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Dear all,

I've had a few problems with the music library since upgrading to Frodo RC3 (I hadn't previously updated to any of the previous Frodo builds). I have since found a solution, but I thought I would post this in case it was of interest/help to anyone.

I have read a couple of threads with similar issues and it would seem that those behind the scenes are working on any issues from XBMC's side, but it would seem to me that the issue actually lies with the audio files, rather than XBMC, now that it uses the ID3 tags. Hence I thought reporting my experiences might be useful.

Basically; not all of my music was showing up in XBMC - sometimes it was entire albums, but more often than not it was individual songs, therefore tough to notice. XBMC was reporting that I had 43,934 songs, whereas MediaMonkey was saying 47,228 - over 3,000 missing, so worth trying to sort out the issue. They were showing in file mode, but didn't show the year, rating or fanart etc... when selected and not in library mode at all.

The strange thing was that in both MediaMonkey, Windows and MP3Tag, the tag fields all seemed to be filled in correctly (including the AlbumArtist tag). If I brought up the extended tags window in MP3Tag it showed two Year fields and if I deleted these and then reinputted the year, then all was fine and on a rescan XBMC would show the songs correctly. Unfortunately, with over 3,000 to change and not knowing which songs weren't showing, using MP3Tag wasn't really an option.

I have no idea if this is correct, but it felt to me that I had both ID3 v1 and v2 on the files that weren't showing up and this was causing a conflict. So I decided to use a tool within MediaMonkey (free version by the way) under Tools - Advanced Tag Management. Here you can clear the ID3v1, ID3v2 or both at the same time, of any file you have selected - this clears all the tag information from the file, but the information is still within the MediaMonkey library. You can then use Synchronize Tags (also under Tools - Advanced Tag Management) to reinput the information from the MediaMonkey library on to the files. As long as you are happy with the information within the MediaMonkey library, then it should be what you want in each file.

I practiced on a couple of files that I knew weren't in the XBMC library and upon a rescan they showed up, so I then decided to select all the songs in my MediaMonkey library, clear the ID3v1 & ID3v2 tags and Synchronize Tags. As I didn't know which songs weren't showing up, I couldn't think of an easier way of doing it. The process took my machine about 5 hours to complete, but far quicker than going through the library manually.

Upon updating the library in XBMC, which was pretty slow, as it was effectively starting from scratch, all 47,228 songs are now showing perfectly. BTW I had previously deleted the database and rescanned from fresh, but this didn't work.

My other observation was that now that XBMC reads the ID3 tags, it seems it can no longer read the information on WMA files and therefore, although my WMA files (luckily I only had two albums) were showing in the library and obviously playing fine - the information was not displayed correctly. I realise that MP3 files are by far the most popular codec, but I wonder how Flac, Ogg, MP4 files etc... will show their information. I converted my two WMA albums to mp3 using Goldwave and now all is fine.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if my interpretations are correct and I know there is continual development behind the scenes, but it would seem that if we get everything correct in the files (using MediaMonkey or whatever software people use) then all should show fine in XBMC.

Hope this helps someone and many thanks to the developers for their continual work.

Since the above post, I have found another issue with the music library in Frodo RC3. Some songs, not necessarily the whole album, show the incorrect length or no length whatsoever. The rest of the tag information shows up fine and they play fine and the tag information seems to be correct in the likes of MediaMonkey and MP3Tag etc...



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

As you can see I apparently have a 1 hour 38 minutes version of Nobody's Fault But Mine!!

Any help with this would be appreciated, or confirmation from anybody having similar issues, or whether it is more likely to be problems with my music files rather than XBMC.

Many thanks

I am also having issues with my music library since going to RC3. My issue is that albums just disappear (maybe songs as well).... for instance, I scanned my whole library in (around 400 albums), then a few days later I only had 46 albums, then I rescanned and had 416 albums....and a few days later only had 396. For some reason XBMC is now removing albums for some reason. Perhaps it is the ID3 tags, I'm unsure.


BTW, almost my whole collection (except for 2-3 albums) are FLAC files created using MediaMonkey

Probably would help if you kept one of the files that was causing problems, to see what tags are causing the problem.

scott s.
.

just an update, I just checked and I was down to 154 albums from 396. I wish I could figure out why XBMC was continuously losing my albums

Hello,

Thankyou for a highly informative post Buff.

