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I use Band-in-a-box ("BIAB") to create backing tracks to practice my guitar-playing, and keep the source files (filetype .MGU) created by BIAB in the same folder as the MP3 files derived from them. Because I share this folder with colleagues via Dropbox, I'm not in a position to move the .MGU files elsewhere.

Every time I start Rhythmbox it checks my music folders, and reports "Import Errors" on all the .MGU files.

RB apparently ignores a number of unplayable filetypes in music folders - is there a way of adding .MGU to this group?

I know I can just ignore the Import Errors, but one of these days there will be an error I would have wanted to know about.

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Rhythmbox uses gstreamer to open files. So, if there is a plugin that supports this exotic file type, the problem might be solvable.

In 12.04, 

sudo apt-get install libgstreamer-plugins-bad0.10-0

will install, among others, a plugin called WildMidi which allows gstreamer to play midi-files (mgu-files are a type of midi files). However, it's not guaranteed that WildMidi will be able to play those mgu-files. If they don't have to be mgu-files you might try to convert them to a midi-format that you and your friends can still use and which can also be read by rhythmbox.

I've found no option in Rhythmbox that could do what you're looking for. Maybe a different player does the job?

Otherwise, you might as well copy those files to a new folder and share this one with your friends too (I know this is not what you were looking for but mgu is an exotic file type and rhythmbox has no native support for file blacklisting).

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  • Thanks for your prompt and informative response. I already have the plugins installed, so that trick won't work. In any case, I don't want to "play" the .MGU files, as I've got rendered versions of them as .MP3s already, so I'll just have to put up with the Import Errors until someone puts an ignore-these-files feature into Rhythmbox.
    – user69245
    Sep 20, 2012 at 13:23
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In RB 3.3 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, manually adding the following lines in ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml:

  <entry type="ignore">
    <title></title>
    <genre></genre>
    <artist></artist>
    <album></album>
    <location>file:///media/sf_Aaron/Music/01_Music/Apologetix/Albums/EasterStandardTime/EasterStandardTime-lyrics.txt</location>
    <mountpoint>file:///media/sf_Aaron</mountpoint>
    <date>0</date>
    <media-type>application/octet-stream</media-type>
  </entry>

finally got it to ignore the lyrics file for Apologetix's "Easter Standard Time" album. Don't know how much of that is actually necessary; I just copied one that was already there and modified it.

It took a while to manually type and correct all the variations for my 27 files that it initially refused to ignore, but each one did eventually work when I got it right. (spaces need to be %20) Of course, you can't copy from the Import Errors list; that would have been too easy.

Be sure to wait a few seconds after closing RB before attempting to save your edits. RB maintains that file while it's running, and it takes that long to fully close.

(I'm using a virtual machine with the files actually stored on the host, so the /media/sf_Aaron path is to access the host's share.)

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