MediaMonkey forum

following on from a lot of off topic GPM discussion in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=90338

More feedback:

1. "Menu item Add/RESCAN files to library" ... no longer seems to offer rescan

[EDIT]: ignore this point ... yeah check boxes ... I see them now :}

How do i *RE-scan* from this menu item? ... You took away the Sync Now button as a workaround for a bug I report earlier. There does not seem to be any way to trigger a resync from this menu option anymore. ... When I exit the window opened by this facility I immediately get the "Scan Results" popup dbox, but it reports nothing. It is so quick you cannot have accessed my GPM library ... AFAICS this menu option doesn't offer RE_scan now that you have removed the Scan NOW button.

To get a rescan I need to access the Devices&Services|GPM node, which still has a Sync Now button ... It is not very intuitive that the initial scan is from the File menu, and subsequent scans are triggered from the Media Tree.

2. Scan Results dbox

[EDIT]: ignore this point also ... see EDIT comment above

This immediately pops up when i exit File|Add/RESCAN. It reports as if it has done a do_nothing scan, which would be confusing if the person was expecting a real scan. ... ie. it looks as if the scan may have failed, when in fact nothing was attempted.

BTW, I hope that you don't fix these two issues by triggering a scan just because I entered this window (ie. the menu item name ends in an ellipsis, implying that I get the chance to cancel out without any update happening ... doesn't it?

3: Timings ... Playlist synch seems to need tuning ... and the UI looks broken during some phases of the sync

The following measurements of a no-op scan over my GPM library of 44k tracks... "no-op" meaning that there was nothing to do ... I had already run a scan a few minutes proviously.

I didn't touch the UI while the scan was in progress.

0:48 end scanning GPM metadata wheel pauses briefly several times, but only briefly
1:16 processing GPM tracks has got to the last track already ... wheel usually frozen, just a single segment of the wheel showing mostly, but the status bar updates still show a sign of life
2:54 end processing of that one last track, plus whatever happens at the end of batch ... MM5 looks broken for most of this minute and a half, no spinning, no status bar updates ... you don't show that you are doing end of batch processing ... it just looks like it is stuck on 1 track for a minute and a half, and is probably broken
5:54 end Sync playlists ... wheel spinning, but long breaks ... no "processing n of m" notification in the status bar, so looks broken mostly ... takes a long time some playlists take a minute ... needs tuning ... I only have 6 GPM playlists, 2 are empty, and the largest has only 61 tracks ... there are also 3 "auto" playlists, 2 have less than 10 entries, and one has 500 entries. ... 3 minutes duration?!
5:54 sync complete ... no Scan Summary dbox

I ran the above sync test multiple times, so that I could observe closely and measure. ... Twice it threw up an exception.
38047E15 & 44237E15 "EFrozenApplication: The application seems to be frozen." Both times it was at the stage when it was processing the last track and doing whatever happens before it starts re-scanning for playlist sync ... If I take your Restart button option from your error dbox ... the MM5 panel goes white, and I have to terminate MM5 via Windows Task Manger.


4. The UI is frozen during some of the sync phases ... is this by design?

eg. The UI is live while you are scanning GPM metadata, but is non-responsive when you are processing the tracks ... this was only around 30 seconds for a no-op scan, but during my first sync the duration was around 8 minutes IIRC ... but both are a long duration for the Ui to be frozen.

By "frozen" I mean: menu options are non-responsive ... can't open nodes in the Media Tree

I seemed to get more exceptions if I touched the UI during a scan; eg. 44237E15

5. Terminology unclear

"scan to library" ... "scan to target" ... which library, which target? ... ie. I am syncing from my GPM LIBRARY to my MM LIBRARY ... it would be clearer if this was "Scan to MM" and "Scan from MM"
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q2e09cw9r7yly ... 1.png?dl=0

"look up track information" ... meaning what? ... can this be better worded? or have an explanatory tool tip
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sm47l16gkqy76 ... 2.png?dl=0

6: Status bar doesn't have its own screen real estate
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bmyznzd4ois16 ... s.png?dl=0
skin is Material Design (dark): Viewing options are: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gvqgyatf425y4 ... e.png?dl=0

Hi, thanks for reporting.

re 3&4: No, this is not expected, we are analyzing the freeze logs (to fix them for 2115)

re 5: It is not "scan to target", but "sync to target", i.e. like the "sync to device" used to be in MM4, you can configure what to sync to the target, previously it was called "Sync to remote", but Rusty worded it as "Sync to target" , it was item 3c here: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14668
I could re-open the issue for Rusty to review (once he is back from Vacation) - do you have a suggestion for a better wording?

