Unable to edit one individual cd without making it unplayable.

[David Heaton]

I'm in the process of updating my B2 music from MP3 copies(which were from my JB7 ) to FLAC.I've aleady done nearly 2000 albums without a hitch until recently.Just one is proving problematic.(I must add at this point that I'm technically very limited).

I loaded the cd and then when it had compressed I added the coverart.I tried to edit the title and play a track with no response and so thinking that the unit had frozen,I pressed save and turned the unit off..When I turned it back on the coverart was displayed very briefly with (null) as the Album title.This hasn't been displayed again.When I went back to the disc and tried to edit the Artist,the coverart disappeared and the disc wouldn't play so I attempted to edit back to the original text which had no effect.I've deleted the disc,copied it again and attempted to edit another twice with the same problem occuring.The FLAC copy plays perfectly well and the coverart remains if I don't edit.I've done many other discs since this happened without any problems but am concerned that problems may arise if I leave this one uneditable.

I would be very grateful for any advice,

               Dave Heaton.

[Edwyn Corteen]

Probably best to delete this album, do a scan disk and then re-rip it, I trust the convert to FLAC is being done by re-ripping the original CD? You cannot turn MP3 files into FLAC files, MP3 is lossy, FLAC is lossless compression.

[Mike W]

Hi Dave, you could try ripping on a laptop then make the editing changes there before uploading to the B2.

Mike

[PMB]

Hi davehe...,

There is a 170 character limit for any title - Artist, Album or Track - and there are some illegal characters that shouldn't be used.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[David Heaton]

Apologies to Edwyn,Mike and Paul for messaging directly.New to this game and only just worked out how to keep messages on this forum.

Thanks again for your speedy responses.Hopefully I will be able to resolve problem,

Dave Heaton.

[William Ellison]

Hi Forum,

On reading these posts there are a few matters I would like to raise - apologies in advance for the length of this post.

1.  Would it be possible to see full details of the limitations on editing? After having a problem rather like Dave Heaton's, and then (later) reading a recent post of Paul's, I assumed that it was a simple matter of limiting the number of characters to 170, so I have been doing my editing in a Microsoft Word document and diligently keeping an eye on the character numbers via the "Word Count" function before copying/pasting into the WebUI. Mostly that has been successful, but there has been one major problem (of which more below), so I am interested to know exactly which characters are illegal, and are there are any other rules - lurking modestly in the small print - that I am going to trip over sooner or later? I should add that, as I have said in an earlier post, although 170 characters may seem generous, in my case - having a mostly classical collection - I find it quite limiting for Album names and I could happily use 270 characters.

2.  Also, I wonder if the penalty for infringing the editing rules might be rather severe? My experience is that the "Album" information (maybe also the "Track" info) disappears off the WebUI without any warning or error message, and it is sometimes the devil of a job to track it down and retrieve it. It seems that the B2 system treats inadvertent rule-breaking as a capital offence and promptly obliterates the offending material, when a simple error message would be more proportionate, and kinder. Something like the "Not while burning" message that shows if you try editing while burning is under way.

3.   Possibly connected with the above, but not necessarily: I have been having a major problem with a particular CD ("Artist" name: Brahms). Having already ripped and edited 7 Brahms CDs without incident, I attempted to edit "Brahms 8", using 167 characters for the "Album" name. As soon as I pasted the edited name into the WebUI, the Brahms 8 Album name disappeared from the screen, together with all the other 7 Brahms albums. Subsequent searching for Albums under the Brahms artist name was fruitless, and the only way I could find to retrieve the missing music was by (i) searching with the Track toggle, using words that I knew would "belong" to the missing albums, (ii) renaming the Artist (Brahms) in each case with an alias (Johannes), and (iii) checking that I had accounted for all 7 missing CDs. Step(iv) was to hunt for the missing Brahms 8, but it seemed to have disappeared completely - searching via the Track toggle was useless in this case. So step (v) was to delete the name Brahms from the Artist list, and step (vi) was to rename Johannes back to Brahms, thus restoring the situation to where it had been about 2 hours previously. Incidentally, deleting Brahms from the artist list simultaneously deleted 8 tracks from the HDD - I assume that these were the 8 tracks belonging to the Brahms 8 album, and that they had still been lurking somewhere, but inaccessibly.

