Beets not writing metadata tags to music even thought it's configured to do that and also re-writing metadata when it probably shouldn't

[Stampede]

I'm just starting to import my collection and this is confusing to me. I would like Beets to update the metadata tags in the music files. I'm pretty sure I have it configured to do so, but the files aren't changed until I $ beet write. And the odd thing is that that when I type $ beet write, then Beets will re-write metadata to the tracks, even when it had already applied the metadata previously. According to the docs, it should not be doing that:

By default, this writes the changes only if there is a difference between the database and the tags in the file.

As for Beets not writing metadata during the initial import, I'm running the import in incremental mode and when I want to pause and do something else, I wait for the next prompt from Beets and the choose the a[B]ort option. Maybe "abort" makes it stop without writing metadata? Is there a better way to pause importing to go do something else for while?

To start the import sessions, I first cd into the parent music directory and then run beet import -i .

Here is the import section of my config file. Thanks for any help!

import:
    move: no
    copy: no
    log: /home/USERNAME/Music Intake Directory/beet.log
    write: yes
    resume: ask
    incremental: yes
    incremental_skip_later: yes 

Other info:
It's been a couple of months, but I'm pretty sure that I installed beets with pip.

$ beet --version
beets version 1.6.0
Python version 3.10.6
plugins: bandcamp, chroma, ftintitle, lastgenre, lyrics, zero

[JOJ0]

How are you importing? Command? Beets version? Latest from git?

[Stampede]

I removed and reinstalled with pip by cloning git like the instructions you pointed to, then ran $ beet -vv import .

It has been running for about 30 minutes now it seems to be going alphabetically through my library. Right now it's getting near the end of the "B's". I saw the screen pause once to give me the "What would you like to do with this album?" Prompt. [A]pply, More candidates, Skip, Use as-is, as Tracks, Enter search, enter Id, or aBort? but then it scrolled right off the screen before I answered it. So I haven't interacted with the program at all since I first started it.

I checked some of the newly imported files that had scrolled past and the file modification time isn't changed at all, so I have to guess that Beets didn't write any metadata tags to those files. Honestly I have no idea what it's doing, but it's doing a lot of whatever it is.

Based on the screen output it's talking to Music Brainz and the Chromafingerprinting with some Bandcamp here and there.

Edit: after 45 minutes or so, it stopped doing things. Maybe the multi-threader ran out of threads? I have not seen any more prompts for input, but maybe all the threads are waiting for me? If so, it doesn't say anything on screen. This is the final output where it hung up:

Sending event: mb_album_extract           # this line is repeated several dozen times
Sending event: albuminfo_received
chroma: acoustid album candidates: 2
Sending event: albuminfo_received
Candidate: Buckethead - In Search of The (6f6ee6d6-5322-4627-b964-20ffe70fdf4f)
Duplicate.
Sending event: albuminfo_received
Candidate: Buckethead - In Search of The (57623bd9-0728-49fd-b8e6-43ddcc89a2b5)
Duplicate.
bandcamp: Searching as for In Search Of The... Vol. 13 - E using {'query': 'In Search Of The... Vol. 13 - E', 'artist': 'Buckethead', 'label': '', 'search_type': 'a'}
Evaluating 5 candidates.

At the very bottom the terminal, it just showed a cursor but no prompt or anything after the lines I pasted. So I guessed it was waiting for me to to make a decision about some ambiguous albums (but didn't show a prompt). I hit B to abort and the program quit with

b
Sending event: import
Sending event: cli_exit

Afterwards, $ beet list did not list any new albums in the library that were not there before I started this most recent verbose import.

[JOJ0]

I think this is what happened: Your were running with verbose logging, thus beets prints things on cli and you might not have seen the actual input prompt (beets moves on with doing things in the background where usually you wouldn't see the log messages). Happens to me all the time as well, please doublecheck! I'm pretty sure, without having read everything in detail above..... Hope that helps!

[JOJ0]

In short: Even if logs are swamping over your input prompt: You can still answer and make beets continue. This is expected behaviour.

[arsaboo]

Also, start with a small set of files to test things out.

[snejus]

You may just want to disable the threaded option - personally I only found it counter productive because of the input prompt disappearing.

I'd rather be slow to import my music but be sure about what exactly is being done

[JOJ0]

One unrelated comment @Stampede, use this for the bancamp plugin: https://github.com/snejus/beetcamp

The original one is not maintained anymore and has some issues. HTH

[arsaboo]

BTW....I just saw that repo. @snejus has added some impressive features there. I would love to a few of those features to some of my plugins. So much to learn.