"look up track information" - right, added as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14955

Re: 6: This is progress bar (that is shown when you click the progress wheel on the toolbar) and can be hidden the same way (the wheel is toggle for the bar visibility).
I guess adding it to View menu would be confusing as the progress bar isn't always shown, maybe a right-click > Hide menu or something like this?
To be fixed the "transparent progress bar" issue (when the Player is hidden).

Ludek wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:40 am re 5: It is not "scan to target", but "sync to target", i.e. like the "sync to device" used to be in MM4, you can configure what to sync to the target, previously it was called "Sync to remote", but Rusty worded it as "Sync to target" , it was item 3c here: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14668
I could re-open the issue for Rusty to review (once he is back from Vacation) - do you have a suggestion for a better wording?

I have been using MM since 2009. I use it multiple times, every day.

When I first loaded MM5 there was quite a lot that i initially found confusing. ... I am no longer in the best position to explain what was initially confusing, because I am more familiar with MM5 now.

One area which was initially confusing to me was the whole cloud connectivity options.
I have not needed to sync my music before, so I am not very educated about it.

"Scan to Library" ... which is the library? ... ie. I think of both MM and GPM as being libraries.
"Sync to target" .... which is the target? ... I am copying something, but it needs to be clear in which direction the copy is happening

The destinction between "scan" and "sync" is still not clear to me. ... the verb "scan" doesn't say anything about outcomes

Suggestions? .... As I said I not fully familiar with all the use cases for synching, but what about:
* "Add/Rescan from target to MM" .... ie. use the same Add/Rescan terminology as used in the File menu, and be specific about which direction things are moving
* "Sync from MM to target"

The other thing I initially found confusing was that I did not realise that the File|AddRescanFiles dbox could be used against web locations. ... The term "files" had me thinking of my local tracks, and that dbox doesn't give any indication that it can work against web locations until you press the Add Locations button.

What I did see was the Devices & Services node, which looked like the place to sync from my GPM library. I clicked AllTracks, but it didn't persist anything. .... I suppose MM5 was more confusing before, because the Sync Now button (now gone) crashed often, and because there seemed to be no consistency whether any specific track had "Add to Library" or "Download" options.

All of this is better now, but IMO there still needs to be a sync log so we can see what happened; whether it started, whether it finished ok, what got copied, and if it failed, why did it fail.

Ludek wrote: ↑Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:40 am Re: 6: This is progress bar (that is shown when you click the progress wheel on the toolbar) and can be hidden the same way (the wheel is toggle for the bar visibility).
I guess adding it to View menu would be confusing as the progress bar isn't always shown, maybe a right-click > Hide menu or something like this?
To be fixed the "transparent progress bar" issue (when the Player is hidden).

I like the progress bar for scanning, because it can be a long running task, and there needs a life sign IMO. ... It would better IMO if it was displayed my default, and could be turned off by the wheel click. It looks good when the player is visible. It is a pity that it overwrites the grid when Player is not displayed. ... Maybe a panel in the right hand side like "Now Playing" and "Selected"? ... maybe a fixed length list of the last 10 or 20 sync events, where old events just scroll off the list, but are persisted in a log file that we can open if we need to check an audit list of what happened?

In the case of GPM sync we need to remember that we are syncing our MM database against what is effectively a dirty library ... not always our tags .. not easy to see what is in our GPM library prior to the sync ... it is not like sync back from a clean track list that you sync'd to MMA ... a person with a large MM db will need an audit list because it is difficult to see what was added|altered in a large library.

Hi,

re 3&4: added as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14958 and https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14959 and going to look into it today

---------------------------

re "Scan to Library" / "Sync to target"

I agree that it can be confusing in case of GPM (as GPM can be considered as library), I think that Rusty originally suggested it for cloud targets (like DropBox, OneDrive, ...)

But this needs to be definetely reviewed. Re-opened: https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14668

--------------------------------

Re: Sync log. Yes, this is addressed as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14936 , gonna to discuss this with Rusty (once he is back from Vacation) how to make this well working.

I ran MM5 GPM sync using version .2115
I started with a fresh library imported from MM4.

A lot of of the GPM<->MM track mismatches are now resolved.
But the Music > Location > YouTube issue does not seem to be resolved. (explanation below).
The sync is a lot slower.
There are still too many mismatches.

Speed:
I think that the initial sync of my GPM\MM library (43,174 tracks) used to take around 20 minutes. ... I think.
It now takes 1 hour 40 minutes.
Most of the time is when it is in the phase where it writes\updates the tracks (ie. the phase after it reads the metadata). ... I did a run where MM5 was on a SSD; that took 22:11 minutes per 10,000 tracks. ... I retried it with a 10,000 rpm spinning disk; that was faster, and was the 1 hour 40 minutes quoted above, still 19:28 minutes per 10,000 tracks during the track phase.

