Updating on the fly

Hi all.

Having looked on the wiki it seems from there that the only way of updating an on the fly database is to get it to re-scan at startup.

Just wondered if there is a quicker way of getting new audio added to the database to appear in the database quicker than doing a complete rescan as to scan 38000 records is taking about 4hours!!!

Is it possible to insert information into the cache file?

Anything would be great…

Thank you

Hi Lackster,
you should use the cache option and the scan os launch (I don’t have the exact name in mind)

Than mAirlist scannes automaticly for new files on startup, all the files that ware scanned before will not be scanned if they didn’t change. So it takes a few minutes only to scan. Maybe it’s that fast that you just think the new files are not scanned.
The cache is important to store all your changes, you do while working with mAirlist.

Regards
Malte

As far as I know (?), you do have to stop and start mAirList for the new files to be ‘picked up.’

This is one reason that I use MediaMonkey as an ‘überBrowser’ :D, running alongside mAirList. The registered version (about US$35?) does true scanning, so as new files are added to a folder, they are also added to MediaMonkey. Plus, MM has more powerful search and category handling, and you can use it to save M3U playlist files which you can then open in mAirList. Their free trial version doesn’t do the ‘live’ folder monitoring, but you can manually tell it to rescan your folders.

I’m not connected with MediaMonkey other than as a happy customer; others in here also find it is a useful piece of software for them. We use MediaMonkey as a rather a good ‘stop gap’ until mAirListDB arrives as part of mAirList 3!

BFN
CAD

ahh, thats useful, i always assumed that if i had rescan on startup, it would take hours to do like the first time i loaded the database.

If it should only look for new files then thats fine.

On a seperate note, in an explorer window, all my tracks are in CAPS, which i don’t want. i have used MM to change it so they appear in lower case in mairlist, but is there a way of chaning the case of all files that appear in an explorer window to lower case?

many thanks

Hi Lackster,
Do you mean the actual filenames ? ie: CLASH - LONDON CALLING.mp3 ? If so, I have used http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Screenshots.php for a few years - it’s a brilliant util that can rename to upper, lower or Title case. It can remove pesky spelling errors or replace & with and etc. If you have a whole load of filenames with the Raduga/Zara ~ markers, you can select to remove everything after the tilde. For audio tracks or general filemanagement, this is a handy tool.

If these caps are stored within the MMD file, that could be an issue :frowning:

no its as you explained it. thanks for the speedy response. will give that a shot.

I was sure somebody would know a solution to the problem.

Cheers :slight_smile:

mAirList uses the MMD file if any, then the ID3 tag (if present) to display artist and title. What you’re doing in MM is changing the ID3 tags within the files. As Charlie implied, the files’ names don’t change when you do that.

BFN
CAD

Although once you have the ID3 tags correct you could then use MM to rename the filenames from the ID3 tags using Auto-organize files (Ctrl-R)

I had wondered if Media Monkey could rename files based upon an ID3Tag - MP3Tag certainly can, which is my choice of tagger.

Yes, very useful, i didnt know you could actually change the file names by using the tags.

Very useful

True: MM can do a lot of useful stuff—or ‘potentially dangerous’ stuff from the POV of your station’s Media Library management!

And if you want to see and work with ALL the tags in your MP3s (even the very very obscure ones), I’d recommend MP3-TagStudio. Again, this can do all sorts: rename files from tag contents, set tags to match filenames, etc. etc.

BFN
CAD

OK, so i have done as you have told me and re-scanned the database on startup, in the hope that tracks tagged to mmd would appear tagged when mairlist loads, but for some unknown reason, they dont!!!

I am certain i have all the right boxes ticked. including load database from cache file bit also.

Incase it makes any difference, i have the option to have a central folder for mmd files, which is correct and know works as when i tag a file and check the folder, the mmd file appears there.

for some reason i just cant get mairlist and the mmd folder to talk to each other…

Any help would be gratefully received.

thanks

Have you tried adding the folder of audio files to the browser as a normal directory and dragging them into the Playlist from there ? (just to check that your MMDs are being saved+recalled) You may have to delete the OnTheFlyCache.mlp file from the songs folder (or just rename it) so that a full re-scan takes place. I wonder what criteria a re-scan will re-read the data on ? If it’s just a case change perhaps it’ll be ignored as technically the letters are the same ???

I’ve not worked with OnTheFly for some months as my 12000 tracks seem to crash mAirList and I’ve not yet had the chance to break them up into smaller chunks to see where the problem is.

i will have to try that, didnt think of that method at the time. maybe worth a go, at least it narrows down the options!