Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

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Gyroscope
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:11 am

Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Gyroscope »

MediaMonkey 4.0.2.1462
Windows 7 64 bit

Yesterday, for grins, I tried to construct Goldfrapp's new "The Singles" greatest hits collection from the existing Goldfrapp albums I already have. What a mistake.

I went into a Goldfrapp album, copied a track to go onto the new greatest hits using ctrl-c, pasted it into another Goldfrapp album, just so I could duplicate the track, then changed the album of the newly copied track to "The Singles". Et voila I have created a holder for the album, and I can then continue picking up other tracks just with copy and paste, copy in the existing album, paste under the "The Singles" node.

However after copying a few tracks I noticed that the original albums were now missing tracks. Eh?

It transpires that "copy" doesn't appear to copy, it cuts. By this time I had already deleted a couple of erroneously "copied" tracks. Only they hadn't been copied, they had been moved. So I've lost data.

I've experimented with a basic

The Artist
Album 1
Album 1 Track 1 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)
Album 1 Track 2 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)
Album 2
Album 2 Track 1 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)
Album 2 Track 2 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)

structure created with mp3tag, and confirmed that copy and paste actually cuts and pastes, using "copy" from either the context menu or the ctrl-c shortcut. "Copy" from one album to the other deletes the source.

Thank goodness I've taken a backup, heh?

OK, so I want to reset all the damage done, and restore from backup. And I have to be REALLY, REALLY careful. It would seem logical to go to the "Album Artist" node, select "Goldfrapp" and hit delete, right? However there is a longstanding bug at play here. If I hit delete on the "Goldfrapp" node it will delete all tracks with an *artist* of "Goldfrapp", not the *album artist*, so any appearances on complilations, film soundtracks, DJ mixes all get nuked.

Again I've experimented with a basic structure of

The Artist
Album 1
Album 1 Track 1 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)
Album 1 Track 2 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)
Album 2
Album 2 Track 1 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)
Album 2 Track 2 (artist: The Artist, album artist: The Artist)
Compliation Arist
The Compilation
Compilation Track 1 (artist: The Artist, album artist: Compliation Artist)

Hit delete on Album Artist -> The Artist and you are indeed warned that you're about to delete 5 files (not the 4 files under "The Artist") - if you go ahead MM really will go ahead and delete everything with an Artist (as opposed to Album Artist) of "The Artist".

So the bug here is that deleting an album artist node actually deletes by artist.

OK, so I carefully delete Goldfrapp album-by-album. I copy the various Goldfrapp data from backup into my usual dropbox for MM, hit "Add/Rescan" and MM duly moves all the data back into my library. Then I run into the final annoyance, which I know has already been reported but it's driving me mad.

I keep all album art as folder.jpg in the directory of the album. MM just moved across all the flac files and the folder.jpg too, but when I come to add the folder.jpg to the album as album art (why doesn't it do this automatically? I think it used to? can't prove anything though), instead of using the file in-situ like MM 3 used to, it copies the damned thing to folder_2.jpg. So I have to intervene manually, move the folder.jpg somewhere else, then re-add it and it gets moved back in. For every single album. Grr.

Sorry if I sound entitled and ranty, but I've been a long-time lifetime gold license holder and evangelist for MediaMonkey. Maybe the cut/copy thing is intentional, but for me it was catastrophic. And when I find my normal use of MediaMonkey so precarious as I tiptoe around bug after bug, well, I'd like something smaller and more reliable; video, UPNP, collections, all useless to me - a rock-solid music file management program is what I want.