Mismatches.
There are still a lot of then, resulting in track duplicates in MM.
It hard to visually estimate how many there are. There are many.

43,174 tracks in my MM4 library
48,311 tracks in my MM5 library after GPM sync
------
5,137 extra tracks ... some will be tracks that are only in my GPM library, and the rest are duplicates. I believe that I have 45,440 tracks in my GPM library.

45,440 tracks in my GPM library
43,174 track of my own, uploaded to GPM
------
2,266 tracks in my GPM library, which are tracks belonging to GPM, not in MM4
5,137 extra tracks in MM5 vs MM4
------
2,871 tracks duplicated by MM5 sync to GPM

They are hard to see, and therefore hard to clean up manually.

I uploaded my tracks to GPM via Google's Music Manager. ... I believe this would be the most popular route for anyone with a large library, because Google first finger print your tracks, then only upload tracks which they don't already have. ... Even with this saving, the upload of a large collection takes a long time, which is why I think that Google Music Manager method would be preferred for larger libraries.

The downside of the Google Music Manager method is that you don't necessarily get your own exact tags in your GPM library. ... This may cause some of the mismatches, but not many as far as I can see.

Most of the duplicates are coming from your requirement that the duration of each copy has to be within 3 seconds of each other.

I don't know the exact reason why my GPM tracks have a different duration to my own tracks. Presumably it has something to do with Google transcoding of my flac tracks, and maybe the handling of lead-in, and lead-out silences. ... Or it comes from they upload minimisation technique... But whatever the reason, your grace period of 3 seconds is inadequate.

Ludek:

Expanded the latitude to 3 seconds, I wouldn't go over this limit (as there is a high probability that it isn't the same song then). But if there is only one track in the database with same artist+title then the duration isn't compared.

Peke:

I also agree on latitude to 3 seconds as it is very rare <0.1% where difference can be >3s

I don't agree, and this is not what I am seeing.

1> Firstly some music genres don't keep to the average three minute track length found in rock & pop music. My average track length is 5:40, and 2,000 tracks are between 10 minutes to an hour long. https://www.dropbox.com/s/51pk066gdjmdbwo/zero.png?dl=0
maybe 3 seconds is not great enough for these kind of tracks.

2> which is worse? ... generating track duplicates because you were too stingy with your grace latitude ... vs the possibility of linking two different, but similar versions of a track having some close degree of match on AlbumArtist, Artist and Album name ... I think that causing the duplicates is the worst option.

3> I don't agree with your statement "if there is only one track in the database with same artist+title then the duration isn't compared." ... see this album ... you generated 4 track duplicates here ... that all have the same artist+title .... I have many many examples.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xhh7wgw334ndy3/two.png?dl=0

4> (sorry if this appears like a rant ) .... Can you improve your tag matching to handle "differences" due multi-value tags? ... Look at this album. 6 track duplicates even though the track length differences are between 0 and 1 second.... why haven't you matched these tracks? ... is it because GPM and I don't agree how the Artist tag should be set for these tracks?... or is it because the unmatched tracks with small differences have a apostrophe in their track name?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/95uu0zb98g3uc ... r.png?dl=0

Same thing with this track? .... is it because of the extra artist tag on one track, or is it the question mark in the track title? ... if it is the extra artist name, would you consider doing a second pass against unmatched tracks, this time allowing for matching just one artist in artist and albumartist tags.
ie. "Andy Lewis" is the same as "Andy Lewis; Paul Weller" in the artist tag ... Same thing in the AlbumArtist tag.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zjr3b9mozci2f ... a.png?dl=0

Here is another suspicious mismatch. Only 1 second difference, and the track name contains "<>" characters
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v23qp4pq28i9v ... b.png?dl=0

"Youtube" location.

Is this fixed?; https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14933

My GPM sync still shows:
44,619 tracks in Google Play Music location
5,440 tracks in Youtube location.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yjh50oyxmrn8n53/six.png?dl=0

The tracks from Google (Google_only tracks, and tracks duplicated due to matching failures) are shown in the Youtube location. ... They are also included in the Google Play Music location, which also shows all the tracks that i uploaded to GPM.

miscellaneous

The Scan completion dbox still shows as soon I press OK button on the Add/Scan dbox .... The scan is running, but your "completion" dbox says that it has finished, and that it has added|done nothing.

I still get an error dbox at the end of the sync. .... It doesn't raise itself to the top of the z-order, so it hides underneath the main MM5 window ... the wheel is still spinning, but the status bar is frozen ... it looks like MM5 may have hung, because you don't know that it is waiting on the hidden error msg dbox. ... it is the same error I got last time https://www.dropbox.com/s/9f444g7yy23bq ... x.png?dl=0 ... [UPDATE] see following comments

Same thing with the 1st time message offering to import the db and settings from MM4 ... it doesn't elevate itself above other windows.

