How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

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veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by veroK »

Hello, everyone;
I'm a pretty clueless newbie. I'm finally trying to digitize our CDs. I just installed MediaMonkey (MM)yesterday in the three Winows7 PCs at home (My laptop, my hubby's PC & the HTPC) to rip our CD collection faster. First I tried storing all the rips on the HTCP's HDD over the WiFi network, but it wasn't working very well; so I created a MM folder in each computer and ripped all day; thinking I would later simply move all the libraries to the HTPC once I was done. Only later I started reading more and realized that migrating the libraries is a little more involved than copying the music folders.

I spend time a few hours in this forum looking for help and found great information on how to migrate your library from one computer to another, and how to merge your libraries (not actually moving the files). What I would like to do is to end up with all my music files in the HTPC, merged libraries and everything. So I need instructions in HOW TO MOVE MY MUSIC AND MY LIBRARY FROM ONE PC TO ANOTHER AND MERGE BOTH LIBRARIES IN THE DESTINATION PC. I don't want to delete my current music library on the HTPC but I can't keep the music files spread all over because some of the computers may be asleep during the day.

I'm not concerned about losing data regarding favorite songs or number of times a song was played, etc, because I'm just starting to rip the albums; but I did have to manually help MM to recognize many of my CDs; so that information I would like to keep. However, if it is much simpler, I'm OK with just dragging all the Music folders manually and let MM re-do all the artwork finding, etc.

If anybody has a link to this particular situation or can give me some pointers, I'd greatly appreciate it!
Lowlander
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Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by Lowlander »

You should be able to just move the music files to the HTPC. Tags are normally saved to the files and thus the database is not required. This would only be necessary if you want to keep Play History or AutoPlaylists (regular ones can be exported). Neither would seem to be something you'd need when you just started.
veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by veroK »

Thank you, Lowlander.

Is there anywhere a glossary in the forum? Right off the bat, the help menus start talking about "nodes" and "collections". I'm very new to digital music software and I'm struggling to understand the logic of the program. Is hard to follow the explanations if don't know what the terms mean...
Lowlander
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Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by Lowlander »

No.

Nodes are entries in the Media Tree. Collections (like Music, Classical Music, etc.) are root nodes in the Media Tree that present a filtered view of your Library. http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... Tracks/4.0
veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by veroK »

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?

Image

Thank you
veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

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

Post by veroK »

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?

Image

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)...

Image
Last edited by Lowlander on Mon Aug 18, 2014 3:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Merged with existing post
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by Lowlander »

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.
veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by veroK »

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!
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by Lowlander »

veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by veroK »

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!

Image
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by Lowlander »

Help > MediaMonkey for Windows Help as shown in your screenshot. Or Help > Help Content in MediaMonkey, or F1 in many parts of MediaMonkey.
veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by veroK »

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....

Image
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by Lowlander »

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).
veroK
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:28 am

Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by veroK »

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...


Image
nohitter151
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Re: How to both migrate music folders and merge libraries

Post by nohitter151 »

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...


Image
"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.
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