Cheers,

/g
BKKKPewsey
Posts: 361
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Location: United Kingdom

Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by BKKKPewsey »

Welcome to the wonderful world of MM4 :(
Gyroscope wrote:It transpires that "copy" doesn't appear to copy, it cuts.
I just tested with my version [1472] and copy does indeed copy np eg leaves original behind :-? Did I misunderstand your post?
Gyroscope wrote:I keep all album art as folder.jpg in the directory of the album. MM just moved across all the flac files and the folder.jpg too, but when I come to add the folder.jpg to the album as album art (why doesn't it do this automatically? I think it used to? can't prove anything though), instead of using the file in-situ like MM 3 used to, it copies the damned thing to folder_2.jpg. So I have to intervene manually, move the folder.jpg somewhere else, then re-add it and it gets moved back in. For every single album. Grr.
Having had the same issue as you I have found that if you rescan your folders again MM will eventually get the message and import the album art correctly.
The nightmare is when you have a separate artwork folder. Why the artwork handling was changed from MM3 (where it worked fine) is beyond me :-?
What happened to MM3's "link to image file" ?. I do not want my folders littered with unneeded .thm (WTF) or folder1 folder2....jpg files.
That is when I boot up MM3 :wink:
Gyroscope wrote:And when I find my normal use of MediaMonkey so precarious as I tiptoe around bug after bug, well, I'd like something smaller and more reliable; video, UPNP, collections, all useless to me - a rock-solid music file management program is what I want.
Could not agree more.
MM4 is still very much WIP and is IMHO still A BETA
Everyone has the right to be stupid Image but some abuse the privilege
theta_wave
Posts: 310
Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:54 am

Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by theta_wave »

Gyroscope wrote:It transpires that "copy" doesn't appear to copy, it cuts.
If is a data corruption issue, you should report the bug ASAP. Also, I understand when directory scanning is on, it monitors every minute change and writes them into the tag when applicable. Maybe all of this copying and pasting simply move the temp files while it was writing, I don't know. I should backup my collection and try what you did.
BKKKPewsey wrote:
Gyroscope wrote:I keep all album art as folder.jpg in the directory of the album. MM just moved across all the flac files and the folder.jpg too, but when I come to add the folder.jpg to the album as album art (why doesn't it do this automatically? I think it used to? can't prove anything though), instead of using the file in-situ like MM 3 used to, it copies the damned thing to folder_2.jpg. So I have to intervene manually, move the folder.jpg somewhere else, then re-add it and it gets moved back in. For every single album. Grr.
Having had the same issue as you I have found that if you rescan your folders again MM will eventually get the message and import the album art correctly.
The nightmare is when you have a separate artwork folder. Why the artwork handling was changed from MM3 (where it worked fine) is beyond me :-?
What happened to MM3's "link to image file" ?. I do not want my folders littered with unneeded .thm (WTF) or folder1 folder2....jpg files.
That is when I boot up MM3 :wink:
I had the same reaction to the .thm generation option, but if you go to Library > Tags & Playlist > Artwork and set "Image location" to "Save image to file folder" and "Image filename" to folder.jpg (or whatever) it comes *close* to the default behavior of MM3. However, like both of you noticed, if you already have a folder.jpg in the directory and decide to replace it with newcover.jpg and when prompted change the filename of newcomer.jpg to folder.jpg to overwrite the old one, MM4 keeps the old one and presents YOUR decision as folder1.jpg. This irked me in the beginning but I got used to it by removing folder.jpg first, then add newfolder.jpg and changing it to folder.jpg after MM4 prompts me.
BKKKPewsey wrote:
Gyroscope wrote:And when I find my normal use of MediaMonkey so precarious as I tiptoe around bug after bug, well, I'd like something smaller and more reliable; video, UPNP, collections, all useless to me - a rock-solid music file management program is what I want.
Could not agree more.
MM4 is still very much WIP and is IMHO still A BETA
Yeah MM3 was such a stable product that I rarely visited this forum during its lifecycle. I also agree that MM4 is considerably more crash prone than MM3 and that the filelist view I use "Show Art with Details" seems to be riddled with bugs. But I also concede that I use directory monitoring in MM4 because the "insert add files" behavior in MM4 is spotty and I'm using some MM3 scripts like Monkeyrok, which has yet to be updated for MM4. Regardless, the level of instability in MM4 is worrisome. It is not all bad, however, ipod touch (4.3) synching is lightning fast in MM4 compared to MM3 and the album art caching bug has been fixed. Also, most of the devs seem genuinely interesting in ironing out the bugs. I just wish MM4 limited my visits to the forum only to download the latest iteration like in the days of MM3.
Last edited by theta_wave on Sun Feb 12, 2012 7:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Lowlander
Posts: 56491
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Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Lowlander »

Are you using Copy & Paste in the Location node? In other nodes you're doing a tagging operation and not a file operation.

