IMS_Blog

I have mp4Tag set not to update the file modification time if I make an edit. The reason I have this is that within winamp I have a few smartviews set up for stuff like “things I recently added”, which obviously have to rely on the file mod time (or the media library updated time) to work. Winamp also backgrounds scans my main music folder hierarchy to find any new items and, I thought, update the library with changes. Except I just realised that last part isn’t exactly happening. It turns out that winamp won’t bother to actually read the tags on files unless the file modification time is later than the last update time, so changes I made to the tags weren’t showing up in the media library. Gaaaaa.

I’ve tried everything I can think of to get this to work without screwing file mod times and I can’t, really. You can get it to work by removing the items from the library and then adding them again but that messes up the playcount/last played time, which I use for other smart views. I just started writing a script to: copy files (preserving modification time) to a temp location; touch all files; wait for me to rescan in winamp; copy files back…..then I realised how nuts that is and decided to moan here instead. It seems I can have either a not very good record of what was really recently added or a not very good record of playing history, but I can’t have it all!