Missing Bookmarks (and editing questions)

[Dan_Petit]

@support I have a pretty significant recurring problem with setting meta data preferences. There are numerous symptoms:

1. I have gone through composers from a-e and merged all of the dupes (for example John April = Johnny April). Upon return a couple of days later, some (but not all) of the merges have mysteriously unmerged.
2. I have edited several composers to fix name sorting, switching last name and first name. Returning a couple of days later, many have reverted. (By the way, the UX for doing a simple fix for a composer which is displaying in the wrong order (showing sorted by first name rather than last name), could be really improved. I should not have to retype the composer’s name…)
3. I reported this separately, but it may be related: I have created several bookmarks that have just disappeared as well.
4. Finally, I can’t seem to get Roon to prefer my metadata for a single track at all. I pick a track on some album where I know roon’s data is different from the file data. I can reproduce this at will:
   Here is a the metadata for a track in my collection:
   
   
   
   Here is what roon displays:
   
   
   
   If I edit the metadata and choose prefer file for this one track (and click save):
   
   
   
   the track still shows the roon data. Interestingly, when I go back into the file to edit the metadata preferences, the screen had already forgotten my setting (no radio button selected)
   
   
   
   Even when I explicitly set it to something very different, it continues to use roon’s data.
   
   

To summarize, I suspect that these are related in some way (just a hunch). The layering system doesn’t seem to be behaving as one would expect. I am doing something wrong or is this a bug?

My setup:
Core on Windows 7 64 bit. Pretty power PC
Playback through Oppo DAC (works fine)
Remote is a MS Surface running Win 10.
Library is about 13000 tracks

[Dan_Petit]

I have noticed over the last few days that some of the bookmarks I have created have mysteriously disappeared (but not all). For example, I made bookmark on the genre Symphonic Metal and it disappeared after a couple of days. It has happened for other album-level bookmarks as well, ones that I made for a particular composer.

I’ll try to come up with reproducible scenario, I know my details are vague at this point.

However, has anyone seen this behavior?

As a side note, I am also see time when the merges I have done on composers undoes itself. I lost an hour’s worth of data grooming the other night. Not sure if they are related.

[mike (Mike Fass)]

Hi @Dan_Petit – thanks for the report. There are a few things here that I can explain, and a few that @Eric will follow up with you on to get some more information.

Missing Edits

1. I have gone through composers from a-e and merged all of the dupes (for example John April = Johnny April). Upon return a couple of days later, some (but not all) of the merges have mysteriously unmerged.

For the composers that have “unmerged”, are there new imports in your library? Has your storage configuration changed at all?

Speaking of which, could you provide the details of your storage and collection as described here?

Composer Sorting and Editing

I have edited several composers to fix name sorting, switching last name and first name. Returning a couple of days later, many have reverted. (By the way, the UX for doing a simple fix for a composer which is displaying in the wrong order (showing sorted by first name rather than last name), could be really improved. I should not have to retype the composer’s name…)

Could you explain where you’re having this issue? In most cases, a composer that’s properly identified by Roon should have this information populated automatically, like this:

Also note that the little “copy” icon on the right will copy the current value, so you don’t have to retype the information.

Composition Editing and Grouping

I can’t seem to get Roon to prefer my metadata for a single track at all. I pick a track on some album where I know roon’s data is different from the file data.

This is a little bit complex, but to summarize the issue – when Roon recognizes that multiple tracks on an album together form a multi-part work, we treat that work as a single unit.

A multi-part work will have a composition name and part names, and those names can come from Roon’s automatic metadata or from your file tags.

Composition names and part (or “movement”) names are different from track names – track names are sufficient in software that can’t recognize these 5 tracks as Mahler’s 5th, but Roon does recognize that so track titles are not displayed here. That’s why your edits are also not being shown.

It’s not clear from your screenshots what you’re trying to edit, but if you give some more details, we can help. My post here may help too.

Metadata Preferences

Finally, your question about the radio buttons is one we’ve heard a few times. The “metadata preferences” tab allows you to bulk edit many items at once. The changes will be reflected on the edit tab for each edited item, but the preferences tab does not display the “state” of the item or items you’ve selected – it’s always going to start with nothing selected, and then apply whatever you pick to all the selected items.

Missing Bookmarks and Edits

As for the missing bookmarks (and the apparent lost edits) @Eric is going to follow up and gather some logs from you so we can understand this problem. Hope that all helps!

[eric (Eric Stewart)]

Hi @Dan_Petit ---- As @mike mentioned in his post, just circling back here to grab some logs so we can take a closer look into what could be casing this behavior to occur.

Moving forward, may I very kindly ask you to pease follow the instructions found here and dump us some logs.