Do you use the Artist, Album Artist or Artist & Album Artist node in the Media Tree? For both the first and last option you would expect all tracks to be removed.

folder_2.jpg has been well documented among other art issues in MediaMonkey 4. I don't know why anything was changed from MediaMonkey 3, but Art handling is to be reviewed for MediaMonkey 4.1. If you enable Scan file directories for Art under Tools > Options > Library, Art will be picked up automatically on rescan (or File Monitor).
Gyroscope
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:11 am

Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Gyroscope »

Lowlander wrote:Are you using Copy & Paste in the Location node? In other nodes you're doing a tagging operation and not a file operation.
Well that's (most of) the problem then, and probably why BKKKPewsey above can get it to work correctly - I am copying and pasting under Entire Library -> Album Artist, not the Location node. Even if it's only tagging (which is hellishly counterintuitive), it doesn't copy & paste (e.g. create two entries for the same file), it cuts & pastes / moves. And were it to "work" by creating two entries it's still pretty dangerous IMO.
Lowlander wrote:Do you use the Artist, Album Artist or Artist & Album Artist node in the Media Tree? For both the first and last option you would expect all tracks to be removed.
Album Artist. So in my scenario there are 4 tracks under the album artist name, but when I hit delete I am warned that I will delete 5 tracks (the other one being under a different Album Artist, but with the same Artist), and if proceed all 5 files are deleted.

There are a couple of screenshots of the nodes where I always work here http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =7&t=62430 (another bug report, ok it's trivial but it seems to have received a thorough ignoring).
Lowlander wrote:If you enable Scan file directories for Art under Tools > Options > Library, Art will be picked up automatically on rescan (or File Monitor).
I hadn't seen that option - thanks for the pointer.

And thank you for all the opinions and help folks.
Lowlander
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Lowlander »

Gyroscope wrote:Well that's (most of) the problem then, and probably why BKKKPewsey above can get it to work correctly - I am copying and pasting under Entire Library -> Album Artist, not the Location node. Even if it's only tagging (which is hellishly counterintuitive), it doesn't copy & paste (e.g. create two entries for the same file), it cuts & pastes / moves. And were it to "work" by creating two entries it's still pretty dangerous IMO.
You can't create a copy as you're tagging, MediaMonkey wouldn't know where to Copy to. That is why Copy will create a physical copy only in the Location/My Computer node as you're telling it where to Copy to. All other nodes are used for tagging. If you drag & drop or Copy/Cut & Paste on them you will just change the tag to the node you dropped it on.

As for your expansion bug have you tried 4.0.3.1472 to reproduce? I can't (please use other topic to update info on this).
Gyroscope
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:11 am

Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Gyroscope »

Lowlander wrote:You can't create a copy as you're tagging, MediaMonkey wouldn't know where to Copy to. That is why Copy will create a physical copy only in the Location/My Computer node as you're telling it where to Copy to. All other nodes are used for tagging. If you drag & drop or Copy/Cut & Paste on them you will just change the tag to the node you dropped it on.
Yes, got that now, thank you. Although I'd still maintain that "copy" does nothing of the sort under Entire Library, and hence is dangerous and should be removed. I'm not trying to prove a point, simply pointing out that it will trip up the unititiated, as it did me (been using MM for years, never tried this until yesterday).
Lowlander
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Lowlander »

If you Copy anywhere and Paste in the Location node it will copy the songs to the new Location, thus Copy is still useful. One could argue that Paste should be removed from destination folders if it won't actually Copy the file, but both Copy and Paste are somewhat misleading and thus you'd be removing a feature some might use.
mcow
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by mcow »

Lowlander wrote:folder_2.jpg has been well documented among other art issues in MediaMonkey 4. I don't know why anything was changed from MediaMonkey 3, but Art handling is to be reviewed for MediaMonkey 4.1. If you enable Scan file directories for Art under Tools > Options > Library, Art will be picked up automatically on rescan (or File Monitor).
I ran into the folder_2.jpg issue. The albums where this happened had two pieces of art in the folder: folder.jpg and (typically) art001.jpg, which I use as an alternate cover for the bonus tracks on the albums.