5A2C7E15: I tried running a second scan to capture an image of the error dbox mentioned above ... I got this error.
I got multiple incidents with the same error ID ... Task manager shows that MM5 is consumimg CPU and accessing disk, but the error returns after a couple of minutes. ... happened about 5 times .... Status bar frozen ... same error Id each time ... Pressed the Restart button ... UI goes all white ... Task manager shows no activity ... ended via the task manager

Restart MM5 and tried again ... Sync Now button from Devices & Services node ... this time it completed OK ... is quite fast ... didn't measure it, but it was very acceptable ... small playlists still take a surprisingly longtime to resync ... the error Dbox is on the top this time ... last time it wasn't ... maybe I had my browser window open above MM5 last time, and the error dbox didn't get risen to the top of the stack?

The UI is fragile while GPM sync is running ... I crashed it once just by going View|Player, and then adding EntireLibrary to the Media Tree ... I ran the tests described above without touching the display which was showing MM5 ... that won't work for a task which for over an hour.

A couple of questions re MM5|GPM integration:

1. So my MM5 database can store connection info for all the locations where I store my tracks; not only on my own hard drive, but now also all of the online locations where I have stored my tracks ... And I can can expand my MM database to include tracks which I stream from GPM, but don't own my own copies of... that's really good ..... so how do I use it? ... say I want to play tracks using MMW or MMA, and I want to play from an online location, how do i tell MM to play from that location? (eg. I have my laptop with MM, at some location without my NAS, how do I tell it to play the tracks from GPM, or wherever?) .... and how do I generate a playlist to be used against one of my online locations? ... this requires MMA? .... can MM5 publish a MM playlist into my GPM library, so that I can play it with the GPM client?

2. I am wondering whether I would use full MM5|GPM syncing .... From my point of view my GPM library is a dirty database ... Amongst what I consider to be "my collection" there is probably a lot of crap in there ... odd tracks that I liked once, or were auditioning ... there are lots of "enhanced edition" tracks that Google just lumped onto the end of their copies of my own albums ... there are duplicate versions of tracks or albums ... the tags in there are not necessarily my clean tags ... The Google s/w makes it hard to see exactly what is in there .... OTOH my MM database is the result of a lot of careful tagging and curation

I would not necessarily want to sync all of that dirty GPM database into my MM database ... I probably don't want their tags, and I don't want all of the junk tracks either .... What i do want is to sync the Google IDs (or Dropbox locations, or One Drive etc) for my matched tracks into my MM5 database, so that I can play from my online databases as described above.

Is it possible to run sync against these online databases, in a mode where new tracks are not added into the MM database? And tags are not updated? I would prefer to control that part of the process via your Devices&Services|GPM|AllTracks facility, by transferring just the tracks or albums that I am interested in.

Possible?

Re speed, error box, flagile UI:
The issues have been already fixed as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14959 and https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14958 , but for 2116 (while you are testing 2115).
2116 hasn't been created yet, it is a bit slow now as part of our team has been on Vacation.

Re mismatches: There probably always will be mismatches (as you stated that your GPM library is dirty), you can find them via Location > GPM (sorting by title)
I don't think that Google Play Music manager do some kind of fingerprinting when upload as I wanted to upload my library (10K track) using it and it uploaded all of them and took horribly long. Uploading using Chrome's GPM etension is even longer and crashes after around of 2000 tracks so it wasn't usable for me.
To prevent from the mismatches I would suggest to copy all the music using MM5, this way all tracks will be perfectly matched and will have all the tags (including custom fields).

Nevertheless I re-opened https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view ... 934#c50763 to fix/tweak what you have found

"Youtube" location.
Is this fixed?; https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14933

EDIT: I see, it is not working in the "Exclude subfolders" mode (the button on the toolbar with folder and +/- sign), I've re-opned to fix it for 2116, thanks.

Is it possible to run sync against these online databases, in a mode where new tracks are not added into the MM database? And tags are not updated? I would prefer to control that part of the process via your Devices&Services|GPM|AllTracks facility, by transferring just the tracks or albums that I am interested in.

Yes. Possible, just disable the automatic scan (that is disabled by default) and go to Devices&Services|GPM|AllTracks , select the tracks that you want to add to library > Right-click > Add to library

Ludek wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 6:37 am

Is it possible to run sync against these online databases, in a mode where new tracks are not added into the MM database? And tags are not updated? I would prefer to control that part of the process via your Devices&Services|GPM|AllTracks facility, by transferring just the tracks or albums that I am interested in.