I'm on Frodo RC3 but I've had trouble with the music-library ever since nightly builds that I tried out late last year, and also RC1 and 2.
Whole albums are missing but they were fine in Eden. They do show up i file-mode.

When I get home I'll try the Mediamonkey approach with synchronizing ID3 tags on an album or two and hopefully it makes a difference as it did for Buff.

I dont know precisely what the developers are updating/changing but maybe XBMC(users) could benefit from a checkmark in settings enabling the older version (Eden-style) when updating the library so that people with these problems have a way to "go back", just in case.

I ran into the same issue. I was able to find which albums were missing from my SMALL collection quite easily. I simply used MP3Tag to remove the tag and retagged the music and voila, it all showed up in XBMC. There must be a glitch in whatever program that we used "Media Monkey" that created the error in XBMC, but that's just a guess.

(2013-01-22, 07:10)sirmeili Wrote: [ -> ]just an update, I just checked and I was down to 154 albums from 396. I wish I could figure out why XBMC was continuously losing my albums

Not sure our problems are the same sirmeili - I've not had albums disappearing once already there, only disappearing between Eden and Frodo. Just a thought but do you access your music collection with any other software - could it be that software that is changing the mp3 tags etc...

(2013-01-22, 12:32)unkle Wrote: [ -> ]Hello,

Thankyou for a highly informative post Buff.

I'm on Frodo RC3 but I've had trouble with the music-library ever since nightly builds that I tried out late last year, and also RC1 and 2.
Whole albums are missing but they were fine in Eden. They do show up i file-mode.

When I get home I'll try the Mediamonkey approach with synchronizing ID3 tags on an album or two and hopefully it makes a difference as it did for Buff.

I dont know precisely what the developers are updating/changing but maybe XBMC(users) could benefit from a checkmark in settings enabling the older version (Eden-style) when updating the library so that people with these problems have a way to "go back", just in case.

Cheers unkle, don't forget in that method you need to clear the ID3 tags first - hope it solves your missing albums issue.

(2013-01-22, 17:18)johnsills1 Wrote: [ -> ]I ran into the same issue. I was able to find which albums were missing from my SMALL collection quite easily. I simply used MP3Tag to remove the tag and retagged the music and voila, it all showed up in XBMC. There must be a glitch in whatever program that we used "Media Monkey" that created the error in XBMC, but that's just a guess.

Out of interest, what tag did you remove in MP3Tag johnsills1? This also worked for me, but didn't seem practical for large collections, when I wasn't sure what songs were missing etc...


Quick update on my last post, where the songs had no or incorrect length showing; upon further investigations these incorrect lengths were showing up in MP3Tag, but not MediaMonkey or Windows. After a little googling, it would seem that they are due to the album having Variable Bit Rates rather than a Constant Bit Rate - I won't pretend to fully understand this, but it would seem to be the ripping settings I used a few years ago in Windows Media Player. Apparently, VBR could produce a better quality file (according to some, but not all), but CBR would seem to be more popular.

Anyway, I converted them using Goldwave (there's plenty of free programs out there I believe) and the ones I have done are all showing up in XBMC fine and playing fine, there doesn't seem to be any difference in quality to my ear - the only issue now is locating all the ones with the incorrect lengths. It's not drastic, as they play fine, just don't look right!

There certainly seems to be a few issues with music and Frodo, but as I mentioned in my first post, everything I've encountered so far would seem to be solved by making sure all the tags are absolutely correct and this has only come to light due to the recent changes in how XBMC reads the files/tags.

I hope I am posting this in the correct forum

i have 2 albums that are absolutely gone from my computer that now show as "Recently Added" even though I do an update every time XBMC opens. I did a "Clean Library" Also. I have 1.5 TB of music in multiple directories so would really prefer NOT to have to delete the whole db and start again. The really odd thing is that the albums showed up AFTER I deleted them.

Any thoughts?

I deleted ALL tags using MP3tag and then reapplied them

I seemed to have the same problem here! Hope there will be a fix for that...

