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Topic: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden (Read 877 times) previous topic - next topic
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Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Hi,
I'm using Foobar V1.3.16 with Windows 10 and the default UI.  I have a couple of ALAC albums that don't show in Album List in Tabs or the Albums in Facets.  The title of the albums begin with periods, ... But Seriously by Phil Collins is an example.  I've found that the periods could indicate a hidden folder.  In File Explorer the option is set to display hidden folders, and in Foobar Preferences>Advanced>Tools "Include Hidden Files and Subfolders when adding whole folders" is checked.  I've restarted Foobar, but that hasn't made a difference.  Mp3tag shows the albums without any problems.  Is anyone aware of something that will fix this problem other than retagging the album title without the periods?

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #1 –
In my setup, folders starting with "." are visible. It does not matter that a tag start with dots either.

Have you rescanned your library? Either through Preferences, or Alt+Shift+L then hit r.
Does it matter if you make a copy and rename that new folder?
 

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #2 –
Perhaps File/Preferences/Media library/Exclude set to something like *.* and it happens to match?

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #3 –
Porcus and Daeron,
The suggestion to copy the folder has led me to what is probably causing the problem.  My ALAC music resides on a WD MyCloudMirror NAS.  When I copied the album folder to a test ALAC folder on an external hard drive, I noticed the icon for the album folder wasn't the normal yellow color; it was faded.  I right clicked on the copied folder and in Properties>General I noticed that Hidden was checked, so I unchecked it.  I removed all music from Foobar and added the test ALAC folder.  The album with the periods is now displayed.  When I attempt to uncheck the Hidden attribute for the album folder on my NAS, the Hidden attribute keeps getting checked again.  I'll have to check my NAS to see if there is something I can do to allow the folder to be unhidden.  Thanks for your help.

Gary

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #4 –
So you are using a NAS which - I presume - internally treats dot folders as hidden, and refuses to tell applications about them?

It is the folder name that starts with "... But Seriously"?  A simple tweak is to just remove the dots from the folder name.  (You can do that without changing the tags.) An IMHO better solution is to stop using album names as folder names - rather, use for each artist year and then album name. Then they are easily sorted chronologically (who needs their collection to be sorted alphabetically by album title anyway?)

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #5 –
I've opened a thread on the WD forum to determine if there is something that can be done.

The folder name is "...But Seriously" and I've also found "...Is It Something I Said?".  I couldn't rename the folder to remove the hidden attribute.  As a test, I was able to create a But Seriously folder and copy all the tracks to it.  Now the "...But Seriously" displays in Foobar.  I like your idea of adding the year to the beginning of the album name and will have to consider making that change.

Gary

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #6 –
Of course, then you have the problem with albums where you do not know the year. You could set your naming scheme to default to 0000 or 9999.

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #7 –
Shouldn't Discogs be able to tell the year of nearly any officialy released album? In some cases Google still can be useful... Plus putting simply (unknown) should also be fine :-)

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #8 –
I didn't find much on the WD forum.  On a QNAP NAS forum I found instructions to use SSH and Putty to change file/folder attributes to either hide or unhide files/folders.  Not an easy solution.

I compared my master FLAC albums that exist on an external hard drive to the ALAC albums that exist on the NAS and found only two albums that began with periods.  Therefore I created new folders on the NAS without the leading periods and copied the tracks to the new folders.  The album tag has the album name with the periods, so Foobar now finds the folder and displays the album with the correct name.  Everything looks good.

Re: Some ALAC albums missing or hidden

Reply #9 –
Quote from: EpicForever on
Shouldn't Discogs be able to tell the year of nearly any officialy released album? In some cases Google still can be useful... Plus putting simply (unknown) should also be fine :-)
You anyway need a naming scheme if you auto-name folders. Leading whitespace could also be an issue. (Windows makes a lot of fuss when copying such.)

I have googled myself down to only three ripped CDs without any known year (and one of them is a test CD). One I even found the album cover and an indication of mid-ninetiness (which it sounds like too), but not the year.
But in these days of internet downloads, there are lot of demo collections of various year - some even of unknown date. And when the artists themselves offer uploads, they sometimes update a folder with a fresh file (though, not necessarily a new recording) every now and then too.

Like, I throw these into one folder: http://anacrusis.us/media%20files/MP3/Bits/Bits.html