Setting a "Start time" fails to skip to beginning

[ChristianA]

Hello everyone,
This is a universal problem that is persisting across reboots and versions, so I'm not sure why I'm the only person reporting it. When I set a start time (to skip talking at the start of a live track, or the dull "toccata" part of a toccata and fugue, eg.) the track always begins from 0:00 instead of the time I requested.
- I know the program is getting the update, because the total track time decreases appropriately
- I have enabled bookmarks for all genres not just the relevant one, in case that matters somehow
- This is a problem on both android (fine) and windows (not fine); has been a problem since 4.2, now using 5.1.0.2832
- This is a problem both within and between genres (going from music to classical music and vice versa, or staying within either music or classical)
I'd rather not physically edit tracks to the right starting time since I want to have the option to hear the rest of the track, and also it takes a lot of time. Let me know if you have any ideas about why this might be happening.

[Lowlander]

It works for me, can you try a different Output Plugin?

[ChristianA]

Interesting! It seems to be working some of the time for MediaMonkey DirectSound but never for MM WASAPI. There seems to be some kind of conflict between bookmarks and start time, so that if the bookmark is set to a time before the start time it defaults to the bookmark. However, if I manually jump to some other time on the playback bar, it rescales to the time it should be. However, when it gets to the end of the track, it does NOT reset the bookmark to the desired start time, but resets to 0:00, and so it starts from the undesired beginning again.
I mentioned this before, but if the bookmark is set to a time AFTER the stop time, it starts from the bookmark, plays the last few seconds, then moves to the next song WITHOUT resetting the bookmark, which means you just hear the last few undesired seconds over and over and over.
This is happening with both DirectSound and WASAPI.

[MattTown]

I also utilise the start and end time settings to get specific subsets of long tracks, but have found that it can be tricky to get the new settings recognised.

In particular, if you edit a file that is in the Now Playing list for start and finish time, then you have to remove that file from the Now Playing list before the new settings are recognised. Its almost as if the Now Playing functionality has a cache of the original file in it and you have to force that to be replaced with the edited version.

I generally only have a small number of files in the Now Playing list. If I edit one of those for start/finish time then after OKing the edit I remove the file from Now Playing, then briefly play a different song. After that, selecting Play Now on the edited file from the Main List should get the playing happening with the new timings as intended.

Generally this is only a problem for me while fine tuning the start and end times via repeated edits/replays. After the edits are concluded and other files have been played, I find that the start/end times are reliable.

Cheers

Matt

[ChristianA]

That trick didn't work for me. I moved my Now Playing list to a temporary other play list, created a new now playing queue, let it run for a minute, skipped to another track, let that run for a minute, and then went back to my Now Playing list and it still completely failed to start at the start time I asked for, instead starting at 0:00 on three different tracks, whether I clicked onto the
track, skipped tracks after a few seconds until I got to it, or let the previous song play to the end and then start.

I wasn't expecting it to work, since even tracks whose start times I have changed months ago and not heard since still start at 0:00 instead.

I'd like to point out that even if this trick HAD worked, it's still a painfully cumbersome process. I really want to use MM5, like I have been loyally doing since MM2, but if they can't get this fixed I may need to move on.

[MattTown]

.. it still completely failed to start at the start time I asked for, instead starting at 0:00 on three different tracks ...

Yes, the same has happened to me. Unfortunately, the formatting of times in the Details pane is misleading. For an unmodified track, the Start time: in Filecontextmenu > Properties > Details shows 0:00 for a m:ss syntax, while the End time: shows (my example) 4:10.435, with a m:ss:ddd syntax, where ddd is decimal seconds down to thousandths.

What I have found reliable is to ignore the difference and just put a simple m:ss value in for both start and finish. For example in my file, if I put 1:01 into Start time: and 3:02 into End time: then I am confident (after clearing the now playing queue) that the file would start at 1:01 and end at 3:02 and would show a total duration of 2:01.

Most of the complexity for me arises from repeated edits to get the timing exactly right. If you don't have that issue then the start and end time should work for you as easily as anything else in MM.

Cheers, Matt