Another issue with this: if I'm looking at Art+Details view, and right-click on the cover, all the tracks are shown selected. However, by default (this is a rebuild of my library), "Apply to all files..." is unchecked. This is insane! There is no use case where "Apply to all" should be unchecked! Admittedly, once that has been checked, it always comes up checked afterwards; but now I have to go back and revisit the ones that had the broken art (but don't, any longer, so they're no longer easy to pick out) and fix the art on tracks two thru N.

These two bugs combine to make getting the album art correct a real exercise in tedium.
Lowlander
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Lowlander »

mcow wrote:This is insane! There is no use case where "Apply to all" should be unchecked! Admittedly, once that has been checked, it always comes up checked afterwards
So it remembers the last user action, I don't see the problem then. Especially as there are users who attach Art to a single track on an Album (changes in MM4 were made on feedback from those users).
mcow wrote:I ran into the folder_2.jpg issue. The albums where this happened had two pieces of art in the folder: folder.jpg and (typically) art001.jpg, which I use as an alternate cover for the bonus tracks on the albums.
As I don't use external Art I'm not as familiar on how MediaMonkey handles it. How do you suppose MediaMonkey created the folder_2.jpg? Just scanning or a user action (involving tagging Art)? I'm especially confused on this in relation to the thm files (not sure why?) that are supposed to be created on multiple Art.
mcow
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by mcow »

Lowlander wrote:
mcow wrote:This is insane! There is no use case where "Apply to all" should be unchecked! Admittedly, once that has been checked, it always comes up checked afterwards
So it remembers the last user action, I don't see the problem then. Especially as there are users who attach Art to a single track on an Album (changes in MM4 were made on feedback from those users).
I need to retract this statement; it does work as expected. :oops: I know that, when I was first adding album art in batches (using MM4.0x, but before 4.06), I did run into a problem where only the first track was updated, but I can't recreate that behavior now. Possibly, this happened before I discovered Album Art with Details view, and my selection technique was broken; I just don't remember.
Lowlander wrote:How do you suppose MediaMonkey created the folder_2.jpg? Just scanning or a user action (involving tagging Art)? I'm especially confused on this in relation to the thm files (not sure why?) that are supposed to be created on multiple Art.
The initial scan did not create any files; and, it did not associated the existing folder.jpg with the tracks in the folder. I'm not sure where, exactly, the association between track and JPEG is made; tags or database? I'm guessing database, but maybe MM just doesn't look at that tag when scanning. In the album folders with only one JPEG, the artwork association was made correctly.

folder_2.jpg was created with Add Image, by picking the existing folder.jpg. It seems that MM doesn't check whether the selected image is in the target folder; instead, it always copies the image to the target folder and then (since a file by that name already exists), updates the copy's name to avoid overwriting. And it's the _2 version that gets associated with the track.

I really don't know anything about the .THM scheme; I've just been overriding suggested .thm filenames with alternate JPG names.
Lowlander
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Lowlander »

mcow wrote:it did not associated the existing folder.jpg with the tracks in the folder.
Make sure the option to scan file directories is enabled under Tools > Options > Library. This will make sure that on scanning Artwork located in the Albums folder is associated with the Album (which also negates having to do it manually which creates the folder_2.jpg).

Note that this only works if only tracks from the same Album art located in that folder (and I assume that the images can't be set to hidden, which WMP may do).
Lowlander
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by Lowlander »

Note that the Artwork in folders can be added automatically through Add/Rescan Files and with the option to Scan file folders for Artwork. However I did enter a bug report for having folder_2.jpg created when you're manually trying to add existing folder.jpg: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=9951
tommycrock
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Re: Miserable experience at the hands of MM4 - multiple bugs

Post by tommycrock »

The folder[_2].jpg issue is linked to issue 8188.
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