4.  It's possible, but unlikely, that I had inadvertently added the edited album name to the existing name instead of substituting it, thus exceeding the 170 characters rule. Or I might have used one or more illegal characters in the Rename, though I doubt it. Whatever the reason, I'm concerned that the effect of the action was so dramatic, that the system doesn't take any prisoners, that it cost me much effort to retrieve the situation, and that the Brahms 8 material seemed still to be around, but inaccessible. 

I hope I haven't sent everyone to sleep, and that someone might be able to help explain this little drama. And I hope I can learn to live without Brahms 8 on my B2.

Best wishes,

Bill Ellison

[David Heaton]

Thanks Bill,

My problem isn't related to length of album title or artist or any anomalies within the text as I explained to Paul at Brennan Support.

I followed the advice of Edwyn and deleted the album and then scanned the disc.I then saved and turned off the unit.When I  turned it back on,I found that I had 4 copies of the album with artwork(the ones that I mentioned originally that I'd tried with different texts in an attempt to find out why it was uneditable,all had been deleted before I made the next attempt).

I now have 4 immovable,uneditable copies of the same cd which I am fairly sure is related to the issue I described originally.That is the display of the same album art with (null) as the album title.I've searched (null) in Album title and found nothing.

This has only displayed twice,when turning the unit on, since I identified the problem.

A major concern is that I need to do a backup(a lengthy process with 50,000 plus tracks,the last one that I did 4 or 5 weeks ago took 27 hours)and am worried that these offending albums and album art will corrupt my backup hard drive rendering it useless.

Any help would be gratefully received.

Dave Heaton.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi to both of you Dave and Bill,

Have you considered looking at your Brennan HDD as a NAS. 

Doing so enables you to access the HDD and music files (directories and tracks) below the le and outside the Brennan interface. 

This enables you to see and sort out problems using the file exploring utilities of a PC or Mac.

Obviously after such work you need to run a Scan Disk so that the Brennan knows what its music now looks like.

Fred

[Daniel Taylor]

Hi Bill,

Your comments on the 170 character limitation are right on point.  The truth is that the B2 does not handle excess characters with any grace whatsoever.  The problem with allowing a character array to overflow its bounds is that the extra characters will overwrite something else in memory: either data or code!  In the former case, data (possibly a filename) is changed.  In the later case, when code is overwritten, it is still interpretted as code that should be executed, and if that happens, extremely bizarre things can happen, often of a disastrous nature.  I have lobbied for error checking to be implemented, but as far as I know, that has not been done.  So we warn all users that exceeding the limit is at their own peril.  It's sort of like having a walkway along a cliff with no guard rail.

[David Heaton]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for your speedy response.

I wish I could act upon your advice but as I said in my original post my technical knowledge is very limited.

Your suggestions are much appreciated but, unfortunately, way beyond my limited capabilities.

Dave.

[Mark Fishman]

In situations where a computer user admits that a suggested action is beyond his or her technical knowledge -- which is actually admirable, by the way, too many people just try to bluff their way through and either mess things up or simply don't follow instructions; knowing one's limits is really A Good Thing -- perhaps there is a friend or family member who could help? We are all different; if you have a neighbor who is used to network-drive access, maybe they could come over for tea or a beer and lend a hand?

[David Heaton]

Thanks for your understanding comments Mark.

Fortuitously,a friend of a friend,who happens to be a B2 owner has offered to pop round sometime soon.

I'm hopeful that a solution may be found and I'm also very grateful to you and others who have been supportive and tried to help me find  a solution despite my technical shortcomings,

Dave Heaton.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Dave,

A while ago during some testing, I had a couple of albums that would display in the WebUI and also in NAS but they would not play. I also found that I could not delete these albums either through the WebUI or via NAS at Windows Explorer.

I eventually managed to delete the album files by dropping down to the Windows command line level on the PC and manually deleting them at the command line.

When your friend calls around this information might be helpful.

Regards,

Peter.

[David Heaton]

Thanks Peter,much appreciated,

Dave.