PDF files not showing up in Roon

Hang on a minute - you say “PDF Folders”. Are you not putting the PDF files into the same folder as the tracks, i.e. into the Album folder, but instead into a sub-folder that is in the Album folder?

If that’s the case, then no wonder you don’t see the PDFs in Roon - Roon expects to see artwork and PDFs in the Album folder alongside the tracks. It currently doesn’t look in Album sub-folders, as @Pieter_Vroon points out, and has been noted here:

I mean the folders with the tracks AND the PDFs inside together.

Ah, OK - pity, I thought we’d got it sorted there for a minute. Something else must be going on in your setup…

Please have a look at my storage setup shown above. Would it make a difference if I activated the second setup, which is just the bare path to the iTunes music folder, instead of pointing Roon explicitly on iTunes?

However, I would definitely not want to have RoonServer index my 30K albums again. This takes more than 24 hours.

I don’t work for Roon, and I don’t use iTunes, so I’ll page @support to help you.

Two clarifications here guys:

First, this is not quite true. We also expect to look at folders that are next to your files called “art”, “artwork”, “scans”, or “extras”. Based on some other reports, I suspect there may be a bug here, but we are still investigating.

Second clarification: [quote=“WKW, post:19, topic:19735”]
The storage config
[/quote]

This is actually the real issue @WKW. We are not able to detect additional artwork or PDF files when you are using our deprecated iTunes functionality from Roon 1.2.

This is because our old iTunes functionality did not involve scanning folders (as would be required to import additional files next to your music files) – instead, we got a list of files from the iTunes XML and simply imported exactly that list of files. This means, there’s simply no way we can detect other files in the directory.

So this is not a bug, but a limitation, and is in fact exactly the kind of limitation that led us to retire our our old iTunes implementation. The next steps for you @WKW are to:

  • Read about the changes to our iTunes implementation [here]
    (https://kb.roonlabs.com/iTunes#What_39_s_Changed_in_1_3)

  • Let me know a little more about what you’re importing from iTunes, meaning:

  • Are all the tracks in your iTunes library in a single folder? Or are they spread out?

  • Are you importing playlists from iTunes?

  • Are you actively making changes in iTunes that you need synced to Roon?

Let me know the answers to the above, and I can advise you on the best way forward. Thanks all!

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Here we go…

It’s a well organized typical iTunes folder structure that is also transparent for my simple human mind.

My User Name > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music > ArtistName > AlbumName

“Keep Media folder organized”
“Copy files to iTunes media folder when importing”

Yes, Would be nice to have.

Yes. I find adding, working and labelling music in iTunes still easier for me after so many years. If Roon’s method were as transparent as iTunes (v. 12.4.3), I’d use that. I stay with 12.4 because later iterations of iTunes are becoming more and more obstrusive.

That’s my setup. And please help me avoid a complete new cataloguing session of 24h …

Can you be a little more specific here?

There is functionality in our older iTunes implementation that’s no longer possible with the new implementation, but it depends a little on what you’re editing in iTunes.

I am not sure what you mean. As I said before, I import new music files using iTunes and edit their meta data. Sometimes I also correct meta data.

As this support thread doesn’t seem to go anywhere I assume I’ll have to stay with what I’ve got. Thanks anyway.

Ok @WKW, here’s what I would recommend if you’d like to take advantage of our new PDF and image gallery features.

  1. Make a backup of Roon (if things go wrong, you’ll be able to roll back to your current iTunes functionality, which is currently “grandfathered” for you but is no longer available in Roon)

  2. Disable your iTunes library in the Storage tab of Settings

  3. Add a new folder for Roon to watch that includes your iTunes library, I believe the path for the both the iTunes XML and all the media should be [quote=“WKW, post:27, topic:19735”]
    My User Name > Music > iTunes
    [/quote]

  4. Once you’ve added that folder, click the “3 dots” next to the folder in the Storage tab of Roon’s Settings and turn the iTunes playlists option on

I think that should do it. Because you’re using iTunes automatic organizing feature, everything you add to iTunes should end up in that one folder, and any playlists you create should end up in the XML file that Roon is reading.

Let me know how it goes @WKW!

Thanks Mike. I did what you described and it seems to import the tracks again. It arrived at 2800 tracks out of my 36k tracks now and it’s running hot on 4 cores (I will reduce this some time). It’s just a bit strange that in Activity Monitor it is Roon (remote) that is consuming 200% and RoonServer (Core) about 170% of CPU. I am not playing music right now.

Is this the activity that just scans the audio forms or is it really importing? So I will again have to wait for more than a day…

OK, the import was smooth, only 3 hours. It’s working as expected and showing PDFs. Thanks, Mike, for your last post.