SOLVED-Library Corruption, Duplicates, Playlists, Synch

[conandrum]

Hi all.
First I must say that Mediamonkey is the BEST music manager in the world.

Here I will let you know the problems I had with my HUGE 238Gb, 34,000 file library and what I did to solve them.
I have a Samsung Note 3 with a SanDisk 64GB Ultra MicroSDXC external SDcard.

1. I wanted to synchronize to Android about 53GB of 5star songs. However, since most android players do not have a YEAR grouping (only songs, albums, artists and maybe genre), I wanted year playlists. The solution to this problem is to use the free version of MAGICNODES http://solair.eunet.rs/~zvezdand/MagicNodes.htm.
There is also a paid version (Magic Nodes 4.2). More info here: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 168#p96695
MagicNodes can group my 5* songs into decades and years, creating a tree structure. EXCELLENT. Now, how do I get them to synchronize? The key here is to move the tree structure to your playlist node. The way to do this, is to edit the magicnode you created and in the options, choose to place it as a child of playlists. (Read the instruction manual for more info).
So this will allow your decades/years tree to appear in your device synchronization options. That's it!
Today, I only synchronize MagicNodes and nothing else.
I have playlists like...
5* Decades by Year (automatically removes duplicates, chooses 5*, and creates separate playlists for each year in each decade since 1930)
So you have a main playlist with all songs, subplaylists for each decade (1970s, 1980s etc), and sub-subplaylists for each year (2011, 2012 etc).

5* Decades by Genre (automatically removes duplicates, chooses 5*, and creates separate playlists for each genre in each decade since 1930)
So you have a main playlist with all songs, subplaylists for each decade (1970s, 1980s etc), and sub-subplaylists for each genre (2010s - Pop, 2010s R&B etc).

5* Latest R&B (automatically removes duplicates, chooses 5*, R&B Genre, since 1 year before this one)

MagicNodes are a SUPER POWERFUL tool that all of us should have. Actually MediaMonkey should consider purchasing the rights and including it in MM as standard.

2.Duplicates have plagued my library since I started my collection back in 1997. Back in those days, I used ID3Man and other tools to scan and tag my collection automatically. My mistake was that I separated my songs from their albums and that is not the way. Keep your songs together in their albums. As you know most tools today can easily tag whole albums. Tagging a single file needs a song fingerprint and again will probably give an album name and year that is not the original.
This mentality though, will lead to a number of duplicates. I have many. It is OK and normal!
How did I remove my duplicate tracks / duplicate songs? MagicNodes!
MN has a node group which can help you to see the duplicates and mark them in some way (e.g. using a custom field).
I went a step further and used SQLite Studio to run custom queries on the MM database, which I designed to EXCLUDE my duplicates automatically from my playlists, without even tagging them or marking the duplicates in any way!
These queries, I then transfered to MagicNodes. Most duplicate songs were excluded (exact match of artist and title) and only one version was left which was automatically chosen to be the oldest and with the maximum bitrate.
Some manual work was done after that to perfect the job, by going through what was left and making the names of similar titles, the same. Refreshing the MN playlist, removed these manually edited songs and left just one.
This reduced my 5* library from over 10,000 down to 6,600.

3. I managed to synchronize my songs but as soon as I reconnected my phone, it would show that all or some songs on my phone were not recognized. The phone would classify them as additional/unknown/yellow (OTHER content) Instead of a blue bar (AUDIO) in the capacity bar!
My breaking point was when MMW would no longer recognize my external storage!! When I connected the phone, MMW would show the usual node "PHONENAME-Card", but in the device synch options, it would show the directory structure of my phone's internal memory and the capacity bar would show 24GB instead of 59GB (no I did not make a mistake - it was not the "PHONENAME-Phone" device I was looking at)!!! I was going nuts at this point.
NOTHING I did could fix it. I was deleting all files from the phone and resynching, wasting hours and days at a time. Sometimes little by little would work, but eventually I would lose synch. I wasted many hours reading the forums and playing with the StorageInfo.xml.MMW file and other files to no avail.
PLEASE... if you have an exFat formated sdcard, PLEASE format it with a FAT32 file system. This is what FIXED MY PROBLEM!
If you have strange problems with synchronization your first move is to CHECK YOUR SDCARD filesystem.
I used Acronis Disk Director to format the card. You can use anything you want. After this, my 40Gb 5* library synch NEVER MISSED A BEAT (or BIT ))))!!