Many thanks!
-Eric

[Dan_Petit]

Thanks for the note:
First, details on my setup:
Core: Roon Core 1.3 build 234 (32-bit), all defaults used during installation. OS is Windows 7 (32-bit). i3-3240 - 8 GB RAM (4 usable). OS Drive (C:) is 120GB SSD. Data Drive is 2 TB platter drive. Both have plenty of space available. Core is configured to read from a folder on the platter drive for all music. System is set up with minimal software (Roon Core, JRiver, AVG, synology cloud client, and that’s about it). Configured to reboot nightly.
Main remote: Surface Pro Running latest Win 10 64-bit. i5-3317U, 4GB Ram. Runs Roon 1.3 (build 234) 32-bit…
Secondary remote on my gaming rig: i7-6700K (OC), 16 GB Ram. Win 10 x64. GeForce 950, 256 GB SSD, 4 TB HD. It’s a pretty pimped out box. Runs Roon 1.3 (build 234) - 64bit
Music plays to an Oppo 105D DAC or a roon bridge on a small HTPC with Roon bridge 1.0 (build 97).
13427 tracks stored locally on the core data drive. This music is occasionally updated from a NAS via a synology cloud copy job, but this hasn’t changed since the problem started.

For the composers that have “unmerged”, are there new imports in your library? Has your storage configuration changed at all?

Minimal since problem started. I did one mass import, then after a couple of days updated a ton of metadata in the files to get my tags to play nice with both Roon and JRiver. This caused most of the tracks to update. (For what it is worth, the primary store of the music is my HD on my gaming rig - this is where I rip and maintain metadata. This data is copied to a Synology NAS drive. From there, the server with roon core is configured to pull changes and save them locally.)
Since this original load-followed-by-mass-update, I have only changed a small handful of files, and they were not related to composers I was having trouble with.
BTW - I just came back from a weekend trip and looked at the merged composers I groomed before I left. Other than them being in a different order (I took a picture :-)), them seem to have all stuck around.

Could you explain where you’re having this issue? In most cases, a composer that’s properly identified by Roon should have this information populated automatically…

I originally had most of my composers in the format LastName, FirstName (Dates-Dates) so they were easy to navigate in JRiver theater view. The mass update I mentioned about simply copied the existing composer information (in LN, FN (dates)) format to a new tag and updated the composer tag with the composer name in FirstName LastName format. This left a bunch of composers roon didn’t recognize. For example, on this screenshot you can see 2 (George R. Poulton and Giacinto Sclesi) filed under the “Gs”.:

So I went through the a-e’s (again) and fixed them all. This time, all but 1 stuck :-).

I stand by my comments regarding the UX being a chore here. For example, to fix George R. Poulton, here is the screen I am presented with:

Here I need to select the edit check box under Last-First Sort Name, copy the name from Name tag, paste it in the Last-First field, then manually rearrange the last and first names either by copy/paste or retyping part of the name. On a tablet this is a pain in the a$$. A simple “Copy this name reversed” button would make it complete painless…

Thanks for the info on the Composition grouping - I understand how it works. What I would expect is when I view the tracks for an album after telling roon to prefer my own edits, that it would take my edits. This feature either doesn’t work, or its UX is hopelessly misleading. For example, here I have set the track title for track 1 to qqq:

but as you can see it doesn’t change when I go back to the album view:

So, while that option to edit the track title may not actually change the track title, it sure as heck leads the user to believe that’s what it does.

Finally, your question about the radio buttons is one we’ve heard a few times… it’s always going to start with nothing selected

Ok, but this goes against every radio button standard that has existed on any platform since the first Xerox GUI. If you are trying to establish a new standard, fine, but you’re working against learned history. And it just looks like it’s not working. There is no affordance (see Donald Norman’s Design of Everyday Things) to the user implying how it is supposed to look/work.

Ok so to summarize, upon return from vacation:

1. It looks like composers stayed merged
2. It looks like all but 1 of the composer maintained sort preference.
3. Most bookmarks are gone again (interestingly, all except the very first one I created like 10 minutes into using the tool the first time).

Many thanks again for your response! I’ll followup with Eric’s questions separately.

[Dan_Petit]

Hi Eric - thanks for the response.

Happy to send logs. 2 questions:

1. The instructions say to ALWAYS shut down the roon server. How is this accomplished safely? Do I assume I just reboot? I think some clarity in the docs would be in order.
2. I don’t have a shared file store. Please provide a location for the upload.

Thanks!

