I made my main muisc folder an Organized folder by mistake. I’d like to make it a simple Watched folder so that I can reorganize it the way I like it. (the artist of “25” isn’t Adele? You’ve got to be kidding.) Can I just remove or disable it as an organized folder and then reenter it as Watched? That won’t force a rescan will it? What’s the best way to do this?
[quote=“rbienstock, post:1, topic:7071”]
Can I just remove or disable it as an organized folder and then reenter it as Watched?
[/quote]Disable and then add, if all is well then remove orgainised folder from Roon.
[quote=“rbienstock, post:1, topic:7071”]
That won’t force a rescan will it?
[/quote]I don’t know … but I think you just have to go for it.
How many albums are in you lib?
Do you have a backup of your audio files?
If so you could consider restoring it and starting again with Roon selecting watched folder this time.
I have 2412 albums in my library. A bit over 1TB of data. I’d love to hear from someone at Roon about this. I sort of have a backup of my files: I have the original files but the structure on the drive where I originally ripped or downloaded them isn’t the same as my Roon drive. The biggest problem with the organized folders is that Roon puts all the files for a particular album into a single folder. I want mine neatly organized with each edition of an album in a separate folder and each disk of a multi-disk set in a separate folder. I managed to make this work by unhiding duplicates and then renaming the duplicate titles something different, which puts the albums in separate folders. I can probably live without the multiple disks getting separate folders. Once I’ve gotten my folders “organized” the way that I want using Roon’s organization tools, I need to stop Roon from organizing and merely watch the folders going forward. @mike, is this doable?
This is actually not quite right.
The Roon database tracks your files (and all associated edits, playlists, favorites, etc) by fingerprinting the audio data in each file. Everything you’ve done in Roon should be preserved when you move your files to a new watched folder, even if the files have been renamed.
However, the one case where you can run into issues is when Roon thinks you purposefully have two copies a given song in your library, in which case you’ll get two entries in the database with the same audio fingerprint.
So, as scary and counter-intuitive as it seems, you really want to remove the organized folder, so the files are no longer part of your database. Then when you add the new watched folder, Roon will recognize all the audio data and your edits will be safe.
For extra safety, here’s the steps I would take Robert:
- Backup your Roon database – this gives us a good place to come back to if there are any issues
- Remove the organized folder from the Storage tab of Roon’s Settings
- Add the folder as a Watched Folder
Let me know how it goes @rbienstock!
I’m waiting a few days to do this in order to use the organized folder system to organize my folders before I migrate to Watched. Though Organize messed up my folder structure, I’ve found the Organize files feature to have been incredibly helpful in fixing the problem. The new way that the database keeps track of the tracks in an album meant that all I had to do was unhide all my duplicates, go into each duplicate album and tell Roon to use the file metadata instead of Roon’s database and presto, most of my files came back to the folders I want them to be in. I can’t believe that it puts all tracks on all disks of a particular album (whether there are multiple editions or multiple disks) into a single folder. That would have been a nightmare to untangle, but Roon appears to be correctly associating the tracks from a particular version of an album with each other, and the multiple disks, though not in their own folders, are at least clearly identifiable.
But this brings up two big issues: first, Roon apparently likes to see Disk 1, disk 2, … folders for identifying multi-disk sets. Why then does it Organize files into a structure that is less useful to its own identification process? Second, when you use the Identify Album tool, the track information shown is the filename of the track, not the title of the track in the metadata. That’s very dangerous because a false identification in an organized folder would change the track names but leave the metadata untouched. So with the present scheme, how can you ever re-identify a wrongly identified album unless you somehow can get at the track metadata or remember what the actual track names are?
For multi disc sets Roon wants to see each disc in its own sub-folder or otherwise name the files 01-01-01, 01-02…01-xx, 02-01, 02-02, 02-xx