Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.4 (2012-10-08) [MM3+]

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fizzjob
Posts: 417
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:37 pm

Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.7 (2011-06-10)[M

Post by fizzjob »

ZvezdanD,

I'm seeing another strange thing with MM4 - the .asx files seem to forget the cover art I've linked. Looking at the .asx files in Notepad, some files have this:

Code: Select all

    <BANNER HREF = "folder.jpg">
      <ABSTRACT>Added by Trixmoto's AlbumArtTagger script</ABSTRACT>
      <PARAM NAME = "Item Storage" VALUE = "1" />
      <PARAM NAME = "Item Type" VALUE = "3" />
    </BANNER>
but some don't, and the ones that don't haven't got any album art. I can work around it by running trixmoto's Album Art Tagger and reassigning the cover art, but it's a little odd that the cover art is getting forgotten in the first place.
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ZvezdanD
Posts: 3257
Joined: Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:40 pm

Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.7 (2011-06-10)[M

Post by ZvezdanD »

fizzjob wrote:I'm seeing another strange thing with MM4 - the .asx files seem to forget the cover art I've linked.
Do you want to say that this didn't happen with MM3, but only with MM4? Did you try with the same tracks in MM3 and MM4? Are you sure that the original audio files which you redirected to .asx files had linked the cover art? Which is an extension of that cover art? Is the linked cover art for those files in the same folder as audio files?

It would help if you could find some regularity in such behavior, e.g. with what kind of files that happens.
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fizzjob
Posts: 417
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.7 (2011-06-10)[M

Post by fizzjob »

ZvezdanD wrote:Do you want to say that this didn't happen with MM3, but only with MM4?
Yep.
ZvezdanD wrote:Did you try with the same tracks in MM3 and MM4?
Well, no, but the problem never occurred in MM3 with the same tracks.
ZvezdanD wrote:Are you sure that the original audio files which you redirected to .asx files had linked the cover art?
The original files all have linked artwork of their own, although it's different from the art I'm linking to the .asx files.
ZvezdanD wrote:Which is an extension of that cover art?
All my cover art is .jpg.
ZvezdanD wrote:Is the linked cover art for those files in the same folder as audio files?
With the .asx files, yes.
ZvezdanD wrote:It would help if you could find some regularity in such behavior, e.g. with what kind of files that happens.
Well, it seems to happen with all my .asx files - after I made my post yesterday, I checked in Magic Nodes for files with uknown cover storage, and about 763 tracks were all in there, and they were all .asx files. It's not the first time that's happened, although I must admit I haven't seen any particular pattern as to when it's happening.
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ZvezdanD
Posts: 3257
Joined: Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:40 pm

Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.7 (2011-06-10)[M

Post by ZvezdanD »

fizzjob wrote:Well, it seems to happen with all my .asx files
I am not sure, but I think that I have fixed this bug. However, it was only manifesting with audio tracks with cover arts stored in tags, not linked to them. Also, MM3 was affected as well, not only MM4.

v3.3.8 - 2011-06-26
* Fixed: references to cover arts if they are stored in tags of original audio files when creating .asx files;
* Fixed: .asx files for tracks with double qoutes in tags causing some media players to refuse their reproduction;
* Fixed: .asx files containing Comment/Lyrics with more then one line of text;
* Fixed: error with non-numeric Track # and Disc # in Create Redirections for Specified Tracks dialog box;
* Fixed: suggested redirection track in Create Redirections for Specified Tracks when Filtered is unchecked and none filter is applied;
* Fixed: remembering of Filtered option in Create Redirections for Specified Tracks dialog box.
Magic Nodes 4.3.3 / 5.2 RegExp Find & Replace 4.4.9 / 5.2  Invert Selection/Select None 1.5.1  Export/Create Playlists for Child Nodes 4.1.1 / 5.4.1  Expand Child Nodes/Expand All 1.1.2  Event Logger 2.7  Filtered Statistics Report 1.6  Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.4.2  Restore/Synchronize Database 3.1.8 / 4.0.1  Find Currently Playing Track 1.3.2  Queue List 1.2.1  Add to Library on Play 1.0.1  Tree Report for Child Nodes 1.1.1  Update Location of Files in Database 1.4.5 / 2.3  Inherit Child Playlists 1.0.3  Add Currently Playing/Selected Track(s) to Playlist 1.2
phantomwhale
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2008 3:36 am

Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by phantomwhale »

Hi,

Quick potential bug report / race condition report from me - something I've been getting ever since I started using the plugin intermittently, but it's caused me a lot of grief today as I've been tidying up my album art.

