SongKong Jaikoz

SongKong and Jaikoz Music Tagger Community Forum

iTunes Autoupdate - didn't replace the error tracks

#1

I found an album in my iTunes that had all caps and the wrong genre. I drug these tracks to Jaikoz and proceeded to fix the capitalization and the genre. When I hit save, iTunes started updating.

However, instead of replacing the bad tracks with my fixed genres, it just added my fixed tracks to the bad ones. I had to then go into iTunes and manuallty delete the bad tracks. Under Save>iTunes Autoupdate, I had all boxes checked.

Is that some kind of safety feature of Jaikoz? That it doesn’t overwrite what’s in iTunes? Because if it is, I’d be better off making these simple changes directly into iTunes and leave Jaikoz out of the loop altogether.

But I think it’s a misconfiguration of Jaikoz on my part.

#2

No. its not a safety feature , it should modify the existing track. It looks like it couldnt find the exisiting track in iTunes database ands so it added it as if it was new.

It is difficult to integrate well with iTunes because of the scant information they provide, is there anything unusual about your iTunes setup ?

#3

Paul,

Nothing different I think. I originally ripped my music for Sonos by (folders) Artist/Album/Track(s). I left it that way when I migrated (copied) all my FLACs to ALACs, creating a new top-level folder. However, I did not let iTunes reorganize my music, since it was so large to begin with. But new albums I add are reorganized into iTunes structures, So I have a bit of both. All my music is on the NAS, not in iTunes locally.

But out of that, nothing special. If you could be more specific as to what I should look for, I’ll take a peek.

#4

On the NAS and not copied into iTunes media location, or have you set the iTunes location from the default to the NAS location

#5

The default location in iTunes is my NAS. Everything is stored there; nothing is on my internal HD.

#6

I wonder if that is the problem. Obviously at some point iTunes was not configured to use the NAS then you chnaged it to point to the NAS, but does the original iTunes location still exist, and is Jaikoz looking there instead. Please send me your support files (Advanced/Create Support Files)

#7

Paul,

The iTunes top folder folder exists on my internal, but the iTunes Media folder in it is actually a symbolic link to my /volumes/media/music folder on my NAS. That way, I don’t have to worry about iTunes “accidentally” changing the media path back to its default and storing media back onto my internal HD (when my NAS gets disconnected).

I’m mailing the support files now.

#8

I wouldn’t call that ‘nothing special’, I think that may be the issue but I dont know yet.

#9

A symbolic link is used in this context instead of an alias since all programs will honor a symbolic link, but not all will honor an alias (shortcut in Win world). If you look into the folder “iTunes Media” on my HD, it will exactly point to the iTunes structure needed on my NAS. iTunes doesn’t need to figure it out, nor does any other program, as long as they’re looking in the normal ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media directory structure.

Symbolic links are commonly used in the OS X/Unix world to associate network shares with local resources, making the actual location of these resources transparent to the accessing program. The OS handles the pointers; the programs don’t need to worry about them.

#10

Hi, yes I fully understand how symbolic links work but from Javas perspective they are different, I’m sure this can be fixed but I expect this is what is currently breaking things.

#11

I didn’t realize that Java would handle symlinks differently. Thanks for that insight.

#12

Hi, Ive setup iTunes as you have and I think the problem is the symbolic link. But is actually the opposite of what you said Itunes does recognise the file is stored in a different location and Jaikoz does not.

When I click 'Get Info ’ on a file within iTunes its where value shows its location on the nas (i.e /Volumes/Media/Music/U2/October/Gloria rather than the symbolic link view (i.e /users/paul/Music/iTunes Media/U2/October/Gloria
(as does the iTunes Music Library.xml)

So if you start Jaikoz and point it at /users/paul/Music/iTunes Media/ it looks for the files using the symbolic link view and these cannot be found in the iTunes Music Library.xml.


However if you start Jaikoz and point it directly to your NAS (i.e /Volumes/Media/Music/) then the song paths will match and it works okay

Please try and confirm if that works for you ?

#13

Additionally Ive made a fix for the next version of Jaikoz so it doesnt matter which path you select it will work in both cases.

#14

That’s great Paul! I haven’t had a chance to change back my path to the original way (my iTunes backup drive took a dirt nap, so I’m replacing it now; I need a full iTunes backup before I can do testing again).

#15

Paul,

I did as you said: I set the base path in Jaikoz to /volumes/media/music with the subdirectories being the artist (like “The Beatles”) then another sub with the album name(s). I then did an Open File and browsed to The Beatles Abbey Road (Dr. Ebbetts MFSL version). What I wanted to do was to change the () to [] (parentheses to square brackets) in those 17 tracks titles.

I made that change in Jaikoz, then saved all 17 changes. Jaikoz created a playlist with today’s date and time. When I selected this list, nothing came up. I thought that was strange, since I had the exact path set to my NAS in Jaikoz, and I had all options set under iTunes Autoupdate.

I then went over to iTunes and did a Spotlight search for Abbey Road. iTunes came back with the album, but it showed () in the album title, not the [] that I set. Hmmmm. Now here’s the strange part - I did a Get Info on one of the tracks and its file name was changed to have []'s in it. Every time I did a Previous or Next with Get Info, that track would be moved under the album title organization with the []'s in the title. Once I did a Get Info for all those tracks, iTunes correctly showed the titles with []'s.

As you said, the symlink is confusing Jaikoz. Jaikoz definitely makes the []'s changes (I see them in Finder), but they’re not propagated to the iTunes db until I do a Get Info on each of the affected files. So, the file name is changed by Jaikoz (via me replacing () with [], and the Album Title is also changed in the tracks, but those changes aren’t reflected in iTunes’s db until I refresh each file with Get info.

This is all very confusing to me and creates extra steps to change my iTunes db, so I’m going to wait until your next version comes out with the symlink code to try this exercise again.

By the way - in iTunes > Advanced, the iTunes Media Folder Location is shown as /volumes/media/Music, even though we know that it’s really ~/Music/iTunes/. There’s no way that I can find to have iTunes display the unresolved path, only the resolved one. I guess that makes sense in the iTunes world, but it is confusing to me :slight_smile:

#16

[quote=ScuseMe]Paul,

I did as you said: I set the base path in Jaikoz to /volumes/media/music with the subdirectories being the artist (like “The Beatles”) then another sub with the album name(s). I then did an Open File and browsed to The Beatles Abbey Road (Dr. Ebbetts MFSL version). What I wanted to do was to change the () to [] (parentheses to square brackets) in those 17 tracks titles.
[/quote]
I think you have misunderstood me, al you have to do is select ‘Open Folder’, and then within the dialog navigate directly to /volumes/media/Music rather than via your symbolic link in your home folder, that should work.

Well no - its really /volumes/media/Music - thats where the files actually are.

#17

[quote=paultaylor]
I think you have misunderstood me, all you have to do is select ‘Open Folder’, and then within the dialog navigate directly to /volumes/media/Music rather than via your symbolic link in your home folder, that should work.[/quote]

When I Open Folder, the path is already set to /volumes/media/music, and that’s where I pull the tracks - from my NAS. I’ve never pointed Jaikoz to ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media. I’ve also dragged the tracks from iTunes to Jaikoz.

#18

Hmm, oh well Beta should be out this week

#19

Great! I’ll give it a run as soon as it’s out.