Yes. Possible, just disable the automatic scan (that is disabled by default) and go to Devices&Services|GPM|AllTracks , select the tracks that you want to add to library > Right-click > Add to library

Is late here, I will respond to your other points tomorrow. But I wanted to clarify this one now.

I have 40k+ tracks stored in both locations; GPM and locally. ... I asking for a sync mode, that syncs just the tracks which you can match, but does not add all the unmatched tracks from my library.

I know that I can control the addition of the new tracks that I want, as you describe ... but I would also like a sync mode which just updated the location & remote ID's for just the matched tracks, but didn't do tag sync and track additions. ... if this is not possible, a person in my position would not be able to use the new MM5 integration with online sources, without syncing their MM db with a dirty database ... ie. it isn't practical to identify and right click the 40k+ tracks which are in both locations, and even if I did that, I would still be creating duplicates wherever you are unable to find the matching tracks.

I know that I can control the addition of the new tracks that I want, as you describe ... but I would also like a sync mode which just updated the location & remote ID's for just the matched tracks, but didn't do tag sync and track additions. ... if this is not possible, a person in my position would not be able to use the new MM5 integration with online sources, without syncing their MM db with a dirty database ... ie. it isn't practical to identify and right click the 40k+ tracks which are in both locations, and even if I did that, I would still be creating duplicates wherever you are unable to find the matching tracks.

OK, so I guess it should be doable this way:
1) Initial scan of GPM tracks into local library to match with local copies
2) Go to Music > Location > GPM , mark all tracks that weren't matched with local copies (i.e. those with source = gpm) and remove them
3) Uncheck the '[ ] Scan for media / playlists ...' checkbox, click [Apply], but on the "Remove GPM entries from library?" dialog click [No] , I mean this dialog:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7iws61fg9899u ... 0.png?dl=0

This way the paired/matched tracks remains.

BUT, I see actually two issues here that prevents this scenario:
a) Once '[ ] Scan for media / playlists ...' checkbox is unchecked then the GPM entry under Music > Location is gone => to be fixed as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14980
b) For the local tracks the local location is always preferred, i.e. even if you would unplug your NAS or HDD then the remote cloud GPM version wouldn't be used for playback (I guess) => to be verified and fixed as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14981

Ludek wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 6:37 am Re mismatches: There probably always will be mismatches (as you stated that your GPM library is dirty), you can find them via Location > GPM (sorting by title)

It is not as easy as you seem to think. ... Firstly you cannot identify duplicates from Location > GPM. See here, there are three tracks which may be duplicates. https://www.dropbox.com/s/9zru3cs5icljb ... 1.png?dl=0

But only one of them is a duplicate, as you can see in EntireLibrary|AllTracks. https://www.dropbox.com/s/fcgp8glyjvann ... 2.png?dl=0

But this only displays 33 tracks per screen ... I have 48,363 tracks after GPM sync, so you are suggesting that I press the scroll down button 1,465 times and study each page closely looking for duplicates?

MediaMonkey does advertise itself as being suitable for large libraries

Manage small to large collections of audio files, videos and playlists (100,000+), whether on a hard drive, network, or CDs

... and I don't that I have a particularly large collection. There is a poll about collection size somewhere in the MM forum. 50% of people said that they had more than 25k tracks, and 22% said that they had more than 100k tracks.

Also as I said earlier, AFAICS the great majority of my duplicates come from your 3 second mismatch rule, and not from Google "dirty" tags. ... So far the only ones with "dirty" tag issues that I have noticed are where GPM has pruned off my multi-artist and multi-albumartist tags, and you have said that you will look at fixing those.

Ludek wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 6:37 am I don't think that Google Play Music manager do some kind of fingerprinting when upload as I wanted to upload my library (10K track) using it and it uploaded all of them and took horribly long.

I think that you are wrong. I uploaded my library. It is 1,008gb of flac files. I imagine that the Google Music manager transcoded to flac before the upload, so let's reduce this to 100gb. My upload speed at the time was capped at 1Mbps ... 100gb would take 10 days, at 24x7, and at max capacity, and the service I was getting at the time was not capable of max upload offered. ... the upload was a big task, but not that long IIRC

It is not just me who thinks that Google minimise the uploads BTW. See here https://www-howtogeek-com.cdn.ampprojec ... y-music%2F

Songs you try to upload will be “matched” if possible. This means Google will give you Google’s own copy, potentially getting you a higher quality version of the song than the one you uploaded. If Google doesn’t have its own version of a song on file, it will just upload and store the song file you provide.

And here on the Google Play Help Forum: https://support.google.com/googleplay/f ... pTc/?hl=en

Please note that with the scan and match service your music collection will be scanned and any song that's matched against the Google Play catalog will be automatically added to your online library without needing to upload it, saving you time. This is how the matching feature works.

