2524 - sync to Google Drive is ignoring location mask [#18660]

[Barry4679]

Sync to Google Drive destination seems to ignore masks in at least two situations.
Same Sync to phone does not seem to have this problem.

the File locations tab for GoogleDrive Sync Profile is set as follows

• Music: \MyMusicCollection\MediaMonkeyTranscode\<Folder:2>\<Filename>

• Classical Music: \MyMusicCollection\MediaMonkeyTranscode\<Folder:2>\<Track #:2> $Left(<Artist>,20) - <Title>

I synced and it made this structure. Tracks with multiple AlbumArtist tags have ignored the Location masks.
I got these
from these

Here is one of the tracks, showing AlbumArtist tag.

Also when I the set the "Enforce use of the sync mask" option on, and tried a re-sync, you can see that it is seriously muddled up

• it seemed like it was going to do something about 7 Worlds Collide error

• but nothing about the Ali Farka Toure error?

• and it was going to do something about the A Tribe Called Quest album for no reason at all

• and it got really screwed up because for the track marked in red it invented its own location mask ?! ... and BTW that is an album with just a single AlbumArtist tag ... here is the track

When I sync the same 7Worlds Collide album to my phone, using the similar Location Mask, the directory structure that it creates on my phone is as expected

ie. mask : \Music\<Folder:2>\<Filename>
folder structure on phone

[Ludek]

It sounds to me that it rather used the mask
Classical Music: \MyMusicCollection\MediaMonkeyTranscode\<Folder:2>\<Track #:2> $Left(<Artist>,20) - <Title>

i.e. the tracks are classical music, aren't they ?

If you put the same masks for the 'Music' and 'Classical Music' then I guess you will get consistent results, right ?

[Barry4679]

It sounds to me that it rather used the mask
Classical Music: \MyMusicCollection\MediaMonkeyTranscode\<Folder:2>\<Track #:2> $Left(<Artist>,20) - <Title>

i.e. the tracks are classical music, aren't they ?

If you put the same masks for the 'Music' and 'Classical Music' then I guess you will get consistent results, right ?

No, no & no. ... not even close to understanding what I am trying to say.

The tracks marked red in the top image are not Classical music.
They have used the default mask,
ie. they used \Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track #:2> $Left(<Artist>,20) - <Title>
not my mask which was \Music\<Folder:2>\<Filename>
ie. look at the folder name that it created by joining the two albumartist tags together with a semi-colon ... see the 2nd image in the post, that shows that actual source folder names

Forget I mentioned the classical music mask ... I meant to cut that line out of the post.

The issue is that:

1. sync to device works as expected with my custom mask in all situations
2. sync to Google Drive fails to use the custom mask in a situation where there are multiple AlbumArtist tags ... maybe it fails in all situations .. I can't tell because the default and my custom mask both would give the same results in that case
3. and something appears to be wrong with the "Enforce use of the sync mask" option ... I will have a closer look at that if you fix this first problem

Background to this issue. I am wanting to use MM5 to transcode a terabyte of flac tracks to .mp3 and store them on Google Drive. I want the source and target dataset to use the exact same folder structure.

I want this because it is not hard, while testing MM5, to do a mass change to a big bunch of my tracks. eg. Autotag, or testing album art operations. This would trigger requirement to re-sync a lot of data up to Google Drive again, just because the track time stamps have been altered. ... Which is a pain obviously.

If the file structures are identical I van use a tool to "touch" my tracks, or the Google drive copies, so that each set has the same timestamps ... and therefore avoiding a lot of expensive and pointless resyncing,.

ie. MM5 sync to cloud is a good thing, but it is a crude tool because I don't have explicit control over what needs to be synced ... there is a simple workaround, but the file structures on each side need to be identical in this Use Case. MM5 should do this, but it has a bug IMO.

[Ludek]

The issue is that:

1. sync to device works as expected with my custom mask in all situations
2. sync to Google Drive fails to use the custom mask in a situation where there are multiple AlbumArtist tags ... maybe it fails in all situations .. I can't tell because the default and my custom mask both would give the same results in that case
3. and something appears to be wrong with the "Enforce use of the sync mask" option ... I will have a closer look at that if you fix this first problem

That's strange,
Are you sure it is 'Album artist' tag and not Arist tag ? Album artist is mostly a single person ?
Anyhow isn't it just that the "Enforce use of the sync mask" option does not take effect?
i.e. if you copy a new track (or delete the old at first) then the newly synced file is according to the currently configured mask, isn't it ?

[Barry4679]

Anyhow isn't it just that the "Enforce use of the sync mask" option does not take effect?
i.e. if you copy a new track (or delete the old at first) then the newly synced file is according to the currently configured mask, isn't it ?

