Auto - Update Filepath

[moymike]

Originally posted by ttimbul
so you didnt get my point after all...

I understand your hash idea, and ya, something like that could be done. It's kinda like putting a bandaid on a zit (pimple) though.

If you compare the whole thing to an application like Frontpage... If you rename or move a file, Frontpage asks you if you want to fix all the links.

Another way to do this is Frontpage could create hashes of all your html's, and have a fix program...

It all comes down to ... Winamp really should do it's own house cleaning. The renames and moves should be done within Winamp, and Winamp should fix the playlists as you work.

If you decide you want to move/rename outside of Winamp, Well, as in the Frontpage example, you'd have to fix the links on your own.

I do /agree though, that Winamp ought to highlight broken entries and somehow let you find and fix them within the UI. This would be a weak fix and only part of the solution, but it would help some.

[ttimbul]

I agree totally that it would be good for winamp to have its own integrated music management capabilities, creating/deleting folders, moving media files around.... That way I guess, yeah, u dont need complicated hashing and rescanning. I just didnt think abt it the frontpage way (off: frontpage makes ugly html)

[dlinkwit27]

Originally posted by james
Yeah that would be cool, but I don't think the way the ML and PL are coded would support this without a huge amount of work. I guess a plugin could do it but it's a fairly tricky and resource-intensive thing to do.

couldn't a plug-in jsut take small hashes of the files, and chack to see if the hashes are the same?

lets say I have song artist - song title. plugin/winamp records it's hash as "xyz".

I rename it to "artist - album title - song title". Winamp/plugin on scheduled re-scan of libray folders notices that here is a new file with has XYZ, and there is a file missing, with has XYZ, so updates the media libray as it does now, but now it checks to see if the old song path was in the playlist, and if it was, replaces it with new song path.

But then again...for people with a few thousand songs....this could be resourcefull intesive like you said.

[moymike]

Originally posted by dlinkwit27
couldn't a plug-in jsut take small hashes of the files, and chack to see if the hashes are the same?

Computing and saving hashes, and scanning for hash changes, is a lot to do and add... to fix something that should never get broken.

If you wonder how intensive this is, check out http://www.musicbrainz.org/

They use hash totals, and ...
1) The process takes forever
2) Most songs have 5-20 matches
3) Mismatches often occur

Give it a try, it's actually a neat product.. It'll make you think twice about hash matching though.

The reason I dont like the hash idea though is more to the point. On my system, MP3 and M3U are both Winamp files. Winamp knows about both and uses both. There really should be a facility within Winamp to rename/move files without breaking playlist.

If Winamp or ML doesn't offer a solution... maybe a plugin like GEN_LIBRARY.DLL someday will:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=179932

Renames and moves should fix the playlists as the occur, as long as they are done with an application that knows about the playlist.

[cadejohx]

couldn't winamp agent be made to keep track of all renaming or moving of files which reside in a library folder? it could make a log entry like 'c:\music\song.mp3 = c:\music\artist\song.mp3' for when a file is moved and then the ml would see this when updating and fix any broken song links in a playlist.
can this actually be done? probably not, somebody else woulda thought of it by now i guess :P

[ttimbul]

I would quite like to be able to use any feature of this kind without needing to run the winamp agent

[dlinkwit27]

Originally posted by moymike
Computing and saving hashes, and scanning for hash changes, is a lot to do and add... to fix something that should never get broken.

If you wonder how intensive this is, check out http://www.musicbrainz.org/

They use hash totals, and ...
1) The process takes forever
2) Most songs have 5-20 matches
3) Mismatches often occur

Give it a try, it's actually a neat product.. It'll make you think twice about hash matching though.

The reason I dont like the hash idea though is more to the point. On my system, MP3 and M3U are both Winamp files. Winamp knows about both and uses both. There really should be a facility within Winamp to rename/move files without breaking playlist.

If Winamp or ML doesn't offer a solution... maybe a plugin like GEN_LIBRARY.DLL someday will:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=179932

Renames and moves should fix the playlists as the occur, as long as they are done with an application that knows about the playlist.

Ok....since hashes arn't that effective, could the media library then so something like this:

-library knows what files are in it. It knows the file names, file location, and filesize, possibly bitrate and song length.

-at a scheduled (or forced) folder re-scan the library notes that a song is missing.
-the library also notices that there is/are sew file/s in the folder

-library checks if old path/filename was in the playlist.

-library checks to see if at least X words (user defined perhaps?) in the new path and new filename are the same, that the new file is the same filesize, bitrate, length, etc (also user-defined perhaps?) are the same as the old file.

-if it meets whatever the [user defined?] requirements are, it replaces the entry in the media library and (if it was in the playlist) the entry in the playlist automatically.

[jojo 544]

[B]
-library knows what files are in it. It knows the file names, file location, and filesize, possibly bitrate and song length.

-at a scheduled (or forced) folder re-scan the library notes that a song is missing.
-the library also notices that there is/are sew file/s in the folder

-library checks if old path/filename was in the playlist.

-library checks to see if at least X words (user defined perhaps?) in the new path and new filename are the same, that the new file is the same filesize, bitrate, length, etc (also user-defined perhaps?) are the same as the old file.

-if it meets whatever the [user defined?] requirements are, it replaces the entry in the media library and (if it was in the playlist) the entry in the playlist automatically.

Let's say this would work, your lib & playlist are fixed, you listened all the playlist and load a new one, wich has again some other broken entries...what then? the rescanning trick dont work anymore cous you already did that, and all old missing files are gone.

