Leia Deleted My NFO FIles!
#6
Scott's post nicely answers the "why export has changed" question, but it was clearly rhetorical. The OP is obviously upset and feels that something bad happened during export. As the dev with most knowledge of music export I am up for calmly discussing that and trying to help restore your confidence @hurricane51, but meet me half way.

@Karellen is absolutely right Kodi does not delete image or NFO files, however it will overwrite existing files but only if you enable that feature. It is likely that you have not configured export to achive the results thart you wanted, we can help with that. But you talk of missing files, Kodi simply can not have done that as there is no file deletion in the code.

IMO the music library export facility is not a good way to create system backups and never has been. If a full system backup is what you want then simply copy the files from the userdata folder (and of course keep a backup of your media files). The export facility works only on the additional album and artists information and images that you may have scraped from online sources. It provides a way to capture that information and art and hold it locally for subsequent re-use without the need to fetch it remotely again, or repeat any manual edits or image selections that you may have done after scraping.

So let's see if I can understand what you did and what happened. If there is a flaw I want to know about it, but it is also likely that you are confused. In that case understanding what happened can help us improve documentation.
 
(2019-07-02, 07:13)hurricane51 Wrote: In previous versions I chose Separate files and KODI would generate the Artist.nfo and Album.nfo and deposit them in the Album/Artist folder along with the actual media (music) file. That way everything was kept together. Not confusing at all, as everything was kept together. The "No overwrite" setting worked. Simple.

That option apparently is either absent or obscured in the new version. When I chose To Library Folder, I kept getting an error that the Artist Information folder needed to exist. When I read the documentation, it appeared that I needed to either accept the "less confusing" (less confusing to whom?) option of putting them all in one place or to create new folders in every one of my existing Artist folders to duplicate my export process of before. Why did you take away the option of simply maintaining the previous method? As far as I can tell, Export has nothing to do with the actual functioning of KODI, so why not simply provide this option?
Having artist art and NFO files located along with the music files has some fundamental limitations - it can only apply to album artists, and all the music by an artist must be under a folder unique to that artist and only that artist. This means no local art or NFO for artists without albums e.g. guest artists or those on compilations only, and no local art or NFO for album artists on collaborations (albums with more than one album artist). It also means that you can not arrange your music in more diverse sources e.g. putting the wife's music in a separate folder if you have some artists in common.

Arranging your music in a unique artist/album structure on a single music source is very restrictive. There is a lot of music that does not fit easily into that structure, and this has resulted in all kinds of user problems, hence now that Kodi supports a more robust way of arranging artist art and NFO we want to encourage users to switch to using it.

Export "To Library Folders" puts the album NFO and/or art alongside that album's music files, and the artist NFO and/or art in a folder <artistname> within the nominated Artist Information Folder. You do not need to create a folder for each artist, Kodi will do that the first time that you export artists, just a top folder (the "Artist Information Folder") for them to go in.

But let's assume you have one music source and a unique artist/album structure with the artist folders named exactly with the artist name, and still want to export artist art and NFO mixed in with the music files. Setting the "Artist Information Folder" to the top of your artist/album structure and doing a "To Library Folders" type of export with "Album Artists" and "Albums" as items to export will achieve that.

If your album folders are also named exactly as the album name then you could also use "Separate files for each item" export type and pick the top folder of your artist/album structure as the output destination to achieve the same result.

One of the new things in export for v18 is that you can use "Separate files for each item" type of export to test what the output from export will look like safely away from your music folders, NFO and art. So if concerned about what "To Library Folders" will do then try "Separate files for each item" first.
 
(2019-07-02, 07:13)hurricane51 Wrote: Back to my problem. I located the nfo and other files from the Export in another single folder in the same location as the "Single" backup. However, there are files missing. I included other artwork files as well as the artist.jpg and album.jpg in those folders. They are all missing. In the existing Artist/Album folders (the ones with the music files), the nfo file is new, with a different size and date from the previous one. How is that "not deleting"?
Very confused by what you say here. When you say "there are files missing" do you mean that some things you expected to be exported weren't? What type of export did you do? New NFO files implies overwriting was enabled. Export will overwrite when enabled, but does not delete things it is not replacing. Did you miss the "overwrite existing files" check box?
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Messages In This Thread
Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by hurricane51 - 2019-07-02, 05:56
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by Karellen - 2019-07-02, 06:27
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-04, 10:55
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by Karellen - 2019-07-02, 07:44
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by scott967 - 2019-07-03, 02:28
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-08, 09:41
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by scott967 - 2019-07-09, 04:57
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-09, 10:01
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-11, 15:44
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-11, 19:31
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-12, 10:44
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-12, 15:25
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-13, 10:28
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by jjd-uk - 2019-07-18, 10:32
RE: Leia Deleted My NFO FIles! - by DaveBlake - 2019-07-18, 14:50
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