How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

by **veroK** » Sat Aug 23, 2014 12:14 am

That's a relief. Thanks.

by **Lowlander** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:07 pm

There is no issue with manually editing the tags, it's just more labor intensive, but often gets more accurate results.

by **veroK** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:32 am

nohitter151 wrote:
veroK wrote: What I'm doing right now is doing a search for a given artist (i.e. Beach Boys). Then, using the folder path, I can identify which "1-song albums" belong to one particular album in my library. I select them all and manually change the properties in the "Artist"; "Album Artist" and "album" fields for the whole bunch. That seems to be working! The album gets restored to the library as a single album w/the correct Artist tags.
"The Clash" still appears in the file path, which is how MM can still find the track when you search on it.
You can easily pull that information from the file path into the relevant fields using "Auto-tag from filename". But do so carefully, so you don't screw up again. Pay careful attention to the preview before making any changes.

OK. I understand now that MM gets the correct "artist" info from the file path. That's interesting. Until I get the proper tag masking procedure through my thick skull:

For the messed up tracks that I have already "fixed" manually by changing the properties as I described above; now back into a single album (w/the correct artist): Would that method have other negative consequences that I need to take care of, or is manually changing the properties ok (other than being tedious & error-prone, that is)?

by **Lowlander** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:58 pm

veroK wrote:Because my tags got messed up and now the tracks have the song's name under the "artist" field instead of the real Artist; seems to me that applying a new mask wouldn't work, because MM would read the "artist" field with the wrong information in it, so unless I fix the tags, masking won't help. Am I correct?

No, the mask is used in Auto-Tag from Filename. However often different masks are needed.

Files with:
Artist - Track# - Title
Track#. Artist - Title
Track# - Title - Artist

would all need separate masks for MediaMonkey to get the correct information into the correct tags.

by **nohitter151** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 6:09 pm

veroK wrote:Thank you, Lowlander.
Because my tags got messed up and now the tracks have the song's name under the "artist" field instead of the real Artist; seems to me that applying a new mask wouldn't work, because MM would read the "artist" field with the wrong information in it, so unless I fix the tags, masking won't help. Am I correct?

What I'm doing right now is doing a search for a given artist (i.e. Beach Boys). Then, using the folder path, I can identify which "1-song albums" belong to one particular album in my library. I select them all and manually change the properties in the "Artist"; "Album Artist" and "album" fields for the whole bunch. That seems to be working! The album gets restored to the library as a single album w/the correct Artist tags.

But, for my own understanding of how MM works: Could you explain how the search results produced the tracks even with the messed up the tags showing the track name in the Artist field? See my example before for Bananarama: The "Artist" and "Album artist" tags shows the name of each track instead of "Bananarama" as they should, yet a search came up with the tracks.

To clarify my question: The picture below shows the properties for one of the tracks that got the tags messed up. The Artist & Album Artist both say "Clampdown" which is actually the name of the track. Nowhere in the tags says anymore that this track is by The Clash, yet the track does show up (wrong tags and all) when I do a search in MM for "The Clash". Where does MM read that information to still know that this track is The Clash? I'm just trying to understand how the program works...

"The Clash" still appears in the file path, which is how MM can still find the track when you search on it.

You can easily pull that information from the file path into the relevant fields using "Auto-tag from filename". But do so carefully, so you don't screw up again. Pay careful attention to the preview before making any changes.

by **veroK** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 5:16 pm

Thank you, Lowlander.
Because my tags got messed up and now the tracks have the song's name under the "artist" field instead of the real Artist; seems to me that applying a new mask wouldn't work, because MM would read the "artist" field with the wrong information in it, so unless I fix the tags, masking won't help. Am I correct?

What I'm doing right now is doing a search for a given artist (i.e. Beach Boys). Then, using the folder path, I can identify which "1-song albums" belong to one particular album in my library. I select them all and manually change the properties in the "Artist"; "Album Artist" and "album" fields for the whole bunch. That seems to be working! The album gets restored to the library as a single album w/the correct Artist tags.

But, for my own understanding of how MM works: Could you explain how the search results produced the tracks even with the messed up the tags showing the track name in the Artist field? See my example before for Bananarama: The "Artist" and "Album artist" tags shows the name of each track instead of "Bananarama" as they should, yet a search came up with the tracks.

To clarify my question: The picture below shows the properties for one of the tracks that got the tags messed up. The Artist & Album Artist both say "Clampdown" which is actually the name of the track. Nowhere in the tags says anymore that this track is by The Clash, yet the track does show up (wrong tags and all) when I do a search in MM for "The Clash". Where does MM read that information to still know that this track is The Clash? I'm just trying to understand how the program works...

by **Lowlander** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 10:33 am

veroK wrote:OK, I understand tags a bit better now. I don't think a bad mask caused my albums to be split into tracks w/the Track name listed as artist; because I applied the mask to the entire library & only about 10% of the albums got split w/the name of the track as the "Artist".