(2013-01-22, 20:28)kmwhit2001 Wrote: [ -> ]I hope I am posting this in the correct forum

i have 2 albums that are absolutely gone from my computer that now show as "Recently Added" even though I do an update every time XBMC opens. I did a "Clean Library" Also. I have 1.5 TB of music in multiple directories so would really prefer NOT to have to delete the whole db and start again. The really odd thing is that the albums showed up AFTER I deleted them.

Any thoughts?

Oddly, when I repeated the process after cleaning all of my temp files with CCcleaner and rebooted my computer - then went back to XBMC and did the clean library under Settings/Music, the albums disappeared!

(2013-01-22, 20:45)johnsills1 Wrote: [ -> ]I deleted ALL tags using MP3tag and then reapplied them

Cheers John, I guess that's pretty much the same as what I did in MediaMonkey - glad it worked for you.

(2013-01-23, 14:40)bg_x Wrote: [ -> ]I seemed to have the same problem here! Hope there will be a fix for that...

Don't think there's likely to be a fix for this (depending on what your exact problem is?), I could be wrong, but it would seem to be a matter of making sure our music tags are correct for XBMC to read them

(2013-01-23, 16:58)kmwhit2001 Wrote: [ -> ]

(2013-01-22, 20:28)kmwhit2001 Wrote: [ -> ]I hope I am posting this in the correct forum

i have 2 albums that are absolutely gone from my computer that now show as "Recently Added" even though I do an update every time XBMC opens. I did a "Clean Library" Also. I have 1.5 TB of music in multiple directories so would really prefer NOT to have to delete the whole db and start again. The really odd thing is that the albums showed up AFTER I deleted them.

Any thoughts?

Oddly, when I repeated the process after cleaning all of my temp files with CCcleaner and rebooted my computer - then went back to XBMC and did the clean library under Settings/Music, the albums disappeared!

Glad to see you've sorted out that issue, seems strange though that cleaning temp files would remove them, but at least they're not there - sounds like you've got enough music to listen to with 1.5TB!!

I tested with one of the albums that would only appear in "file mode" and not "library mode". It worked.
I opened the albums directory with MP3Tag -> marked all the files (CTRL+A) -> Tag Sources (from menu) -> freedb... -> next next next and MP3Tag rewrote the tags. I did not clear the tags before this procedure. It worked succesfully and the album appeared after an "Update library" in XBMC

However, having a couple of thousand mp3's this procedure would take me a very long time. Is there any way to do this "batch-style" somehow ? I've had a look in the help-files of MP3Tag and there's a chapter about scripting but I dont think that's what I want to use (?).

My apologies if this is "out of scope" or more suited in an MP3Tag-forum, however I might suspect that others stumbling upon this thread may find some pointers useful when it comes to converting/fixing "larger" collections, - so I take my chances

(2013-01-23, 20:00)unkle Wrote: [ -> ]I tested with one of the albums that would only appear in "file mode" and not "library mode". It worked.
I opened the albums directory with MP3Tag -> marked all the files (CTRL+A) -> Tag Sources (from menu) -> freedb... -> next next next and MP3Tag rewrote the tags. I did not clear the tags before this procedure. It worked succesfully and the album appeared after an "Update library" in XBMC

However, having a couple of thousand mp3's this procedure would take me a very long time. Is there any way to do this "batch-style" somehow ? I've had a look in the help-files of MP3Tag and there's a chapter about scripting but I dont think that's what I want to use (?).

My apologies if this is "out of scope" or more suited in an MP3Tag-forum, however I might suspect that others stumbling upon this thread may find some pointers useful when it comes to converting/fixing "larger" collections, - so I take my chances

Yeah, that was why I went down the MediaMonkey route, as it's easy to select all your songs. However, thinking about it, you could do a search in Windows for mp3 (assuming all your files are mp3's) then select all, right click and click on MP3Tag - this should bring them all up in MP3Tag and you can make the necessary changes. Not sure if you can then select all in MP3Tag and it work ok though.

One of the other reasons I didn't end up using MP3Tag was having to rely on FreeDB e.g. I like to have all my music in certain genres, so that I can search more easily and my worry would be that FreeDB would mess all that up. In MediaMonkey if you're happy with what the tags are in the library this will be reflected in the files and therefore XBMC.