Sorry, but I need to keep beating on this:

quote:

My problem is the opposite: MM asks for the new location *every time* I open a playlist that contains relocated files. I want it to learn where the files are now located and **remember** the lesson ....

And just to be clear ... this is w/r/t a regular mix (i.e., not a tag team, where the mmp has come to me from another user whose file system is different than mine) -- this is where I have simply moved some of the files in a mix from my internal HD to my external HD.

Having this problem over and over, and it finally occurred to me to wonder: Why isn't this a factor in uploading a mix to the station?

What I mean is, I have a mix with a handful of relocated tracks in it and everytime I open that mmp, I have to go thru the drill of specifying the "new location" because the program doesn't "learn" the information when I provide it ... But so then why isn't it a problem also when I close the mix and fire up the DJ Submit tool? Or is it? (I don't actually believe that I've done any uploads of "pre-existing mixes" since I've moved stuff to the external HD.)

Does the DJ Submit tool know where the tracks are even when MM doesn't? Or does the upload fail? Or does the "specify a new location" dialog open in this situation also?

And even more confusion: Let's say I have one of these mixes that I had to specify new track locations for ... and then I shut down the program and shut down the computer ... when I re-open MM next time I reboot, the mix is there with all its tracks and I don't need to specify any new locations ... I only have to go thru that drill if I actually close that mix, open some other mix and then try to reopen the first one (the one w/ relocated tracks). So now my question is: why is that?

Oh and (most important question) any chances this routine can be improved? The program really should remember the updated location information it has been given, regardless of the circumstance. Or if it can't, it would be nice to understand why.

Thanks

This message has been edited. Last edited by: MadameFLY,

mfly, I share your frustrations and confusions.

I've just transfered my files to a new HD so I have to hunt for the trax too.

here's my understanding of the reasons and solutions, however, I am making some speculations, but it seems to jive.

within a mmp, each track has a full path, say for example, the first track is "C:\my music\trackname.mp3", then that path is referenced in the mmp (refering to a file by path name prevents issues with duplicate file names. Now the problem arises when you move that file to a new drive/folder. the next time you open the mmp, it looks at your "c:\my music" folder and can't find the file (even though the new location is in the catalog).

One thing to do is after you point mm to the new locations, save your mmp, and the new paths should take hold.

as for stopping this from happening, there is something you can do to prevent it, but you have to do it before you move your files. without too much detail, you export your catalog, open it in excel, and then do a find/replace with the old path to the new path. Using my example from above, if I moved the files to a drive called "m:\music", I would need to replace "C:\my music" with "m:\music", then move the files, and reimport the catalog. but again, this needs to be done before you move the files (well, before you re-import/clean up the catalog).

not sure if this answers your questions, or makes new ones, but yes I agree, there needs to be a better way, but in all honesty, I'm trying to think of how it can be done easier, and there's not many options.

one really dirty ugly method is to keep all your trax in one folder, but that limits a lot of things you can do with your collection.

Thanks phreaq, it's a good explanation for what's going on behind the scenes. And, of course, I did not do a catalog export immediately before moving files to the external HD ... tho, honestly, even if I had done, that would still seem a bit excessive to have to do in order to resolve this situation. But, even to do that, I would have to (as I've already found out) go out and buy Excel in order to be able to handle the amount of data I had to deal with, since you can't reimport a series of truncated catalog txt files such as I ended up with using the spreadsheet app in Works. I really don't know how many users are also the proud owners of Excel ...

I do think that as the affordability of external hard drives increases and more folks take advantage of that storage options, this will be something that will affect more people ... and there is nothing in the "Specify a new location" dialog window to alert ppl that it is not a permanent fix, which is where some of the frustration arises.

At the very least, there needs to be a reference to this issue in the Help files so that ppl have the option of preparing properly (e.g., following your good instructions) for file relocations.

Best solution, of course, would be for the program to edit the pathname in the mmp file when you choose the option to specify the new location of the file ...

MmFly...I recently ported most of my files to a new external drive, and I haven't encountered the problem you're getting.

Whenever I open a mix that hasn't been opened since the move, MM will ask me to "locate the files or skip it"...I choose to look for it and then click on the box that says "do this the next time"....i've closed those files and re-opened them, and MM hasn't asked me to locate the files again. From my point of view, it seems your MM is not doing its job right...

Sorry to chime in without a solution...

Thanks for that other POV ... at this point, it would be nice to hear the official word on how it is supposed to work ...

As I've mentioned before, my experience of the "do this next time" option has been that for the next relocated file to come up in the mix (assuming you have more than one relocated file per mix), the program will look in the folder you just specified.

As noted previously, if I have a mix with relocated files open (having gone thru the "specify new location" drill) and I shut down MM, and then re-open the program later, that mix will open without me needing to do the drill again ... BUT if I open some other mmp and then go back to the one w/ relocated files, I do have to do the drill again.

It would be good to find out if that was a bug in my specific installation of Studio 6 ... then I could get it fixed and stop whining about it

Back to phreaq's explanation for a moment:

quote:

One thing to do is after you point mm to the new locations, save your mmp, and the new paths should take hold.

as for stopping this from happening, there is something you can do to prevent it, but you have to do it before you move your files. without too much detail, you export your catalog, open it in excel, and then do a find/replace with the old path to the new path. Using my example from above, if I moved the files to a drive called "m:\music", I would need to replace "C:\my music" with "m:\music", then move the files, and reimport the catalog. but again, this needs to be done before you move the files (well, before you re-import/clean up the catalog).

OK, so as far as the first paragraph, then if I'm relocating and saving my updated mmp (which is definitely the case) and the changes are not taking hold, there is a problem w/ my MM ... it seems phreaq and TRR both are saying that ...

But as I was driving around town this morning, I got to thinking about the advice in paragraph two (about exporting the catalog and changing the path) and it got me wondering why you would do that for the entire catalog, wouldn't it make sense to get into the mmp and change the pathname there instead? Reason being, let's say I have my MM set to automatically update from certain designated drives or folders (which is the case) ... then that means the catalog already IS updated with the new paths for all my tracks ... so now it's just the info in the mmp that isn't updating.

So, the $64,000 question is: can you open an mmp file (in notepad or wherever) and change the pathnames for the tracks as necessary?

Or am I missing something here?

Progress report and a big up to my support peeps (you know who you are) ... I decided to go to the source, filled out my MM support request and pointed to this thread in the comments section ... within the promised 24 hrs, I had my answer: Catalog Cleanup along with a few other minor tweaks.

Now, for as long as I have been using this program, you may well wonder why I didn't hit on that solution a whole lot sooner (the one about Catalog Cleanup, not the one about asking for tech support ) and really, I wonder myself. Perhaps I thought it would do way more than I needed and leave me with a new and completely different set of issues ... but, if that is the case, I have not yet discovered it.

Thanks again to tech support for the on-time response ...