[Dan_Petit]

ok I lied. I definitely had artists unmerged and revert assigned custom sort order. I just imported 3 more discs, then noticed several mistakes in the a-e section of composers (this is the subsection imam working with). I’m not sure if it happened before or after the addition of the new discs. I have latest logs pulled just need to know where to upload.

[eric (Eric Stewart)]

Hi @Dan_Petit ---- Letting you know that I sent you a PM with upload instructions on how to get your logs over to us.

-Eric

[eric (Eric Stewart)]

Hi @Dan_Petit ---- Thank you for following up with me as requested.

Confirming that the materials have been received and are in our queue for evaluation. Once our tech team has completed their analysis of your logs, I will be sure to update you with the team’s thoughts/findings. Your patience is very appreciated!

-Eric

[Dan_Petit]

Acknowledged. Thanks!

[Dan_Petit]

Update: This is happening with tags too. Yesterday I created a couple of tags to track changes being made to composers and added a bunch of composers to the tags. This morning, the tags are gone along with the changes made.

I just uploaded latest logs to the up server. Junk@danpetit.com.zip (2).

[eric (Eric Stewart)]

Hi @Dan_Petit ----- Thank you for touching base with me and sharing this latest observation. Confirming that I have added this feedback, along with the new round of logs to my report for our tech team to review.

Furthermore, upon looking at your first set of logs, our team has pointed out that they are not noticing any traces indicating any active bookmarks in Roon. Now perhaps this is due to the issue you’ve reported, but I just want to make sure that you are creating a bookmark in Roon and not a file tag(s). Speaking from a procedural stand point can you verify how you are creating bookmarks in the application? Screenshots of these steps would be very appreciated!

-Eric

[Dan_Petit]

It will be a while before ill be able to send screenshots. I currently have one book mark called unidentified albums made using the bookmark feature in the upper right hand corner. I have made several others as well by setting up album filters and then saving the view with a bookmark. I have also created tags to track composers I have edited.

I am aware of the difference between the two - both are dropping,typically a day or two after creation.

The only exception is the unidentified albums bookmark, which I created day one and hasn’t disappeared on me.

[Dan_Petit]

Also, to be clear, I sent logs from the Roon core. Should I have pulled them from the remote?

[eric (Eric Stewart)]

Hi @Dan_Petit ---- The provided Core logs should be enough. However, if this behavior you’re reporting is ONLY occurring on a remote and your core machine is functioning as expected, then we would need logs from the device(s) having the problem.

-Eric

[Dan_Petit]

Ok thx. The problem is not isolated to one remote so i suspect the core logs will be fine. The logs I uploaded a couple of days ago should have several examples of me creating tags, tagging specific composers, then losing the tags. Ironically, I created the tags specifically to track composers I was merging and those whose naming sort order was wrong and needed to be fixed. This way could easily track when they mysteriously unmerged or when name sort order reverted. All of this was to create a reproducible (or at least traceable) scenario for your troubleshooting.
Let me know what you find with the second set of logs. I return from vacation next weekend and will try to take detailed screenshots of what I’m doing when i merge and correct composers and subsequent shots of them reverted.
Thanks and enjoy your holiday.

[eric (Eric Stewart)]

Hi @Dan_Petit ---- Thank you for the follow up!

My tech team has updated my report and have requested some additional logs following the procedure listed below:

• Very Important - Please create a “test” bookmark and note the time when it was created.
• Send us a new set of logs.

IF THE “TEST” bookmark disappears…

• Please send us another set of logs.

-Eric

[Dan_Petit]

Will do. It will be Sunday at the earliest

[Dan_Petit]

Hi @Eric -
Sorry for the delay. My house got hit by lightning over the holiday and fried a ton of my stuff - I have been dealing with that mess since I have been back.

Here is a screenshot of my bookmarks BEFORE adding the TEST bookmark.

and after:

Time is about 5:40 am central time 7/19/2017.

Also, see the same photo for an example of the composer Last Name, First Name sort or problems. On that screenshot is Brian Holland, appearing in the middle of the “B’s.” He should be sorted with the "H’s. I fix this by going into the artist and choosing edit:

I then scroll of the Last-First Sort Name section, check the edit box and enter the correct name:

He now appears in the “H’s” as expected. This should all be in the logs I am sending to the share. If he reverts back to B’s I’ll send another round of logs.

Logs are filename junk@danpetit.com20170719.zip

Thanks for your help.

Dan

[eric (Eric Stewart)]

Hi @Dan_Petit ---- Thank you for touching base with me and I am sorry to hear about the lightning strike on the house.

I wanted to let you know that I have received the logs (thank you) and have placed them in our queue to be evaluated by a member of our tech team.

I also wanted to see if the “test” tag has been holding, since creating it. No issues with it disappearing? Let me know.

-Eric