Firstly, let me explain my usage. I have around 15,000 FLAC files, all of which I have an m4a (AAC encoded) copy of. So each m4a file is marked as being linked to it's FLAC master using your plug-in and I'm not using the ASX files. I do this to keep the metadata between my master" FLAC files and compressed files in sync.

My options panel is set to sync all data changes for each, except for information specific to the m4a and FLAC file (bitrate, encoder used, etc... ) and one of the things I try and synchronize is Album Art. I like to tag all my file with Album Art, and optionally keep a folder.jpg in place too, but I'm less worried about that. My preferences are therefore set as shown here : Image

The problem I get is with Album Art. If I try and tag a whole album (of FLAC files) with Album Art, often using the "Lookup from web" wizard in MM3, I click auto-tag and will see the process bar in MM report "10 tracks to be tagged". Then, a second or two later, the plugin kicks in, and I see "Updating 0/10 appear" as expected, and the number of tracks to be tagged go up to 11.

Here it's about 50/50 what happens. On a good day, the number of tracks to be tagged goes up to around 18-19, the plugin completes, and the number of tracks to tag slowly drops to 0. Why so slow ? Well, FLACs are quite big files to tag, so take time, and my files are stored on a NAS. A very fast NAS, with gigabit connection, but nonetheless is a factor of 3-4 times slower than tagging local files, I find.

But on a bad day, it now hangs, as shown below. What's more, MM will not exit or close, and the only way out of this is to kill the process via task manager. Any further attempts at lining up tagging during the session just get stuck in this queue and never complete. So somewhere, I think the plugin and MM are getting a deadlock, possibly on the database, I'm not sure having not delved into the internals of MM myself (maybe I should one day !)

Image

My workarounds are to turn off the automatic synchronizing, only invoking it manually when all the master FLACs are done tagging (or half-way through being done... as long as a few are processed, the deadlock doesn't occur). Or to turn off Album Art in the synchronizing, which means the deadlock occurs a lot more rarely, but still does occur on occasion; this has been the case for the last year or so, where I've just been tagging non-album art fields.

So therefore I've only seen this deadlock once, maybe twice a month at most in the past. Today, tagging 20 or so albums with art, it's happened around 15 time, hence the prompt to get me to report this issue. Suspect my usage of your plug-in my not be the one it was designed for, and my set up is slightly unique, but would be cool to get to the bottom of it if possible ?

Many thanks,
Ben (-PW-)
ZvezdanD
Posts: 3257
Joined: Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:40 pm

Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by ZvezdanD »

phantomwhale wrote:Suspect my usage of your plug-in my not be the one it was designed for, and my set up is slightly unique, but would be cool to get to the bottom of it if possible ?
Thank you very much for your report. I am really glad when someone sends me such detailed description of some problem, not matter if it is my fault for such behavior or not. I am glad because I really spent too much time writing this add-on and I don't like short reports like "your add-on doesn't work!" without any explanation how is that.

Well, here we have two unfortunately things. Firstly, problems that rarely happens are also hard to reproduce and they are also hard to resolve. Secondly, I am afraid that the mentioned problem is with the program itself. But first to explain what is happening inside of the add-on. Some audio file formats don't allow storing of arts inside of them, but could contain only links to the external bitmaps. If you select storing covers in the tags of redirected files (as you did), when you sync files my add-on first try to store that covers into the redirected file, then it waits in the loop to see if something with the file is changed.

If the file is changed, the add-on assumes that the redirected file could accept covers in tags and continues with another file or finish execution if there are no more files for synchronization. However, if the file is not changed, the add-on assumes that the redirected file cannot accept cover arts in tags and it would copy that cover into the external file which would be linked to the redirected file (not matter for your settings to store covers in tags).

Now, as I said there is that problematic loop. The problem with the program is because it does not update information about tags and cover arts immediately after you try to apply storing arts to tags, but there is some timely undetermined lag. I need to do some voodoo things with the DateLastAccessed of the file to check if the file is really modified (there is an option in the program that DateModified of the file is not modified when you change tags in that file). Worst of all, that loop is limited to 2 seconds, so if DateLastAccessed is not changed for 2 seconds the add-on would assume that the file cannot accept cover arts and would link them to the file, even if the file accept the modification after e.g. 3 seconds. This is especially problematic with the files on the networked drives which have slow response no matter how fast is the network.

So, the only suggestion which I could give you if you want faster synchronization of the cover arts is to specify their storing into the external bitmap files linked to the redirected files, not storing into the tags. Anyway, I would take a look at that part of the add-on as soon as possible to see if it could be better optimized.

