Auto Tag Issue

[stemray]

I am running version 3.1.58.0 and seem to be having an issue with Auto Tag. It was running OK for a while but now the window just goes away and my files are not tagged. I am not getting any errors and there are no messages indicating there was a problem. I love this feature and would like to have it back.

[bizmodeller]

Apologies for this - could you please zip and email your iHomeServer and iHomeServerConsole logs to [email protected] and we'll take a look asap.
You can find information on how to find the log files here - http://www.bizmodeller.com/iHomeServer/ ... _files.htm

thanks

[bizmodeller]

thanks for the logs - looking into this now....

[bizmodeller]

Thanks for the logs.

I believe the issue with AutoTag is as follows. When iHomeServer tags a file it has to update the bytes within the actual MP4 file. In the past, we’ve seen some very rare examples of corruption when we update the file with the edited metadata. Just to be safe, with iHomeServer v3, iHomeServer reads the tags from the file before it writes to the MP4, then does the update, then re-reads the tags. If the first read succeeds, and the second read fails then iHomeServer assumes that it may have corrupted the file. If this happens twice, then iHomeServer will go into ‘SAFE’ mode and make a backup of all files before it updates them. The advantage of this is that if any corruption does occur then iHomeServer can restore the backup file. The disadvantage is that it can take some time. In your case, you appear to have mounted an external NAS and it’s taking several minutes to take the backup. The iHomeServer Management Console is timing out which is why the window is disappearing.

We can resolve the timeout issue, however, the bigger concern is if iHomeServer did in fact corrupt two of your video files. From looking at the logs, I think that iHomeServer may have corrupted the following file:

Amish.Mafia.S03E06.Doppel.Leben.WS.DSR.x264-NY2.mp4
… and one other file which I can’t see because the logs have rolled over (however you should have a message in the iHomeServer Messages window for it)

iHomeServer then engaged ‘safe mode’ – you can see this by looking in iHomeServer / Settings / Metadata tab and see the checkbox “Backup files before writing metadata changes” will have been checked automatically by iHomeServer.

You then ran a lot of other AutoTags, and they all succeeded however they took a long time to complete (because of taking the backup). If you check the metadata in iTunes, they all should be ok. However, the following file failed with possible corruption:

Amish.Mafia.S03E05.The.Bear.WS.DSR.x264-NY2.mp4

iHomeServer detected the corruption and the changes it made were rolled back successfully because Safe mode was already engaged.

I would very much like to get to the bottom of this and understand if/why the corruption took place. I did download my own copy of “Amish.Mafia.S03E06.Doppel.Leben.WS.DSR.x264-NY2.mp4” from however could not reproduce the issue. I note the copy I downloaded has a different bytesize to yours so it may be slightly different.

Would you be willing to upload an exact copy of “Amish.Mafia.S03E05.The.Bear.WS.DSR.x264-NY2.mp4” to our dropbox site so I can try to reproduce on the file that has failed? This file is perfect because iHomeserver backed it up before writing changes and restored the backup so it should identical to how it started. I’ll send you a dropbox invitation now. I'd also be grateful if you could keep a copy of this file somewhere safe on your system so we can re-use it in the future to test the fix for this.

I hope this makes sense, please let me know if you have any other questions and look forward to receiving the file.

[stemray]

I am uploading the file to the Dropbox. The file size is 372,155KB. My Dropbox says it will take about an hour to upload (sorry...just have a 3MB connection here)

Maybe my whole issue is that I am impatient. I set up some watch folders and its loading files from that, in addition I am running the Auto-Tag on some of my files.

I must say that so far I LOVE your application. I am still in trial mode but am certain that I will be purchasing a 5 year license. This application make it so easy to run my files from any device in the house. I will be spreading the word to all my friends about it.

And I am so impressed with your willingness to look into my problem even as a trial subscriber. Support is always key to making a GOOD purchase and your support is EXCELLENT!

Thanks

[bizmodeller]

Thanks for the feedback - always good to hear nice things

Re the files, there's good news and bad news. The good news (from my perspective) is that I have reproduced the problem. The bad news is that we use an open source library to write the metadata changes and I've reproduced the issue again using just that library's codebase. This means the problem is in the library itself. I've raised this as an issue on their site and will monitor it closely. In the meantime, I'll go through their code and try to work out why it's happening. The issue seems to only affect a very small subset of files (it hasn't happened on the thousands of test movie/television files we use to test) so I don't think it is a widespread problem and is due to some internal error in the original file.

If you want to increase the performance of AutoTagging you can uncheck the "Backup media before making metadata changes" checkbox in Settings / Metadata. This will restore normal tagging speed, but at the risk that if iHomeServer finds another problem file there is the limited risk it may corrupt the file when it AutoTags it. However, as I mentioned before, if it hits two file corruptions it will revert again to backing up the media before making changes in order to protect your media.

[stemray]

Thanks for all your help...I did have a couple of corrupted files but I can deal with those. Now that everything is loaded into the server the auto tagging seems to be working fine. I was just trying to rush the process.

And I am now a registered user. Thanks again