New Problem

[evilstepdad]

Hello again,

I just can't get a break lol.  We had our karaoke on one machine and quite awhile and had backed it up with a external hard drive.  When I got this gig I built the gig rig and now it has the karaoke on it.  My wife likes to sing so what little songs I have added up until now have been on the home machine but now with having to do this at the place I play music at I need all of it on the gig rig.

So I am adding both files on to the external to make one right file...making sure I have all the songs off of both machines so I don't miss any of them but there is now a new problem.  I search for a song and I find it and it is copied two of the same song by the same manu and the ones that were on the home machine are not showing up in the search but if I go to .g it shows like six of them there, four of the new one I loaded and the other two copies that we have had for quite awhile.  they are not marked as 0 or anything like that and I opened up the folder and they are  in there but will not show up when just searching for them, just two of the same one.  Any ideas?

Thank you,

ps: checked out the file path and it looked ok, one thing, one set is in the home system with windows7 and the gig rig is xp if that might make a difference

[Darryl]

Check the contents of the Ots Album file with OtsStudio.  Check that the title and artist information is set correctly since this is what the search function is using.

Have fun,
Darryl.

[evilstepdad]

Thanks for the reply, I might have figured it out but now I don't know how to figure it out. lol

I think when I have it on our home machine it is saved as c drive and karaoke files and when I moved it to the external drive to transfer to gig rig it is names something else.  Went and looked at one track I can find in hard drive but does not show up on .g or will not come in with search but will play if you go into files on c drive and select it to play..the file path on that say's H drive and list the name I had on the file so I would guess it is downloading all the c drive karaoke files but not the ones from there but those have all been copied onto the c drive but some are not showing up and it is not importing all of them.

Is there anyway to batch with studio and resend everything to the karaoke folder so they will all read the same path?  I thought once you copied everything into a folder it took on that name etc.

If I had hair I would pull it out..lol

Thanks

[Darryl]

Ok - The files on the hard disk are only part of the story.  The Media Library is a database that OtsAV uses to find the files.  Run OtsAV and use File -> Import/Refresh Files to Media Library and click on Easy Scan.

This process will scan the folders on your hard disk that OtsAV is aware of and check that all the items in the Media Library are where they are supposed to be.  In the case of the items that have a different location on the hard disk to where the Media Library (ML) says they are, the file will be marked as unavailable.

E.g. The ML has "C:\Some Folder\ManufacturerA\Disk1.ots" but the file is actually at "D:\Some Other Folder\Disk1.ots" - all of the items from Disk1.ots will be marked as unavailable at this point.

At this stage, you can see how many unavailable items you have (and what they are) using the Media Library search in OtsAV.  Choose "[Unavailable Albums] ^AU" from the drop down list and all of the unavailable items will be shown.  If you double click one you can see the full path that the ML contains (i.e. "C:\Some Folder\ManufacturerA\Disk1.ots" in the example).  Make a note of the number of items (shown in the grey box to the right of the drop down list).

Now you can get OtsAV to search for any unavailable items and re-link them to the files on the disk.  This is only possible if you haven't renamed the ots album files or edited them in Ots Studio.

use File -> Import/Refresh Files to Media Library and click on Re-Link Unavailable Albums (Files)...  You will be asked for the folder that contains the files - in my example you would choose "D:\Some Other Folder" to get OtsAV to look for the unavailable items in all the subfolders within that folder.

At the end of the process, OtsAV will tell you how many unavailable items you now have.  Hopefully the number will be less than before!

Let us know how you get on.

Have fun,
Darryl.

[evilstepdad]

One quick question as I am heading out to work and no time until I get home, if these are on a n external drive so I could transfer them over am I going to have to have this thing hooked up all the time?  I have done this before with backing up and there hasn't been this kind of file path problem.

Will this change the path from say the H drive or external to the file on the actual home hard drive now?  Again thanks and will try when I get home if I have time, have a karaoke gig and have to use this fairly early tonight.

Thanks

[Darryl]

No - this wont copy the files - it will just correct the locations in the OtsAV Media Library.  If you want copy them to the local hard disk of the other computer, simple drag and drop between windows in Windows Explorer.

If the files are already on the target computer's internal hard drive but OtsAV doesn't have them in the Media Library - do an easy scan to check for unavailable items, then a re-link to fix the unavailable items (assuming they are actually on the disk and haven't been changed).

Otherwise just do an import/refresh folder to pick up the new files.

Have fun,
Darryl.