Hi everyone,

I haven't fallen off the planet!
Just madly trying to get packed for an overland expedition due to depart today, and we might even make it.

Once we are under way I will eventually get a chance to watch the videos that you suggested Peke.

I have begun porting my MM5gold to a an external SSD that will have plenty of room for experimenting with solutions to my messed up library.

Just on the m$ Surface Book2 Peke, the batteries are beginning to give me grief. The moment I disconnect AC power, it crashes (ie to power OFF!). So to move her I need to shut everything down which is not very 'portable' and is certainly inconvenient! Thankfully w10 survived this brutal attack.

I understand that she has two batteries (one in the tablet 'display' and one under the keyboard somewhere). In your experience, is replacing both of them even more difficult or, if I opened her up to fit a huge SSD and new keyboard, would two new hard disks be an easy extra, thus a wise upgrade as well??

Looking forward to getting time to get some of my music issues properly sorted; and to investigate some high resolution music too.

Best wishes,

Jim Kelly.

Hi,
Replied you in PM. Yoga is fairly easy to upgrade with New SSD, Surface need bit of experience, but very very doable.

Thanks for your kind words Peke,
I applaud your hardware repair work and note that I have two notebooks that I would love to have installed bigger SSDs, and now both of their keyboards have failed. My search for how to do it found results . . . but the risk of total failure from the detailed long procedure was too daunting for me to consider trying! Planned obsolescence comes to mind.
* Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro
* M$ Surface Book 2

Have you discovered any current manufacturers that make excellent notebooks that are designed to be upgraded and/or repaired?

Cheers,

Jim

Hi,
No worries, I only wish that there is more people like you, I am big supporter of the bill, I do PC service repair (all thru board repair) and hardware design/build/repair for 25+ years. We are currently living on a lease and nothing that we buy we own. Even less and less each day. But that is fro another topic.

It was a compliment, as I totally agree. I would not put better words when describing the problem.

Unfortunately LOCATION node under collections always contained just paths to MM library files and there is no plan to change that behavior. Folders Browser is made for that.

You can always right click -> Find More from same -> Folder (all)/Folder (Explorer) to get what you want abd see if something is missing.

Hi Peke,
I did have to look up what you meant - and yes, I'm very much in favour of helping farmers keep their machinery running 24x7 when necessary. Our capitalist system FAILS when the "no monopolies" rule is disregarded. Freedom is about having a choice at every step of the way and evading that rule is a recipe for tyrany in my opinion (along with facism: collusion between governments, global businesses, legal, military and the 'journalistic' media - entities that should all be 'kept miles apart').

But no, I am just trying to guide your organisation by explaining my frustrations. I know that many cultures will not do so, and they just turn away and their custom disappears (without ever giving honest feedback). But you need your customers to be happy so that we introduce friends into buying your products. WE are your best salespeople! As a QA person, please try sitting quietly whilst observing a newbee grappling with your product. Note every single thing that creates havoc and make it a mission to get all such things fixed asap. It seems that your team know the product so well that you are missing all of the silly things that do not work as expected! We have music to organise and play, not software to write.

I truly trust that you take this as intended . . . as very constructive criticism.

Kind regards,

Jim Kelly

Hi,

Jim Kelly wrote: ↑Sat Apr 01, 2023 6:36 pm Thanks for your work, the product is great, just needs tidying up! You have a great opportunity to keep control of our music and playlists in our hands, not to be lured to control by big corporation$$.

Do I see here "Right to repair" bill supporter?

Peke,

I work mostly in the Music > Location node.
It would be a great help if we could opt to Add a New Folder to an existing tree when adding a new Album and Artist (etc).
It would be a great help if we could see any empty folders too - quite ok if they were subdued in some way to make it clear that they did not yet contain any playable tracks.

I have noted such requests in the fofum posts for many months now. Why can't it be addressed?
Even a message at the right mouse click menu explaining what to do would be a bit helpful. I (and surely many others) have spent hours trying to find a way to Show Empty Folders (and to Add New Folder).

Whatever the reasons, your users' frustration levels needs to be addressed at every possible oppourtunity, otherwise we cannot feel comfortable introducing other potential buyers to your product, etc.

Thanks for your work, the product is great, just needs tidying up! You have a great opportunity to keep control of our music and playlists in our hands, not to be lured to control by big corporation$$.

Best regards,
Jim Kelly

kncuk1969 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 01, 2023 5:44 am I believe that is only available in the Folders Node as the Location Node is only for content that is media related. (i.e., mp3, mp4. mkv,, etc... and NOT txt, bmp. jpg, pdf)

To correct you Collection location node contain only folders and files that are in MM library eg. Location file/folder browser and main folder browser acts like windows explorer reading all media files that MM can add/play/manage.

OK!!
I will try over the next day or two (it's midnight here).
And I will be careful - thanks for the heads up and the syntax.

I'll let you know.

Cheers,
Jim

Hi Jim

I think we're on the final lap now.

