[mythtv-users] Re: MythMusic suggestion for file moves and id3changes

[Joseph A. Caputo]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org]On Behalf Of Jamison Wilde
> Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 12:13 AM
> To: myth
> Subject: [mythtv-users] Re: MythMusic suggestion for file moves and
> id3changes
>
>
> Didn't know that the email address had changed...
>
> --- Jamison Wilde <jamison_wilde at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I don't know about the rest of you, but I do a lot
> > of
> > maintenance on my mp3 collection, especially since
> > MythMusic is case sensitive in it's tree view. I'm
> > always renaming new files ( or moving them into a
> > separate folder, etc.).
> >
> > This causes problems for MythMusic in that it
> > doesn't
> > like missing files, renamed files, doesn't seem to
> > check if the id3 tag has changed or whatever.
> >
> > The only way I've found to fix this is to empty the
> > db
> > and rescan everything, which invalidates all
> > playlists.
> >
> > To enable tracking of music even if it's been
> > moved/renamed I had a couple of suggestions:
> > 1) Use an empty field in the id3 tag to store myth's
> > db key number.
> > 2) If this isn't acceptable (read only file system
> > for
> > example), use an md5 style checksum on the file's
> > music data, but ONLY the music data, NOT the id3
> > data,
> > so if the id3 changes, it won't be thought of as a
> > new
> > file. (You might want some sort of verification
> > dialog
> > in this scenario since the checksums wouldn't be
> > guaranteed unique.)
> >
> > Either of these would allow you to rename a file or
> > move it, without losing all of your playlists.
> >
> > A scanning thread running in the background very
> > slowly could be checking for id3 changes, say one
> > song
> > every 15 seconds or so.
> >
> > Checksums on the directories listings (with file
> > size
> > data) themselves could tell you quickly if anything
> > in
> > that directory had changed, and if so, scan it, to
> > further reduce load.
> >
> > Any comments?


One thing I've been meaning to do for a while is change how MythMusic
locates files.  Currently it store the full path to each file in the db; I
think it makes more sense to store the path relative to <MusicStorageDir>.
This way it doesn't matter if the mount point is different on different
hosts.  This could be handy, especially if your collection is on a
removable/external device.  Right now, if I go into Setup and change my
music storage directory, it forces me to rescan my whole collection, even
though the collection itself hasn't changed, just the location of it has.
If no one else gets around to making this change, I'll get to it *someday*.

-JAC