Ludek wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 6:37 am To prevent from the mismatches I would suggest to copy all the music using MM5, this way all tracks will be perfectly matched and will have all the tags (including custom fields).

I could do that ... but 100gb is a lot to upload a second time. ... Google have been offering this service since 2013 ... you have already done it, and I have done it ... A lot of MM5 prospects will have already done it, because it is useful, and it is free ... you really want to make them all do it all over again?

I think that your matching logic will be fine once you have sorted out the 3 second limitation, and the multi-tag issue, and whatever special character tag issues remain.

You could put a mode into sync which does your neat custom tags hack (ie. a json string into a GPM comment field), so that people who have already climbed over the Google upload mountain, also get the benefit. ... ie. after GPM->MM sync, you could have an option which updated the GPM library, without requiring that they repeat the whole upload again.

BTW the Google Music Manager upload does offer some other benefits to anyone with a large library.

• You can throttle back the max bandwidth that it will consume, so you don't wreck Internet experience for other tasks ,or other people in the house

• You can pause the the task once you approach your monthly data cap, and then restart it when you roll into your new monthly data allowance

Do you offer these facilities?

I am hoping that I can enjoy the new MM5 feature without having to go through the upload task again.

Ludek wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 2:52 pm OK, so I guess it should be doable this way:
1) Initial scan of GPM tracks into local library to match with local copies
2) Go to Music > Location > GPM , mark all tracks that weren't matched with local copies (i.e. those with source = gpm) and remove them
3) Uncheck the '[ ] Scan for media / playlists ...' checkbox, click [Apply], but on the "Remove GPM entries from library?" dialog click [No]

This way the paired/matched tracks remains.

I could do that, but it is a bit lame isn't it?

Would this be so hard?; ie. a check box to condition whether you do the add new tracks logic, and|or the update non websource tags
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4sd8qmdy2r9hm ... e.png?dl=0

IMO the GPM library will be a dirty library for most people ... if they think like me they will be happy to sync from DropBox or One Drive, etc to MM, because it is their own tracks which will be up there ... but GPM is a dirty library, and they will see your new option to sync GPM into their hand manicured MM database, and they will think "What?? Are you freaking kidding!?"

I want the new benefits of sync from GPM, but not if it is going to mess up my MM database.

Tell me if I am annoying you ... I can shut up about this. ... It is just that I see this as a bigger issue than you seem to, and am keen for MM5 to be as good as it can be.

Re mismatches: right, you are true that EntireLibrary|AllTracks is the place to compare and you are right that anyone with large collection will hardly compare them manually. I've fixed #14934 yesterday (enhanced latitude to 5s, special chars, multi value tags), so test with 2116 (once it is available) and report back how it is working for you.

Re: Google Music Manager: yes, I've read about the ability to match existing tracks on Google's servers and actually was trying to reverse engineer that for a while in the past, it just wasn't what I've experienced when uploading using 'Google Music Manager' or 'Google Play Music' extension for Chrome. In my case it uploaded all (even well known tracks), so it either doesn't work as one would expect or maybe it works just for your tracks that you have already uploaded in the past?
Re: setting up a bandwitch treshold or monthly data bandwith -- sure, that's not what MM5 offers, but I guess that's something that one would rather set globally, i.e. using a tool that would do such a restriction for all apps on the device/PC.

As for the usecases, I guess there are various, one would want to migrate all local tracks to GPM and just stream them, another (like you) wants just partial pairing with "dirty" GPM library (just for playback purposes) - to be able to play the tracks when you are not at home (if I understand correctly)?
I am entering it as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14983 for Rusty to review.
Generally speaking I agree on adding them.

Ludek wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 1:22 pm I've fixed #14934 yesterday (enhanced latitude to 5s, special chars, multi value tags), so test with 2116 (once it is available) and report back how it is working for you.

Sounds great. I look forward to testing that.

Ludek wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 1:22 pm Re: setting up a bandwitch treshold or monthly data bandwith -- sure, that's not what MM5 offers, but I guess that's something that one would rather set globally, i.e. using a tool that would do such a restriction for all apps on the device/PC.

IMO the essential feature is that a person could suspend the sync when they approach their monthly data cap, and then restart it when the new month rolls over. ... MM5 works like that? ... ie. I can pause it. Reboot PC, and then when I restart the sync, it just continues from where I cancelled it. .., And the logical integrity of the db is not comprised by pausing, and turning off, at some delicate part during the sync update process? ... It is kind of hard knowing what your plans are at the moment.

It is nice that the throttling back is built into the Google Music Manager.

