DosCab ? Re: Adding songs

[Crazy Cooter]

I haven't set up anything yet, I'm just planning some stuff for my parents .

[Chris]

It will rescan all of the folders.  For each file found, it will check to see if it's in the database, and if it has been modified since the last time it was scanned.  If it is new or has been modified, it will be loaded into memory to search for ID3 tags.  This is the time consuming step.  On my test syustem, with 500 songs, the first scan takes about 30 seconds or so; on the next startup, the rescan takes about half a second.

If none of the files are new, and all it has to do is confirm file locations, it can get through very fast.  Make sure you are loading SMARTDRV in your AUTOEXEC.BAT; it'll speed up the indexing process.

--Chris

[Crazy Cooter]

Cool, I was thinking "time consuming" meant like 5 minutes or something.  If adding 500 songs takes less than a minute for updating the database, I'm totally cool with that.  I was worried they might panic and think they blew something up if it took a long time.

My parents aren't really computer savvy, that's why I'm looking for something easy to operate for them.  I think your progam fits the bill perfectly.

[Dermbrian]

On my test syustem, with 500 songs, the first scan takes about 30 seconds or so; on the next startup, the rescan takes about half a second.

Must be a nice system you have.  My Micron PC with an AMD Duron at 700Mhz, WindowsME, takes about eight minutes and 15 seconds to index 721 songs the first time.  But less than a second on subsequent loads.

Those 721 songs are just about a fourth of what I will eventually have.

My system is running as clean as it ever has right now, with very little else loaded at startup and plenty of memory.

I don't consider the initial scan anything more than a minor inconvenience.  Adding a CD full of MP3's only means it will take about a minute to add them to the index.

Brian

[Chris]

Must be a nice system you have.

[Dermbrian]

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ on XP.  But 8 minutes is still awful long.  Are your songs encoded at a really high bit rate, making the files large?  My files average about 3.5 MB each.  If you have huge remixes, indexing is gonna be ugly.  I wonder if this might be a ME thing...

My songs are encoded at a really high bit rate.  I've used the -alt -preset -extreme switches when encoding them from LP's, so they're very high variable bit rate.

Average file size for normal length singles is probably 6 - 7 mb.  So you've probably nailed the reason mine takes longer. 

Still, it's rare to have to start building the database from scratch.  The program starts nice and quickly on subsequent runs, unlike Windows Media Playter, RealPlayer, and similar bloatware.

Brian

 

[Crazy Cooter]

Instead of loading only part of a song and stuff, is it possible to activate a database update with a button?  Kind of like an admin button thing?  That way the database doesn't need to be touched except when "told" to.

[Chris]

Instead of loading only part of a song and stuff, is it possible to activate a database update with a button?

[Crazy Cooter]

If I could disable the update in the ini file, and have only the button update, it would be perfect.  That should almost eliminate loading time too, you could use the "old" database until you actually added something.  Then push the button before you go to bed and it could take 8 hours if it had to to update the info.  Then it would be back to "instant on" status using the "new" database.

Plus it would be cool for networks like you said.  Hit the button, grab a soda, everything is updated.  No reboot required.