4. The last problem I had was with Ghost Playlists. After so many synchs, and resets, I ended up with many playlists on my android mobile phone with a "_1" at the end of them.
I deleted all playlists from the phone again and again with no result. I deseleted all synch playlists, and synchronized just a single flat (no tree) playlist. Still, many playlists were being sent over to the phone!!! Where was MMW finding these OLD playlists/non existent playlists/deleted playlists/previously removed playlists/unselected playlists???
Where are all these OLD ORPHAN PLAYLISTS hiding? In the MMW database.
I found the answer here and many thanks to the person that discovered it.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =1#p260638
These are left over playlists that have lost their connection to their parent for a number of reasons... e.g. you forced MM to close before a playlist was moved completely from Playlists to some other collection node.
Since they do not have a parent, they do not appear in the synch list, but they do get transfered. You need a tool like SQLite to run this code.

That's it.
All problems Solved.
I hope this post helps someone.

PS.
PLAYERS:
I use Player Pro for Android because it was the only player for Android that would integrate with the lock screen - basically for ease of use while driving. Even though other players today integrate with the lockscreen, PlayerPro remains the best media player for Android compared to PowerAmp which is a close second.
PowerAmp lacks ability to read star ratings from tags!!! so it is USELESS until they implement this feature which is pending since 2011. If they do they will be a formidable choice.
On the other hand PlayerPro has everything you need except the ability to tag edit/track deletion on SD cards in Lollipop. (Poweramp will ask for write permission on SD card when you attempt to delete a track.) Hopefully they will implement this feature soon and become the definitive player.
MMA MediaMonkey for Android is my current second choice but lacks the ability to sync to a folder other than the mediamonkey folder on the external sd card with read/write permissions on android lollipop. Hopefully they will implement this feature soon and become the definitive player for Android since it is the only player that has the most powerful synch built in. It is scheduled for MMA version 1.1.3.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 21&t=78924
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=12299

CAR AUDIO
Also I use a SONY BM10 Bluetooth Music Receiver in the car which automatically connects to your Android phone as soon as you enter the car and sends your music to your car stereo.
Lastly a Satechi BT MediaRemote Bluetooth Multi-Media Remote Control completes my car setup, so that I do not even have to touch the mobile anymore -just press play on the remote... next, previous, pause, volumeup/down.
For the first time since I first started my in-car mp3 adventure with an upgraded 75GB mstation, I finally feel that I have a complete immaculate solution!

[conandrum]

I have one more issue that I managed to resolve.
Tracks on external device lose rating but are not marked for re-Synching

I just don't know how these things just happen. I suppose because of the large number of tracks, and the MTP flakiness which causes explorer to hang and mediamonkey to pause and after hours and hours of usage, I guess a crash comes along and everything falls out of wack. ))

I noticed today that when I connected my phone to the computer via USB, mediamonkey showed the number of tracks on the mobile being LESS than the actual number should be based on what I chose for synch. This was just for a split second, and then it poped back up to the correct number. Instead of 6680 it was something like 6470 for maybe a second or two. It is amazing that I caught it!

Anyway, I thought nothing of it, and synchronization did not actually synchronize anything as everything was OK.
Later on, after another hiccup and another synchronization started, I noticed this number again (on the ) for second! This time it was lower! 6206! What was going on?

I went to my mobile device node while the phone was being scanned, expanded it and clicked on the MUSIC node. And surely, there it was! Total number of songs 6206!
So why was the "Capacity Bar" reporting 6680 in BLUE as if the songs were there on my phone?
At this point the "Scanning" process of the phone was well underway, and I noticed that towards the end of the scan (10-15 minutes), the 6206 list started getting bigger, until it reached 6680! Naturally, at the end of the scan I was curious to find out what these tracks were. I went back to the phone's music node and noticed one track without rating!
I sorted by rating and there they were. 474 tracks without rating!

WHY? I have no idea! And the funny thing is that MMW does not fix them.
So I selected them all, and clicked DELETE. They were removed from the device and I run a synch again.
When I disconnected and reconnected the phone, there was no hiccup this time!

Hope this helps someone.

PS Moderator, I don't know what you want to do with this. It is not detrimental but is a bug non the less. I do not know what implications it may have if left unchecked.
Thanks

[conandrum]

My little experiment with FAT32 recently is now coming to an end ))

Even though my library is now stable and my syncs are now steady and reliable, my transfer speed has suffered a huge 30% or more hit.
I carried out the tests on windows using diskmark and the write speed of the card in windows is around 6MB/s compared to 9MB/s when it was formated as exFAT.

Also further speed tests on Android using AISDBench have failed to complete or have reported abismal write speeds of less than 1MB/s compared to 5.7MB/s when exFAT.

I decided to finally bite the bullet and initiate an RMA for both Ultra 64Gb MicroSDXC I cards.
Sandisk have been more than accomodating to say the least, after detailing to them all the troubles I have been experiencing, and I would recommend them any day!

I will update when I receive the new cards which I have high hopes for.
Bottom line: If you are having to resort to extraordinary measures like FAT32 to get your card working... RMA your card... it is probably faulty or at the very least malfunctioning.