MediaMonkey is corrupting my music! WHY??

[Pugglewuggle]

Hi,

I've been using MediaMonkey Gold for about 9 months now and I've had this problem THE ENTIRE time I've used it. When tagging files (or at least I assume this is when it occurs), MM will truncate my files to a size from 128 bytes to 2 KB. I don't understand why it's doing this and it's really starting to tick me off as I update album art and add [bonus] tracks frequently.

I have 8500 songs in MM currently (and a lot more to add). The majority are 320 kbps MP3 (although I occasionally import FLAC files and convert them to MP3/320). I checked my library for small files by creating a filter last week and in just this week I've got 5 new truncated files that are RUINED.

1) WTF is going on? This is ridiculous. I used WMP for the last 7 years and it NEVER did this - NOT ONCE.
2) How do I fix this? This is the 3rd computer I've had MM on and it's done this on all 3 (in my constant use in the last 9 months, and in previous use before that).

I LOVE MM's features, but this seems like something that should not happen - ever.

BTW - before you ask, the corruption is NOT due to hardware problems. I have my music on a server with an Adaptec powered enterprise RAID 6 array with enterprise hard drives on a gigabit network. I have had absolutely no problem with any other files becoming corrupt, so this must be related to MM.

I appreciate any help you can offer. Thanks you!

[rovingcowboy]

so does it do this to every song?

if monkey was the cause it would be every song as the cause would be unable to do one song then quit for awhile.

it seems to me that you might be having issues with other programs running at certain times when monkey is converting or ripping songs to the network server, thus taking up monkeys ram doing a song then monkey closes that song cause it crashes due to that interference. that is what sounds like is going on if there is no pattern to which files are corrupted, but if there is a pattern then let us know what it is, like every tenth song? or every tenth album? or every song that starts a new album, or what ever the pattern is you find. that might be something they could make a work around for.

but you should also check to see what is running each time if you found a pattern then you might find the other program that is causing it. my guess is something dealing with keeping tabs on the size of the hard drive free/used space or the health of the hd. could also be something doing a virus scan. or a ram clearing program that just bulldozes the ram in to swap file to get more usable ram.

[weinrich]

I've been using MediaMonkey Gold for about 9 months now and I've had this problem THE ENTIRE time I've used it. When tagging files (or at least I assume this is when it occurs), MM will truncate my files to a size from 128 bytes to 2 KB. I don't understand why it's doing this and it's really starting to tick me off as I update album art and add [bonus] tracks frequently.

I have the exact same problem! Every single one of 208 of my .M4A files have been truncated to exactly 2 KB. WHY? I bought these songs from iTunes (v8.1.2.6) and now they are ruined with no way to recover them. They were working fine and were not truncated before I used MM to update the album art and update the tags. Perhaps Media Monkey doesn't know how to correctly modify an M4A file from iTunes without truncating it?

I cannot describe how frustrated I am at the moment - at about $0.75 per song on average, I just lost $150 in music. I realize bugs happen, but WOW, this is a big one.

Can anyone offer any information on why this would be happening?

MediaMonkey Gold - Registered - Version 3.1.1.1259.

[rovingcowboy]

I have the exact same problem! Every single one of 208 of my .M4A files have been truncated to exactly 2 KB. WHY? I bought these songs from iTunes (v8.1.2.6) and now they are ruined with no way to recover them. They were working fine and were not truncated before I used MM to update the album art and update the tags. Perhaps Media Monkey doesn't know how to correctly modify an M4A file from iTunes without truncating it?

I cannot describe how frustrated I am at the moment - at about $0.75 per song on average, I just lost $150 in music. I realize bugs happen, but WOW, this is a big one.

Can anyone offer any information on why this would be happening?

MediaMonkey Gold - Registered - Version 3.1.1.1259.

now you said a different format m4a, that has had several problems but i think nohitter151 would be a good one to ask since he wrote an article of how to use mediamonkey with ipods and itunes.

[Pugglewuggle]

Hi,

There is absolutely no pattern, except for it does this to songs that I modify the tags on... ones just sitting there and not being modified are not affected.

I just checked and I have more stuff corrupted...

As far as RAM/etc. issues go, the server has 8GB ECC registered memory and no stability problems at all.

Any ideas? Anybody?

