odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

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xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

This is a very odd sort of problem, I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, so I've taken a few screen shots to help explain. I recently purchased and installed v4 of the product (4.0.1.1461). At first I thought I was having a strange interaction problem between Google MusicManager and MediaMonkey, but I've determined the problem is MediaMonkey.

The problem seems to be related to the auto-organize feature:
- some files are being renamed a second time to "orginal-name(2).mp3" even when an "auto-organize" is not required
- some files are being skipped and not "auto-organized"
- some files are being "auto-organized" but turn into dead links in the MediaMonkey database

The symptoms show up after a night of "auto-organizing" (I leave the application running with the "auto-organize" turned on). Initially, I was missing half of my music library (about half of the library turned into dead links) even though none of the files marked as dead links had actually disappeared from the disk. I thought I might be having a problem with file and path names that were too long. So I shortened the naming template to "auto-organize" the library a second time (template is D:\ServerFolders\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:2>_<Title>) to use shorter file names.

Let MediaMonkey "auto-organize" again overnight, and I now end up with a bunch of renamed files, per the new filename template, but it's as if the rename happened twice, because many of the music files are now named "xx_title(2).mp3" and there are a bunch of dead links "pointing" what should have been the correct new name of "xx_title.mp3". The following image illustrates a sample:

Image

However, some files show up with two new names, like above, but both are dead links. In this case, the files are still on the disk, and they have been "auto-organized" to match the new filename template, and only the "xx_title(2).mp3" file is present. See this image for what the MediaMonkey library thinks:

Image

Finally, some albums in the library show up with double entries (see image below), but in fact, the files did not get "auto-organized" and they still are named according to the previous naming template. Again, no files are actually missing from the disk, just that the library is confused. See the following image:

Image

This is a Windows Home Server 2011 machine that I have configured to allow user login (via RDP) and am successfully using it as a small application server as well as just a home file server (similar to a Small Business Server). WHS 2011 is just a slimmed down version of Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit Windows 7 configured as a server). I am running MediaMonkey as a "user" (not as an "administrator"). File permissions for the MediaMonkey program directory and for the music directory are not an issue, my "user" has full control of these directories.

Do the MediaMonkey background processes, such as "auto-organize" run as a System or Administrator user, or do they run as the User that is running MediaMonkey? Also, is it possible to install MediaMonkey for only one user, so it installs and stores everything in either the \Users\"username"\AppData directory, or in some other directory outside of \Program Files (x86)\?

Sorry for the long-winded error report, but I couldn't find anything on the forum that was quite what I am experiencing...

p.s. You might have to view the images separately to see the right half of them in order to see the filenames.
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

BTW - a count of the mp3 files currently in the ...\music\ directory gives 2672 files, and the longest total path+file name is 174. These are calculated using: >dir /s/b *.mp3 | wc -l and >dir /s/b *.mp3 | wc -L
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

p.p.s. This is a four-core machine and I had the "auto-conversion" number of cores set to two, is it possible there is a race condition causing this? I've since set it to one, but won't retry the whole experiment again until I get some feedback from you guys.
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

And now I can't figure out where you enable/disable the background process that does "auto-organize." Please direct me to the right place.
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

okay, found the scan/rescan bit I was looking for -- might be related to the problem -- is there a conflict between auto-organize and the add/rescan functions???
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by Lowlander »

Tools > Options > Auto-Organize

Could there be an issue with rights to delete files?
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

Lowlander wrote:Could there be an issue with rights to delete files?
Nope, the user has "Full Control" in those directories and, in fact, last night MediaMonkey did a "File -> Add/Rescan files..." and deleted all the "xx_title(2).mp3" files and replaced them with "xx_title.mp3" files. That happened after I turned OFF the automatic "File -> Add/Rescan files..." option, kind of like there was a latent "I need to scan these files" waiting to happen that got triggered when I turned it off.

I think I'll try to start over from scratch and rebuild the library and leave the Add/Rescan files feature off, since I think that is the source of the problem.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by Lowlander »

If you know how to reproduce this you should send a debug log (step 4b) to support as this seems to be a serious bug: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

Lowlander wrote:If you know how to reproduce this...
I'm not sure exactly how to reproduce it AND capture it. I've downloaded and installed the debug version along with debug view. I can successfully capture logs. And, after rebuilding the library, the library is confused, again. Although, in this case, it's a little less severe. Out of ~2700 mp3 files, ~300 are now dead links.