A mask will only work on files with the same folder/filename structure, thus many can't use the same mask on all files.

All that's required is to use the correct mask on the incorrect 10%. It may still take several masks if folder/filenames structures differ.

The splitting of tracks into multiple Albums as seen in the screenshot is normally due to the Album Artist being different for tracks on the Album (differing Artist is no problem).

by **veroK** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 1:35 am

OK, I understand tags a bit better now. I don't think a bad mask caused my albums to be split into tracks w/the Track name listed as artist; because I applied the mask to the entire library & only about 10% of the albums got split w/the name of the track as the "Artist"...But the important point is how to fix it...can it be fixed?

I'm confused about where MM stores the information because if I do a MM search -for example- for Banarama; MM does find all the tracks from my Bananarama album that got split up in it's individual tracks, but nowhere in the tags for those tracks it says the artist is Bananarama (picture attached). So does how MM find the tracks when I ask for Bananarama?

More importantly; is there a way to fix this? I tried changing the artist manually to the correct Artist and that didn't work. I did it for one album and now MM won't find those tracks at all (won'a add them to the library) even when I manually point MM to that folder with the with the "Add/re-scan files to the library". If I manually ask MM to open the file, it plays it w/o problem, but it won't add them to the library when I re-scan the folder....

by **Lowlander** » Mon Aug 18, 2014 4:59 pm

Help > MediaMonkey for Windows Help as shown in your screenshot. Or Help > Help Content in MediaMonkey, or F1 in many parts of MediaMonkey.

by **veroK** » Mon Aug 18, 2014 4:33 pm

Oh, WOW.
Can you kindly explain to me how to get to reach that page on the wiki from the main page (shwon below)?
I did try the help pages before but I couldn't get from this screen I show below to something comprehensive like an index. I'm sorry i'm so dense but can't find it.
Thanks again!

by **Lowlander** » Mon Aug 18, 2014 4:04 pm

Have you tried the help: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... lename/4.0

by **veroK** » Mon Aug 18, 2014 4:03 pm

Lowlander;
Thank you for your reply.
I must confess that I'm struggling to wrap my head around MM and find is not very novice-friendly. Well, at least not "totally-clueless novice" friendly.

I have been trying to learn the basics about tags, but the forum keeps telling me when I try to narrow a search that "you can't do a search right now, try later", so is very hard to find info by search & I'm bumbling around the forum aimlessly.

I understand that explaining everything I need to know to follow your suggestion properly would take forever, but if you can think of a few links you can throw at me which you think may help me get there I would really appreciate it. I don't know what is a mask or how to verify the results from the tag window or how to know if a tag is the right one.

Thanks!

by **Lowlander** » Mon Aug 18, 2014 3:23 pm

You likely used a bad mask in Auto-Tag from Filename. You should always verify the results in the Auto-Tag windows as they all show the changes they'll make prior to applying.

Using Auto-Tag from Filename with the correct mask will likely solve your problem.

by **veroK** » Mon Aug 18, 2014 1:20 am

I'm getting into more trouble by the minute...

Updated full library to try to copy art downloaded from one user account into another, and MM split a ton of my albums into individual songs: somehow confused the title of the songs (including track #) with albums. So now a have a dozen "albums" in my library starting w/ 01- xyz, etc. (see picture).
For example: B-52's album was split into 1 album called 01- Planet Clair (w-Planet Clair as Artist)
I tried tagging one of them from the web and it realized the real artist, but then it automatically deleted all the other songs for that album. Thank goodness I tried it w/only one album first!
And now I can't get the tracks back into the library. Even if I go to "Add/re-scan files to the library" and manually point MM to look in that specific folder for that artist, MM DOES not import the album tracks back into the library! WTH?....
Anybody has any idea how to undo this mess or what is going on?

I'm terrified of asking MM to re-do the entire library and undo the hours of work I did to find the missing album art in batches of 20 or so (larger batches crashed my batch art finder add-on)...

by **veroK** » Sun Aug 17, 2014 11:46 pm

I finally figured out how to make the batch art finder working my laptop. I had to install everything in my elevated admin. account. So today, after spending hours getting most of my artwork to show, I went back to my regular user account and found that the artwork did not export (although all the music albums are in my user account).

I tied "auto-tagging from file name" on a few albums at a time; and this seemed to bring the album art back, so I auto-tagged the entire library. But mistake.

To my dismay, about 120 mystery albums showed up at the start of my library list. All the these albums that were created by auto-tagging hsave just one song and were created when I I tried to auto-organize my library; They start with a number from 01 to 12. Each album contains just one song. Please see picture attached.

Can somebody explain to me what I did wrong to make this to happen and; most importantly, how to fix this mistake?

Thank you

How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

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Many albums got split by song & now MM won't recognize them!

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