[jiri]

This can happen for mp3 tracks that already don't have any valid music and are full of zeros instead. Then such a file can be properly shortened. However, if this is not your case, I'd be interested in any additional information you can provide, the most valuable would be the original file before the corruption happened, if you have such from some backup or so.

Thanks,
Jiri

[Pugglewuggle]

Yes, I have the originals as I have been taking special care to back up my files before tagging them. They are definitely not corrupt... they play fine until they are tagged/corrupted (while the corruption percentage is still very low, it is a huge annoyance that, left unchecked, could ruin my library). I would like to just send you a few of them, but I don't want to break any rules by posting music on the forums... please let me know.

[jiri]

Sure, just e-mail me (jh at mediamonkey dot com) anything that could be used for reproducing the problem (files, steps used, etc.). Or you can upload it to some free web service and just e-mail me the link.

Jiri

[GibsonXXI]

I think this has something to do with Oplocks over SMB/CIFS.

I have a ReadyNAS Ultra where my music collection is stored, and I get exactly the same symptoms as described by the other posters.

What I think is happening is that MM writes out the tag for the new file first (which is logical) then a read/write access fault occurs and the content of the song fails to get read and the process fails. However, i would expect in such a scenario for MM not to delete the old version of the file (or the tempfile.XXXX files it creates) until it can ascertain the source file and destination file have the same content.

Currently this is not happening. And as for version 4, it has an even more serious bug that instead of getting 2kb files, the failed files are simply deleted completely (source and destination) when a failiure occurs. And this is happening to me on local drives attached to the computer as well as on remote shares. In Windows, the media Player service and file indexing service can both lock files temporarily, and if MM is unable to read the content of said files while this scanning is taking place, that would explain the issue. I Find it most prevelant when doing batch modifications of large numbers of files (i.e: in the thousands). Sometimes Auto-Organize is failing to delete the source files after they have been "moved" to a new folder / directory creating library duplicates as well (new symptom for V4).

[Lowlander]

Please open a support ticket with a debug log for this: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69
This is a very serious issue and should be addressed (although I haven't experienced it on my NAS).

[Peke]

@GibsonXXI
What share options you use and what HDD+RAID configuration you setup. I'm in process of obtaining 559 Pro II unless Qnap finally release smaller x79 types.

[GibsonXXI]

I have the share where my music resides set to the admin user account to prevent WMP from ruining my album art / adding useless AlbumArtSmall.jpg/Thumbs.db files and other clutter from appearing on the shares. Uninstalling WMP has some negative side effects for uPnP related support in Windows, so uninstalling it is not an option. The regular access to that share via a normal username/password (for read only access) is done via a different user account, specifying the Host Name as the target (versus IP address for the admin account). This is the only way you can specify multiple credentials for the same source under windows (IP/Hostname trick).

Hard Drives are 4x Samsung SpinPoint 2GB drives (Either F3, or F4 don't remember off top of my head). The local drive where I process my media before synchronising to the NAS is a Seagate 3TB SATA Drive.

[MediaJunkie69]

I have a very similar problem but with videos, MediaMonkey is destroying my home videos, one of a kind once in a lifetime videos of my child, vacations, etc. etc. It also occurs during tagging, the tagging of certain files gets stuck and then all of sudden it unsticks and all the files are destroyed. It seems that it may be certain encodings only but it happens to both mp4s, mkvs, wmvs and a couple of others. Regardless of possible incompatibilities, any decent software would gracefully stop and warn the user. I am betting that it is happening when headers have to be written or rewritten. I love the MM gui and capabilities but this problem is a definite catastrophe and deal killer. I have no choice but to dump MM for ITunes or something else if I can find anything good.

[SGUIRR]

I am new to media monkey, this seemed like an old thread but now you have Media Monkey corrupting files in 2016?

Should I be looking for alternate software?

I would have thought something like this would have a huge priority, but the responses do not seem to solve the problem.

Seems to early to be recommending this product to my users.

[Lowlander]

The advice is above, send in a debug log to support on a couple copies (not originals) showing this happening. As you can see the forum isn't full of people having this issue, so it's only affecting a couple people, likely due to very specific user environment circumstances.

I wouldn't even know how MediaMonkey ended up corrupting MKV files as they're not writable by MediaMonkey: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... erties/4.0