I give up

[ronnyjoz]

Thanks for all your suggestions. I've found that the only way round this that seems to work is to clear the database every time I make changes to a file. Continuous monitoring and scan at startup don't seem to work (at least, not reliably)

[Lowlander]

Is the Date Modified changed on files that were edited? MediaMonkey, by default, won't rescan files without changed Timestamp.

[Dryst]

To answer your question "how is this this not working for you?", you tell me! I'll think it's all gone well, I'll be playing random tracks in my car and suddenly an album (seemingly at random) will be missing its artwork.

For missing artwork, many head units will refuse to show album art that is either too large or the wrong image format. I reduce all album art sizes to 300x300 for my vehicle and convert all to jpg format. If album art is 1000x1000 no art gets displayed at all for my Jeep. My Mitsubishi was exactly the same way. This is why I settled on 300x300 for all album art only for my vehicle. This is too small for viewing on my computer while playing, so I resize album art for all file for my USB stick.

[ronnyjoz]

To answer your question "how is this this not working for you?", you tell me! I'll think it's all gone well, I'll be playing random tracks in my car and suddenly an album (seemingly at random) will be missing its artwork.

For missing artwork, many head units will refuse to show album art that is either too large or the wrong image format. I reduce all album art sizes to 300x300 for my vehicle and convert all to jpg format. If album art is 1000x1000 no art gets displayed at all for my Jeep. My Mitsubishi was exactly the same way. This is why I settled on 300x300 for all album art only for my vehicle. This is too small for viewing on my computer while playing, so I resize album art for all file for my USB stick.

Answered in post #6

Is the Date Modified changed on files that were edited? MediaMonkey, by default, won't rescan files without changed Timestamp.

Thank you!

You may may very well have pointed me at option I was looking for. "Update file info from tags when rescanning files" was NOT checked. I'll clear the database one more time having made changes to the settings, and let you know how it goes.

[ronnyjoz]

Nah. That didn't help. Sometimes it notices if files have changed; sometimes it doesn't.

Now it's refusing to recognise USB devices I've used before, and appends "(1)" to their name. Luckily I exported my sync settings so I can import them again, but it sits there scanning for hours on end and doesn't update a thing.
This isn't going to work for me. I just want something that mirrors files from one location to another, without caring what's in them, but also has the ability to change their format on the fly. I'm assuming from the lack of any suggestions to this end that this isn't the place I'm going to find it.

Thanks for all your help anyway.

[Lowlander]

Did you remove files/format the drives since the last Sync? MediaMonkey relies on a some files it stores on the device to recognize it as a previously used device.

[ronnyjoz]

Not initially. sincce it wasn't working, I wiped everything on the drive and tried syncing it as a new device. It recreated the Media Monkey folder but didn't copy any files across at all.

I only bought this thing in the first place because windows Media Player (now Legacy and unsupported) stopped syncing. Media Monkey has been working (albeit with the above-mentioned issues) for about nine months but now it too has stopped working. Beginning to think a Windows reinstall is in order but that seems a bit drastic just to play music in the car.

I've changed my car in the last year. I'll see if this one plays flacs in the right order - if it does I'll just use Synctoy (also now unsupported).

[Lowlander]

If the drive is wiped, it's seen as a new device. When it's seen as a new device, make sure you actually enable something to be Synced on the Sync List. Does it have content enabled to be synced?