If all of the affected files should go in M:\Music\+6. Classified TMO\P\a. FLAC then I think you would get away with a mask like so:
M:\Music\+6. Classified TMO\P\a. FLAC\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Filename>

The Filename part will keep it as is. e.g. 12345.Flac will remain 12345.Flac just in the new directory.

But JUST to make sure I would only do a couple of affected albums at a time until you are happy that they have moved to their original places.

Re the PS:

I believe that is only available in the Folders Node as the Location Node is only for content that is media related. (i.e., mp3, mp4. mkv,, etc... and NOT txt, bmp. jpg, pdf)


kncuk1969

Thanks AlanH and kncuk1969, your help is very much appreciated.

This is typical of my structure (TMO is Tempo, Mood and Structure):
M:\Music\+6. Classified TMO\P\a. FLAC\Carly Simon\The Best of Carly Simon\{filenames}.
The bug has hit everything in my . . \P\a.FLAC\*.flac tree (so all album art, etc is still in place as well as notes, logs, etc.).

I could go through the original(and thankfully still existing) file structure and look for anomalies;
or I could just merge any discrepancies later.
Or maybe I should begin by renaming the existing tree (say \P\ to \Pp\) in a way that the function creates all new folders?
[btw, P and Pp both simply represent 'Pop music'].
Please remember that the existing folders still have ~20% of the tracks in them.

I followed your link read it and and then went on to the MM5 link ( https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHel ... enames/5.0 ).

Sounds like just the thing!
I feel ready to try a small batch when I hear from you again.
At this stage I'd like to leave the filenames intact though. Just using \Artist\Album\ will cluster the files into managable clumps for the manual fine-tuning I think.

Thanks again for being there!
Jim Kelly

PS: Is there any way to 'show all folders' including those without music tracks in them - in the Location node?
I have tried using the Folders node (where they do show) but other things are not working for me (including selecting a group of tracks by using: click then shift+click . . .
Lots of QA tidying up still needs to be done it seems.

PPS: Did you notice the irony that the sequence in the AutoOrganise process includes the exact same function (Move to . . ) that created the havoc that is wasting all of our time!!

Hi Jim

I also never use the auto Auto-Organize feature which is the one that most people have the trouble with. (i.e. If activated moves files as soon as they are added to database. Which is no good if you still need to tidy up the tags.)
Which is why I only use the manual version (Invoked by Tools>Auto-Organize files (for both MM4 & MM5) once the files have been selected.
Then as AlanH stated it's just a case of matching the correct masks.

E:\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:2> <Title>

The above would produce the following (foe example)

E:\Music\The Cardigans\Gran Turismo\01 Paralyzed.mp3

It will also create the folders if they do not exist.

So do you have an example of how your folders look.

kncuk1969

Ok its good that the tags are still there.

Im only a novice user of MM, the trick is to match the mask to your folder structure.

My file structure is like this: Music \ album artist\ album name\ track number ~ title

Its just a case of matching the mask to your existing folder structure. Heres the page on what you can select and if your unsure i would start a thread with your exact folder structure and im sure one of the power users will be able to match you up with the exact mask.

https://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/ ... enames.htm

Ah!! Two new answers - many thanks!
Hi kncuk1969:
All done with MM2, 3, 4 & 5 Gold over the past 16 years. I loved the idea of AutoPlaylists so that as I added CDs etc to my library the usefuness of my algorithms grew automatically (for music to suit dining times, driving, parties, etc.). I have used custom tags to add my keywords for Tempo, Mood, Occassion, Grouping, Quality, and Genre. And many of the standard fields like rating & comments). Of these, only Mood is present in Windows File Explorer and that is truncated as it ignores multiple Mood entries that MM allows (using the ; seperator). I did use the MM addin "RegExp Find and Replace" to help tidy track names at times.
Sorry, I am not familiar with MP3TAG nor MusicBrainz Picard.

Hi AlanH:
Yes, I tried to move just one small folder (an album of six 'completed' tagged tracks) from a 'Work in progress' folder to the 'finished' folder structure of the usual . . /Finished/Quality/BroadGenre/Artist/Album/CD# (which is still intact). The RMC 'Send to . . ' function that I used (because it included an add 'New Folder' option that I had found impossible elsewhere) let me add the new Artist's folder BUT when I completed the 'paste' [or whatever], it mopped up every track from Quality down and tried to put all of them into the new artist's new folder!! It was trying to move 2090 tracks but crashed at about 1561. At no time did I get asked "Do you really want to move XXXX files all at once?" and I could see no way to stop the process . . . The selected folder of six tracks never got moved.

Yes thankfully, the album and album artists tags look ok, and my added tag info too.

I have never tried AutoOrganise (seem to remember that 'it takes a lot of caution'?). Now might be the time to get on top of it? (kncuk1969 mentioned it too).

I hope this helps clarify my issue?

Thanks very much for helping
Jim

Im a bit confused from my understanding you tried move certain files but ended up moving a lot more into one folder.

Are the album and album artists tags still the original or have they been changed. if original couldnt you just use auto organise to move the files back into the same folder structure you had it before.