But i like the idee of it. specialy the user defined options like 'at least X words'

As i see it, the playlist would highlight broken entries, right click on one brings up a menu with the option 'fix entries'
The plugin now looks in the (already updated lib) for user defined matches witch you can coose of,(filename x same words, bitrate, length...), or when no matches are found, the option to browse (or skip and go to next) broken entry. Maybe also the option to auto replace all broken entries when exact same matching files are found.

Of course i agree with moymike that winamp making it's own house cleaning by renaming and moving files within winamp would be a easier sollution, but here i think i have to quote James again,

[QUOTE]Yeah that would be cool, but I don't think the way the ML and PL are coded would support this without a huge amount of work.[QUOTE]

[moymike]

gen_library

DYNAMIC LIBRARY

Take a look at this plugin: http://www.informatik.umu.se/~svph0140/gen_library.dll

Thread that talks about it: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....hreadid=179932

There you go, move via drag and drop, and just need rename abilities. It displays playlist internally, so all it needs now is the ability to update them automatically when a move or rename is done.

The feature that would highlight bad links in playlists, and allow you to fix them is still needed though. Any renames or moves that took place outside Winamp (plugin) could still mess up playlists.

Lastly, I'd just like to comment on all the hash suggestions. .... I personally dont want Winamp eating up my cpu cyles searching songs [constantly] for possible renames and moves, and checking all my playlists for update. I have over 4000 songs and several hundred playlists. The most effecient method I've seen suggested is to store a serialized number in the ID3 tag and associate it with the same number stored in the ML database. This still would require reading 4000 ID3 tags and comparing them AND that the ID3 tag is not junked up for any reason. A run on demand would be the only way for it to work VS scheduled runs.

Either way, the plugin I linked at the top -Dynamic Library- looks like it would be a prime candidate to save our playlists. The fix, hash, serial number ideas all reak of having to run CHKDSK-SCANDISK everytime I make a file change.

[jojo 544]

Re: gen_library

Originally posted by moymike
[B]I personally dont want Winamp eating up my cpu cyles searching songs [constantly] for possible renames and moves, and checking all my playlists for update......
.....The fix, hash, serial number ideas all reak of having to run CHKDSK-SCANDISK everytime I make a file change.

That's one of the reasons i dont like the m3u checker plugin. The scan&fix proces should only start when the user askes for it, not checking all playlist but only the loaded one.

I found the DL plugin recently and i like it a lot.
'looks like it would be a prime candidate...'
Maybe so, but it isn't (yet)

[dlinkwit27]

Originally posted by jojo 544
Let's say this would work, your lib & playlist are fixed, you listened all the playlist and load a new one, wich has again some other broken entries...what then? the rescanning trick dont work anymore cous you already did that, and all old missing files are gone.

during the re-scan, when updating of the files in the media library, it can also update paths to broken files in saved playlists.

[ttimbul]

you could use ntfs timestamps on NT based systems to check whether a file has been touched, so u dont have to look at files at all that have not been touched since the last recorded timestamp (that winamp might associate with each scan), so winamp could check each of your folders for a change in its timestamp, if it changed, look into that folder automatically and find what has changed. I doubt it takes a lot of cycles to do that... I guess there should be some restriction, ie dont scan immediately, as a change most likely prompts another one, so wait for 10 minutes or so from last change and then scan the changed folder.
This of course assumes that you use the NTFS file system, so will not work for win9x users! (It also requires users not to tinker with the registry and turn ntfs timestamping off..)

[moymike]

Originally posted by ttimbul
you could use ntfs timestamps on NT based systems to check whether a file has been touched, so u dont have to look at files at all that have not been touched since the last recorded timestamp...

If this were such a good idea, Windows itself would use this to 'refind' programs that shortcuts no longer match.

I understand why the request from rematching songs to playlist is getting attention, but overall, trying to fix them via storing data on them and re-matching after they get broken is just poor programming.

The two real fixes would be:
[list=1][*]Highlight broken playlist entries in playlist window. They can then be manually fixed with Ctrl-E. Also, add a browse to the Ctrl-E window.

Showing missing files in playlists with either highlights or characters should be easily done. Adding a browse to the Ctrl-E window also easy.
[*]Somewhere within Winamp or plugin, support the ability to move and rename files in a way that is "safe" and keeps playlists and the ML staight.

This is a bit more difficult, as it doesn't really fit into ML. The bright light here is that a new plugin called Dynamic Library is looking very nice for this sort of thing.[/list=1]
Until both of these are done, a utility program that does it's best job to fix things could be designed. This would be a very weak and lame solution if it were put into Winamp as the primary handler of playlist.

I expect to be blasted for saying this, but I dont think a playlist fix program should even be done, as it may take attention away from what really should be done. The two fixes I mentioned above are simple and staight forward, and most all other similiar applications work this way.

[ttimbul]

mm, I know that it wouldb much better to let winamp do the moving etc, especially since if somebody made this fixing tool thing, then most definitely somebody will say 'look, its already done' and not go all the way with the housekeeping idea.

BTW: the reason windows doesnt use ntfs timestamps to find find broken shortcuts is first of all the fact that it doesnt keep track of shortcuts (winamp does keep track of songs) and that it would have to monitor the entire filespace (winamp monitors the directories that are configured, which may potentially of course be the entire filespace) and finally, because one shouldnt rely on a feature that is discriminating against those with older OS'.

[jojo 544]

Originally posted by moymike
[B]Highlight broken playlist entries in playlist window. They can then be manually fixed with Ctrl-E. Also, add a browse to the Ctrl-E window.

That would not fix all the problem, but it sure is a step in the good direction, so at least it will be possible to manualy fix things easier.

Any dev. / Mod. input on this?