EDIT: I just recall that some file systems don't have DateLastAccessed information for files, so this could also be a problem with the mentioned NAS.
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Sandra89
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by Sandra89 »

Hello)) If you like to store and play whole albums and if you have many albums with same songs (official studio, compilation, soundtrack, ...), especially if they are in some lossless format, then this add-on is right for you. Instead of having multiple large audio files with same song for every album, you could keep just one file for one album and on another albums you could have small .asx files (1-2 KB) as redirection files.
WoozleWazzle
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2011 2:09 am

Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by WoozleWazzle »

Hi there

I really like the idea of this script. I just have one question regarding different versions of tracks with the same name, by the same artist on different albums. For example a live album.

Is there a way to ensure that the live album track is not lumped in with the non-live album tracks? The only way I've thought of doing it so far would be to exclude tracks (with the same track and artist) that are different lengths. A live track is almost always a different length from the studio version.

Is it possible to add this length condition? Or is there another way of achieving the same result?

Thanks very much!
aprzybylo
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by aprzybylo »

Do you know if there's any way to filter redirected tracks from Collection or playlist?
ZvezdanD
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by ZvezdanD »

aprzybylo wrote:Do you know if there's any way to filter redirected tracks from Collection or playlist?
I don't know what you mean with "to filter redirected tracks". If you want to create redirection for tracks in some specific collection, you should choose that collection in the Media Tree panel and you need to turn on the "Filtered" option in the Create Track Redirections dialog box. If you want to apply some option only to the master tracks that belong to some collection, you should choose that collection again from the Media Tree and select wanted master tracks before applying such option, like Transfer Redirected Playstats to Master Tracks.
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ZvezdanD
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by ZvezdanD »

WoozleWazzle wrote:Is there a way to ensure that the live album track is not lumped in with the non-live album tracks?
I am not sure that understand your requirement. If you want to create redirections only for some specific tracks, e.g. for non-live tracks, you could create collection which exclude such tracks, e.g. with the condition "Album - not contains - live" or something like that, and after that you could apply a suggestion from the previous post (i.e. choose that collection in the Media Tree panel and turn on the "Filtered" option in the Create Track Redirections dialog box).
Magic Nodes 4.3.3 / 5.2 RegExp Find & Replace 4.4.9 / 5.2  Invert Selection/Select None 1.5.1  Export/Create Playlists for Child Nodes 4.1.1 / 5.4.1  Expand Child Nodes/Expand All 1.1.2  Event Logger 2.7  Filtered Statistics Report 1.6  Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.4.2  Restore/Synchronize Database 3.1.8 / 4.0.1  Find Currently Playing Track 1.3.2  Queue List 1.2.1  Add to Library on Play 1.0.1  Tree Report for Child Nodes 1.1.1  Update Location of Files in Database 1.4.5 / 2.3  Inherit Child Playlists 1.0.3  Add Currently Playing/Selected Track(s) to Playlist 1.2
kitkat
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by kitkat »

Dear ZvezdanD (or anyone else),

Where is all of the data from this script stored? I back up my MM.DB regularly because I'm a DJ and I'd lose all my cataloguing work if I didn't.

However, much of my work involves the work I've done syncing tracks with your script.

I realized tonight that I have no idea where all the data about which tracks are synced is stored!

Thank you,
KitKat
ZvezdanD
Posts: 3257
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by ZvezdanD »

kitkat wrote:Where is all of the data from this script stored?
The table with the map of redirections is stored in the MM.DB database file, so the backup of that file would contain all the data about created redirections as well.
Magic Nodes 4.3.3 / 5.2 RegExp Find & Replace 4.4.9 / 5.2  Invert Selection/Select None 1.5.1  Export/Create Playlists for Child Nodes 4.1.1 / 5.4.1  Expand Child Nodes/Expand All 1.1.2  Event Logger 2.7  Filtered Statistics Report 1.6  Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.4.2  Restore/Synchronize Database 3.1.8 / 4.0.1  Find Currently Playing Track 1.3.2  Queue List 1.2.1  Add to Library on Play 1.0.1  Tree Report for Child Nodes 1.1.1  Update Location of Files in Database 1.4.5 / 2.3  Inherit Child Playlists 1.0.3  Add Currently Playing/Selected Track(s) to Playlist 1.2
kitkat
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by kitkat »

Excellent--thanks!
fizzjob
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Re: Track Redirection & Synchronization 3.3.8 (2011-06-26)[M

Post by fizzjob »

Has anybody else experience tracks "skipping"? To clarify, when an .asx file comes up in the playlist, it plays for a few (3-5) seconds, pauses very briefly, and then continues playing from about a second before the pause.

If I skip to the previous track and then forward, the track doesn't skip, so it's only the first time it plays. It's strange, and kind of annoying.
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