elisa-developers team mailing list archive

[David McLeod <daiode@xxxxxxx>]

If I understood it correctly, it seems a lot of time in that thread was spent arguing over file locations and directories.

When it comes to scanning and finding media, there are three things that in my experience it always comes down to...

1. Manual: let the user add, file by file what they want. (metadata lookup is required after adding: again either manual or auto).
	a. This creates a database of alias like links to the files
	b. This moves the files into a neat defined folder structure (iTunes offers this option called 'Keep Organized'...frustrating for real power users and media collectors)

2. Media scanning/scraping: Launching the app invokes a media scanner to find new files and auto-sort everything. (Moovida, XBMC, Boxee etc)

3. An always on seperate application running in the background tracking files and locations. (not seen this tried, although Plex for Mac has what they call a media server which touches on that somewhat).

- -

I havent seen any other methods discussed and all arguments about scanning and tracking files, essentially 'feeding' a media center UI with content always come back to those three points in some way. It often spills across one or more of those points and moves into Desktop management (a separate app to manage it all) via mouse and keyboard or trying to do it all simply inside the media center with a remote.

What is clear is that an abstraction from the bogged down folder hierarchy system when you go to use it is what makes things easier for the user (and your mom) as they shouldnt have to worry about where a file is or find it. Plus you factor in the internet and plugin usage and it needs to again be simplified. In the same way we talked about searching and not caring where it comes from as long as it is good quality the same thinking is applied with file structure and location. I think Moovida pulled that off way better than other media centers and its simplicity still strikes me as easier than the others when adding files and browsing....just that scanner needs to be better.

David


On 22 Feb 2010, at 14:14, Paul van Tilburg wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 02:07:35PM +0100, Olivier Tilloy wrote:
>> As is common, the thread is big and a lot of the discussions are
>> completely off topic, but some of them are quite interesting (see
>> e.g. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2007-February/msg00203.html
>> !), and to me the bottom line is that the basic technical
>> requirements for a good media center haven't changed in the course
>> of three years.
> 
> Indeed.  And I agree with the point that Tracker or similar concepts
> are the way to go.  Why have every app scrape and gather its media
> metadata.
> 
>> Things have moved forward in the right direction and we now have a
>> good number of solid foundations to base our work on, but the
>> ecosystem still lacks fast and reliable media indexing (particularly
>> for videos). In that regard the media scanner we're working on has a
>> very important role to play I believe. Let's get to work!
> 
> So, I was talking a bit about this on the IRC yesterday with some of
> you.  Metadata seems to be lacking most in the video area, but 
> certainly has some issue in music too.  More and more I view the
> media scanner (yes, I still have to check it out, pardon my ignorance)
> as a separate thing.  I might just write a tool that builds upon
> the scanner that can actually tag the stuff (avi, mkv, ... support this
> these days) and reveals difference. 
> 
> For example, my music library is tagged via musicbrainz.  This is a
> community constructed library that might improve/correct tags.  Such a
> tool would help in saying: hey the files of this album have outdated/
> different tags, or: this video lacks the director/synopsis tag, shall a
> commit.  In this sense the media scanner could help a lot too.  (As in,
> if you don't want to type in all the information by yourself, you need a
> scraper anyway.)
> 
> Paul
> 
> -- 
> PhD Student @ Eindhoven                     | email: paul@xxxxxxxx
> University of Technology, The Netherlands   | JID: paul@xxxxxxxx
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> 
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