Here's what I did to create the dead links:

1) cleared the library
2) rebuilt the library by using "File --> Add/Rescan..."
3) everything looked good and appeared to be okay, no dead links
4) as an experiment, I tried "Tools --> Auto-Organize..." (changed the filename template slightly in order to force all files to be renamed)
5) all but ~300 files appear to have been renamed (still have old names)
6) however, within the library database the new name is shown

Feels like an attempt to rename these ~300 files failed and, as a result, the database and the filenames are "out of sync." Perhaps a verification check of the new filename needs to be put in place in order to make sure that the rename actually "stuck"?

There is nothing special about the files that got changed and those that did not. Permissions are okay, nothing unusual in the filenames (length, characters, etc.) I don't have any other user's logged into the system and my backup is currently not working due to a failed drive, so I don't think there was some interference from a backup process trying to access those same files. Perhaps an indexing service was accessing them simultaneously?

Given the roughly ~1% failure rate, catching an event could involve capturing a very large log! I suspect I was getting more errors before because I previously had the background File Monitor process running. That is no longer running, trying to keep things simple this time.

p.s. Why is there a file organize template in the "Tools --> Auto-Organize..." command AND in "Tools --> Options --> Library --> Auto-Organize"? If you modify one it doesn't update the other. Are they meant for two different operations? Shouldn't they be pointing to the same template?
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by Lowlander »

Try to capture the log anyway even if it is really long and send it to support.

Auto-Organize is an automated organize tool and Auto-Organize Files is a manual version of it. This is why they have different masks in use.
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

Okay, I'll give the debug log a go and see if I can get it to reproduce. May be a couple of days before I am able to get back on this.
xmnboy
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:42 am

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by xmnboy »

I've figured out the problem. On a WHS 2011 machine there is a "Media Streaming Metadata Synchronizer" service that overwrites tags and was also renaming the files in my media library. I think it starts up a copy of Windows Media Player in the background to manage this activity, since I also found "wmplayer.exe*32" running as a process in the background.

The instructions provided by the following page (about 75% down, search for the service named above):

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wik ... tials.aspx

provided me with the keys I needed to disable the offending service. An additional step, not provided by the above link, is to also make sure that "wmplayer.exe" is not running in the process list (make sure to view process from all users. Now that those two items are disabled, everything is working just fine.

I would assume this might be a problem on any Windows Media Center machine, in addition to WHS machines, and, potentially, on any Windows 7 machine which has Media Center features turned on.

Sorry about the false alarm, this is probably something that should be written up as a knowledgebase article on the MediaMonkey wiki (assuming there is one).
donkykong017

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by donkykong017 »

i have some kind of a similar problem. i have madiamonkey 4 and my files are on a synology network drive. i add my 50k+ files to the library and make some playlists and after some time when i restart mm (i dont know exactly when) more and more files are greyed out and it seems as if mm renamed those with a "(2)" or "(2)(2)" at the end. i have searched for days now and i have not found anything.

i dont know how to get the log to post it here. but maybe someone can help me with that.
also i told mm to organize my files like itunes did before in the specific folder: \\192.168.0.198\music\Itumes Music\artists\artists\<artist>\<album>\<filename>
i hoped that MM would not reorganize my whole library because it should be the same way as itunes did.

i turned that of and i turned "scan continuously" off for that path and i tried to rescan my files and tinkered with the settings in library but it did not help.

only thing that helped was to delete my whole library and add it again to MM; and i dont want to do that everytime when i have dead links. in addition the files are renamed anyway so the playlists wont work.

what i found out was that it seems to be almost the exact same files everytime.

i also tried to mess around with the synology settings, for when some process from the network drive is causing some changes in the files or tags of the files, but i did not find anything and turned of as much as i could that maybe stands in relation to mediafiles.

maybe someone can help me i would appreciate it. im tiered of scanning my whole library over and over again.

thx dk
technochitlin
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:32 pm

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by technochitlin »

Is there any resolution to this problem? I have moved all my music files from my C:\User\Webb\Music folder to D:\My Music but MM 4.03.1476 insists I have many dead links still on the C: drive. Short of wiping the database and having to rebuild all my playlists, what can I do? My playlists no longer work properly...
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: odd duplication and dead links of mp3 files

Post by Lowlander »

Remove C drive from Location node or remove all files from Files to Edit > Dead Links node.
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