etc to be what the file is. But it is the wrong file. (hope I am not getting more confusing)
2) I did change the display preferences in MMC yesterday, I made it so the "filename" was right next to the "album name", made it a bit easier to see what was wrong, but didnt help out for a fix.
Couple more questions for anyone:
A) When I renamed my parent folder, I went to "collection" in MMC and said "highlight missing files". Sure enough, 0 of the 6000 were there. Should I have then clicked on the first file of a sub-parent folder, hold shift, and click on the last file in that same sub-folder? In other words, can I tell MMC which files to look for, or is MMC trying to find any and all of my 6000 files?
B) If I remove the files as you suggest Xoas, then add them again, I will be starting over with ratings, volume boost, etc, dont really want to do that, but as a last resort I might have to.
C) Let me know what you think of this idea: rename the parent folder again, and start over. Just like going to the docter for a broken leg, sometimes he has to re-break it. At least I wont have to remove any files and add them again, causing me to lose volume boost settings, etc. But if I do this, how can I make sure MMC will look at the correct folder for the correct file?

Let me try to explain how things are organized on this comp
C/My Tunes/All Music/now it splits into 9 major folders, from there each of the 9 are broken up into Artist/Album/Track # Artist-title. So I might have "Mr. Big" in each of the 9 major folders, and there might be 20 live shows in each of those folders, every live show had "Large One" as the first song. That would be 180 "01 Mr. Big - Large One", and the way I keep them apart is making sure IDV 1 & 2 tags are correct and complete, and they are in their own folder for just that live show. Album name would be the date of the show. So MMC now has studio version of "01 Mr. Big - Large One" pointing to a live show in a totally different major folder. Hope I clarified things and maybe someone has some insight on how to fix without having to add files again. First thing I am going to do when I hit the send button on this, is to go to "program files" and make a copy of the ".mcc" file and save it in a safe location, just in case things get worse. (Should have done that before I changed the parent folder name and tried finding the files) Thanks for all the help guys, apperciate it and love the program nothing but db for playing and organizing.

[xoas]

Re: Music Collection Weirdness

Let me know what you think of this idea: rename the parent folder again, and start over.

You might try renaming the parent folder back to its original name and see if your files reappear in MMC in the correct associations. If it works that would be very nice.
It might not work and if it does not it would be because MMC is already confused about which of many similarly named files go with which others and it is unable to unlearn to confused order that was created when you asked it to locate missing files. And if you rename the parent folder, MMC will not be able to locate the files you created and if you ask it to locate the missing files I don't think it will be at all able to sort them right this time around since it has no memory of how it was supposed to work (it only has the memory of how it thinks things are supposed to be arranged now).
I assume your MMC is massively messed up in its associations. If this is so then it likely can't really get any worse (of course having to lose your ratings and so forth would be painful if you could avoid it) and so you have little to use beyond computer processing time by trying this experiment.

If you are using Windows XP and assuming this calamity has happened relatively recently another experiment might be to rename your parent file and try a system restore to a point prior to when you re-named your parent folder. While I am skeptical this would help it might be worth a try.

In the meantime, I'll keep my thinking cap on.

Best wishes,
Bill

[Da Floyd]

Re: Music Collection Weirdness

Just got done fixing it, took a while but it is correct now. In MMC, I had the "Album Name" (which was correct) right next to the "filename" (incorrect path), and clicked on the first song in the "album" and then held down shift button and clicked on the last song of the album, highlighting all the files that were supposed to be in that album folder. Then I looked in the "filename" to make sure it corresponded to the correct files. The ones that were incorrect, I highlighted those files, right clicked and chose "remove". I might have removed 3 of the 10 files in that "album", I then chose "add music" (upper left hand corner of MMC) and added the entire folder again. MMC only added the files I needed to make the "album" complete again. So I removed 3, added all 10, 7 of the added files kept their ratings, and only 3 had to be rated again. But I had to do this over and over.......... etc. Seems like there should be a better way to make sure seemingly duplicate files get added correctly. All my tags are complete, there is a lot more to a file than just the "file name". Anyway, a lesson I learned is before I do anything drastic like this in the future, is to click on "collection" and save the MMC (or .mcc) as a different name, such as "backup 2005 09-19" then open up the original again. Would have helped me some, but not entirely. Thanks for your help and insight, if you have any further questions feel free to ask and I will try to explain what I did to fix it.

[xoas]

Re: Music Collection Weirdness

Seems like there should be a better way to make sure seemingly duplicate files get added correctly.

That would be nice.

Glad you got it sorted out and thanks for sharing how you did it for the next person who runs into this problem.

Best wishes,
Bill