Ludek wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 1:22 pm As for the usecases, I guess there are various, one would want to migrate all local tracks to GPM and just stream them, another (like you) wants just partial pairing with "dirty" GPM library (just for playback purposes) - to be able to play the tracks when you are not at home (if I understand correctly)?

Close to correct. ... In my own case, my aim would be (partial) pairing so that I could generate MM playlists which could be used against online sources. .... specifically playlists, that I could use on a mobile device, which would play from my online track duplicates. ... In a GPM context this would be either a playlist published directly into my GPM library for use with the Google client, or could be using MMA, if MMA is able to read my GPM library tracks ... I have asked here, on two previous occasions, about your integration plans for online sources with regard to MM playlists. ... I notice that you didn't answer on either occasion.

I can also see value for a person being able to take a laptop copy of their MM db, and play from their online locations, but I have no personal need for that because i don't travel with a laptop, nor do I have MM running at any away from home location.

If we are talking wish lists here, I would also like to play my MM playlists against my 3tb WiFi USB drive. I travel with this drive. It stores a duplicate of my whole collection. It enables me listen to my music, using active MM generated playlists, remotely, without incurring Internet charges. ... I have written software which translates the .m3u files to this alternate file location, but it would be neat if this was built in MM.

re mismatches, speed, sync error and all the issues fixed for 2116:
2116 hasn't been published yet, so I am attaching the debug build here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e40vopokbd4uv ... g.exe?dl=0 so that you can test and confirm the fixes.

IMO the essential feature is that a person could suspend the sync when they approach their monthly data cap, and then restart it when the new month rolls over. ... MM5 works like that? ... ie. I can pause it. Reboot PC, and then when I restart the sync, it just continues from where I cancelled it. ..,

Yes, you just need to do this manually. i.e. you can terminate the upload in MM5 the middle (right-click the progress bar > terminate) and continue after computer restart and it continues from where it was cancelled.

As for the other feature requests:
MMA isn't capable to read GPM library yet - so you need to sync MM playlist to GPM library and play it using a GPM client for Android (if you want to play the playlists on your Android mobile).

I can also see value for a person being able to take a laptop copy of their MM db, and play from their online locations, but I have no personal need for that because i don't travel with a laptop, nor do I have MM running at any away from home location.

OK, this is fixed as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14981 in 2117

If we are talking wish lists here, I would also like to play my MM playlists against my 3tb WiFi USB drive. I travel with this drive. It stores a duplicate of my whole collection. It enables me listen to my music, using active MM generated playlists, remotely, without incurring Internet charges. ... I have written software which translates the .m3u files to this alternate file location, but it would be neat if this was built in MM.

Not sure if I understand correctly, but I suppose that the drive is one to one folders/files copy of your NAS and it can be accessed via IP via Wi-Fi? Or you are connecting it via USB on travelling? Maybe you could try to eleborate this in a greater details, but please move it to another thread, thanks!

FYI: I am leaving to Vacation for a week or so -- so my responses will be delayed.

Confirm that:

• speed issue resolved

• Youtube location fixed

• multi-artist tags handled better

• duration latitude extended

• number of duplicates due to MM sync have at least halved

But IMO there are still too many duplicates.
To give you an indication of the impact, here are the first 21 incidents in my MM db, and I have only just got started looking for them, ie. I have not even reached the track names beginning with "Aa..".

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uzhi1r552f03s ... s.png?dl=0

They are all explainable by track duration differences being greater than your lattitude.
I checked all of their Artist, Album and AlbumArtist tags .. they are identical.

To be honest, they are a PIA. They are hard to identify, because they are not my only GPM-only tracks ... ie. I have many legitimate GPM-only tracks, where I have added GPM tracks to my GPM library, because I like, but don't own the tracks.

I really question whether this duration comparison criteria is achieving anything worthwhile.

My question is what is the bad implication if you connect one of my local tracks, to an incorrect version of the track in my GPM library tracks, where they share the same Album|Artist|AlbumArtist|(TrackNumber?) tags?
Your cure is worse than the sickness, IMO.
I can see that your logic makes sense for someone with no album tags, but is a potential large annoyance for an album-focused person.

I can see a benefit in a situation where there are multiple matches on the tag set, that you would favour the one with the closest duration match ... maybe a first pass could match identical tag sets, having an exact or very near duration, ... and then a 2nd pass could match unmatched tracks, where there are matching tags sets, and album tag is not null, but ignoring duration differences.

It is hard for me to estimate just how many duplicates you are still creating.

As part of my investigation. I ran a report over my GPM library, and it discovered that I have 700 track duplicates in my GPM library. (?!) This makes it difficult to see just how many duplicates that you have created in my MM library.

I investigated the cause of the duplicates in my GPM library. ... There seem to be multiple causes. It looks like MM5 has caused some of the duplicates in my GPM library, which is of concern.