No, sync is ignoring mask when creating folders at Google Drive.

Steps:

• I noticed that I was not getting the target folder structure I needed in my Google Drive target

• investigated, saw that I needed a custom location mask ... changed the mask

• renamed the my previous target folder at Google Drive, using File Explorer. ... aim: hide it so that MM5 could not see it any more

• cleared the Sync list for my Phone in MM5, and re-synced with Delete options on, so that you would clear any metadata or db at Google Drive

• added some folders back into sync list, including one with multiple albumartist tags

• synced ===> You ignored my custom location mask for tracks with multiple albumartist tags ... maybe for all of them? It is only visible when there are multiple albumartist tags

• closed and restarted MM5 in case you had cached the old sync list

• added another album with multiple albumartist tags, and re-synced

• ===> same problem

I only mentioned the Enforce facility, because I entered it to see whether MM5 could fix it custom mask error.
I did not let it run, because it was screwed up, and also because was going to resync something that didn't need fixing (the Tribe Named Quest album) ... I see the most recent has a fix re sync doing unneeded work.

Are you sure it is 'Album artist' tag and not Arist tag ? Album artist is mostly a single person ?

It is a matter of choice.
My criticism of you (ie the group of MM5 designers) is that you have lost focus albums and the albumartist tag

I pay little attention to the artist tag ... in my Use Case it is only used for scrobbling ... most of my tracks have just a single artist tag.

I only navigate MM via album. I only ever queue whole albums. If an album is the work of several people whom I am interested in individually, I give the album multiple albumartist tags for navigation purposes.

None of this should matter for syncing. I am selecting via the Location node in the Sync List, and my custom mask is (should be) based upon <folder>

[Barry4679]

I tested again with 2526, and the problem is gone.
That's good I guess. The problem was persistent yesterday, even after a restart of MM5.
Maybe 2526 fixes the issue, or maybe it was just the version upgrade process.

A couple of other issues in the same area:

1. when a track is being synched to the target, the MM5 status bar message uses the Track Summary mask from Tools>OptionsPlayer>PlaybackRules .. but when sync is deleting a target track, due to Sync's "Delete Other Files" option it just displays the track name ... ie. does not use the Mask ... can that be fixed? ... It is a bit scary when MM5 is deleting things, and it nice to be able to keep informed about what it is doing ... nb. all my track file names are 01.flac, 02.flac etc ... so I cant disambiguate them with further information
2. The Delete option, referred to above, does not housekeep ... ie. if it deletes all content of a folder that it has created, it does not delete the empty folder also ... can this be fixed? ... all the resulting clutter makes testing difficult, and it screws up navigating by Folders in a music client like MMA etc

[Ludek]

OK,
I also cannot replicate, but I can replicate that the 'Enforce use of sync mask' does not taky any effect for cloud storages,
tracking as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=18660

Re the status bar summary versus title, feel free to enter this into Mantis.
But it's unlikely that it will be fixed soon -- as the issue is very minor and the fix isn't as easy as looks like

Re deletion of empty folders:
This has always worked, but I'll retest.
Are you sure that all the folders were created using MM during sync ?

[Barry4679]

Re the status bar summary versus title, feel free to enter this into Mantis.
But it's unlikely that it will be fixed soon -- as the issue is very minor and the fix isn't as easy as looks like

Re deletion of empty folders:
This has always worked, but I'll retest.
Are you sure that all the folders were created using MM during sync ?

OK, I will retest deletion issue.

Sync to Google Drive has some other issues:

1. playlists; MM5 creates "Selected Artist node" playlist OK, but not Album or Folder playlists ... these options works OK with sync to Device
2. ignores the "Organise playlists using ..." option ... always uses the "prefix" option

Also I can't find a way to use playlists written to Google Drive ... but I will start another thread for that
nb. it would be good if MMA grew some UPnP wings, ie. was able to stream from Google Drive

[Ludek]

1. playlists; MM5 creates "Selected Artist node" playlist OK, but not Album or Folder playlists ... these options works OK with sync to Device

Are you sure that the Album node(s) are selected? You probably selected only some Artist nodes and thus those are generated?

1. Also I can't find a way to use playlists written to Google Drive ... but I will start another thread for that

You can actually connnect to the google drive by another MM5 instance and scan it, then you will see all the playlists, auto-playlists (including the auto-playlist rules) and track metadata.
Or alternatively you can just open the M3U files if you are using alternative music player to play the files/playlists from OneDrive.

nb. it would be good if MMA grew some UPnP wings, ie. was able to stream from Google Drive

MMA <-> Goolge drive sync (including the metadata in the /MediaMonkey/meta_files/) is planned for future MMA 2+ version, not implemented yet unfortunatelly.