Some GPM duplcates have been caused where I initially added a GPM version of an album to my GPM library ... and then I bought and ripped my own copy of the album. The Google Music Manager has created a duplicate in these circumstances.

Another cause is where I had a mp3 copy of an album, which the Google Music Manager uploaded to GPM. I then I bought the CD, and ripped a flac copy of the album, replacing my mp3 track versions. The Google Music manager has created duplicate track versions in my my GPM library.

But I can also see that MM5 has created quite a few of the GPM duplicates.
See here I have the version that Google Music Manager originally uploaded of my album. https://www.dropbox.com/s/eg9v3lmg0ibx1 ... l.png?dl=0
But then MM5 has also uploaded a duplicate version of this album; I can see your json string in the duplicate. https://www.dropbox.com/s/uti2s5duy6swf ... d.png?dl=0

I presume that I played with some part of MM5, and caused this GPM library corruption ... but this illustrates how problematic sync between a person's MM library and a library such as GPM can be, ie. in a situation where the person does not have complete control, nor good visibility over the library that they are syncing from.

It is hard to clean up this corruption. I can't chose which tags are visible in the GPM client matrix, so I have to go into the properties each duplicated track, to detect which is the real one, and which is the one that you uploaded to GPM.

I think that you may get many complaints. with people thinking that you have corrupted their library.

I see that the Google Music Manager versions were uploaded at 320bps quality. The ones uploaded by MM are just 140 VBR?
Is that another advantage of the Google Music Manager methods, vs MM->GPM sync? ... In their case, any of your own tracks which have low resolution, are replaced with Google's high resolution copies. ... There is some user control over the resolution the MM5 uploads to GPM??

I feel strongly that that by default GPM->MM sync should just sync connectivity between these two libraries, ie. by default it should not sync tags, and should not add tracks ... the user should have to turn on these updates, and there should be a health alert warning.

And that the default for a MM->GPM sync should be to sync playlists only ... and that uploading of tracks and sync of tags should have to be explicitly turned on by the user. ... Some control over which tags are synced would also be nice. ... eg. Maybe I just want to sync across tags which are visible and useful in the GPM client; eg. play counts, and track ratings

I see my GPM library as also being a backup of last resort of my music collection, as well as just being somewhere from where I can stream or download parts of my collection when I am away from home ... This is why I want control over of updates to my GPM library.

I know you would rather that people just used MM5 to upload to GPM.

If someone told me that to be able to use the new facilities in MM5, all I had to do was re-rip all of my CD's, you can guess what my reaction would be.

Well it is much the same thing with regard to re-uploading my 1tb of music data, which I have already transferred to GPM. As you said before it is a long and tiresome task. ... And since the free offer to upload music collections to GPM has been available since 2013, I would think that you find a lot of that.

Adopting Google-only tracks into a MM library.

I want to do this only once I have auditioned the tracks, and I like them enough to want to track their plays, and want to browse the tracks via MM, and want to use them in MM playlists. .... This is a relatively small percentage of the extra tracks in my GPM library.

In this use case I need to use the Devices&Services|GPM|AllTracks node of the Media tree.

This node gives no visibility of which tracks are not already in your MM library. It lists all of the 44k+ tracks in my GPM library. ... Finding which tracks are available for adoption into MM is difficult in a large library.

At the moment I have a tool which shows me a filtered list of GPM tracks, listing just those which are not already in my MM database (ie. the tracks whose GPM track IDs are not stored in MM. ... I use that list to decide which albums I am going to add to MM at the moment, and then locate the tracks again in the above MM node, and use the Add To Library menu option.

It would be good if this filter facility was built into MM; ie. an optional filter on the Devices&Services|GPM|AllTracks node, which only listed items NOT FOUND in MM. ... or something that would serve the same purpose. ... ??

Hi,
re latitude tolerance, from your screenshots I see that some tracks has duration difference more than 40 seconds? How it this possible?
I think that we need to compare also track length, e.g. I have track called 'Track 12' in my library (empty album + empty artist) and such a track was false matched with another track called 'Track 12'. The duration comparing is helping to resolve this. But maybe we should do the track length comparance only when the album+artist info is not available (like in this case). I've re-opened https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=14934 to tweak this further.

BTW: What app you are using that you are able to see the Comment tag? I don't see it in the GPM Chrome's extension and I also don't see it in the Google Play Music Desktop player: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oat8l9jrzv4bb ... 8.png?dl=0
I thought that Comment is always hiddedn, therefore I used it to store ventis metadata JSON.

Re: quality of uploaded tracks, you can set up the quality in the Options > Auto-conversion
We should probably just set up a higher default quality? Entered as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15002

I will react on the further items later...