To cut to the chase: is there any easy way to have emplode "synch" with a directory structure?

I feel like the most intuitive way to organize my mp3's is using a nice directory structure. like mp3\NewMusic\Kent\songtitle, or mp3\Rotation\Radiohead\songtitle, where "NewMusic" and "Rotation" are my "playlists".

I know I can just drag the entire \mp3 folder to the playlist folder on the empeg, and it will create playlists in a similar heirchical fashion. BUT, this only works once! If I delete all my playlists and drag \mp3 again, it copies every single song to the rio again, making duplicates. If I just drag the \mp3 folder without deleting the playlists, sure it detects duplicates and adds new stuff only, but doesn't delete anything I may have removed on the desktop.

Maybe there's something I'm missing -- is there any way to do this? It would be great because I manage songs on my ipod in a similar fashion, and it's just painful to manually go in and figure out what I've deleted and added and synch by hand.

If there's no way to do this, I'm willing to write my own win32 synchonizing program -- would this be possible? are enough methods exposed to communicate with the rio in win32?

Roger from empeg has been working on this in his spare time, but nothing has come of it yet, and nothing may ever come of it as Roger has indicated in other threads. On the Linux side, Mark Lord did release a tool about a year ago to sync music, but it's somewhat limited in features. (Looks like he just made it to suit his particular setup when he made it a year or so ago).

Empeg does have a full source code release of emptool, the tool used to talk to the empeg under Linux. Looking at that might be the best start to a Windows based sync tool.

I've been meaning to talk about this one, and this thread is a good opportunity for me to bring up the subject.

I thought that with version 2.0 of the emplode software, it would do duplicate-checking within each directory. So, imagine the following scenario:

- You have a huge "MP3" folder on your hard disk, organized into folders as follows: "MP3\Artistname\Albumname\songnames.mp3"

- When you first get the empeg, you select all of the artist folders in your "MP3" folder and drop them onto "Playlists" in the 2.0x emplode.

- This creates a bunch of artist/album trees in Emplode's playlists.

- You synch, and all is well. (Yeah, I know. This is in a future release of emplode 2.0 where huge synchs are stable again.)

- Now you add one new album to one of the artist trees on your PC.

- You drop the same directory structure onto emplode the same way you did before.

- In theory (if I understand it right), the new album will be added, and every other song will be considered a duplicate and is ignored. This assumes you did the exact same drop so all the folder names were the same.

Doesn't it work this way? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Okay, moves and deletions are not covered by this method, but at least "adds" are covered.

right, adds are covered -- but without moves or deletes, that means that every time I drag the directory, I have to sit down and compare the lists to make sure I delete everything I want to delete.

am I nuts for wanting to do things this way? I just can't imagine how else I would organize my mp3's besides directories...

I too wish for an eaiser sync option. As it stands, I have just been deleting the entire contents of my player and then re-copying everything to do a sync. Eventually I will add another drive (I now have a 20 gig) and will have plenty of room for all the music I own, but for now I have to pick and choose.

I guess it's not a huge problem, just something that would be kinda cool.

The best solution for syncing isn't to sync with a plain directory structure anyway. It's to have emplode support full-fledged online/offline operation. Then you can manage your music database on your local PC drive and connect and sync your empeg any time.

And again, this is something Roger's been looking at in his spare time. I won't forget to put in a request that it be added to the todo list for the next official version after 2.0 (it will be of great use for the other Rio products like the HSX and Riot).

Bruno

Well, I have to say that the Empeg is so central to my music listening that every time I get a new album or I move/remove a song from my collection, I update just those changes to the player, so it's really not difficult to keep my PC and my car player in synch.

I do moving and removing of songs so rarely that I don't understand why it's such an issue with some people. And when I buy a new album, it's a pretty straightforward thing to add it to the Empeg.

For the people who are so concerned about a full-offline-bidirectional-synch with the player, I have one question: Is most of your collection pirated MP3s from the internet, and that's why you're so concerned about the multitudes of changes on your PC? Because for me, doing just one CD at a time is not a problem.

Even if you do a lot of random internet downloads, simply being a little more organized about it should solve 90 percent of your problem.

"For the people who are so concerned about a full-offline-bidirectional-synch with the player, I have one question: Is most of your collection pirated MP3s from the internet, and that's why you're so concerned about the multitudes of changes on your PC?"

Tony, you know that's the problem.

All of my music is my own -- I have the original CDs. My problem is that I very often move directories around, or tag the files on the empeg. These are then no longer spotted as duplicates, so I end up with two copies.

The correct solution? Not completely sure, but I suspect that it _is_ full automatic (2-way) synchronisation with the empeg or HSX-109. This would almost certainly require offline operation of emplode.

This also solves another problem I have: I keep my music collection in 3 places (2 different PCs and the empeg). When I move folders or rename files, using rsync means that I always end up with both copies reappearing on both ends. I can't use a single-master model, 'cos I rip CDs at both computers.

This problem applies equally well to my photo album -- I have a copy at work, a copy at home and a copy (abridged) on my website. Keeping all three in sync is something I've wanted for a while.

Now, the algorithms involved in doing this are fairly straight-forward. I just need more copious free time.

Good guess, I do get 99% of my music online, which causes some incompleteness as far as cohesive albums are concerned. I'm also getting new music all the time, and phasing out old music, so the main operations I do are:

1) add a new song/album to my New Music directory
2) decide I like a song/album enough to move it to my Rotation directory
3) decide I don't like a song/album and delete it from New Music
4) get sick of hearing a song/album and remove it from Rotation, but back it up on CD.

obviously, the only easy step right now is #1. I use directories because:

1) it's conceptually simple
2) it let's me use the same organization on my ipod
3) I also access my mp3's via file sharing from work, so similar organization helps there too

I would delete everything and resynch, uploading everything again overnight, but I would fear reducing the rio hard drive's time to failure.

Yeah, I may take some time off from Hijack and rewrite my filesystem sync'er.. I want it to manage playlists better, and directly, rather than through the complex database or broken emptool interfaces (emptool gets very confused about fids..).

I want it to understand *nix "symlinks", and perhaps even windoze "shortcuts" (and Apple "aliases"?).

And now that we have a two-way FTP interface working (Hijack), we can completely bypass the proprietary emptool/emplode protocols..

Mmm..

This thread is really honing in on what the finishing touch that would make the RioCAR completely user-friendly. Im not sure how most people organize their music, but I keep my master copy on my home PC and would like a sync copy on the RIOcar. Rather than reinventing the wheel, there are many front ends out there that do a great job organizing music (I use Media Jukebiox). All of them have plugin capabilies to interface with portable units!

-Ted

I kinda see where some of you are going with this (need somehting like the Neo's Breifcase function)... and I see the need for this ability, but I don't think it's that great. If I was constantly moving my songs around and re-organizing my directories, I would go nuts trying to find anything!

I'm with Tony on this. I rip a half dozen CD's or so every few days. I keep them in a "New Music" folder until I have time to sync with the emepg. When I do, I simply put the songs in the same place on both the PC and the empeg.

I did play around with organizing for a few weeks, but once I found a structure I liked, I was set.

For me, empeg is the main place to keep the music; everything else is backup.

Empeg's playlists are much more flexible than simple directory structure. Granted, unix symlinks can provide similar functionality (actually, hard links are more similar). We can use ftp for syncking PC and empeg, but then we also have to do FID-to-filaname mapping and *1 file construction, as well as empeg database rebuilding (which we know how to do from emptool sources).

I am not sure its worth the effort. I feed my empeg in a fashion similar to Tony's, few CDs at a time, then simply burn new MP3's to CDR. I am thinking of acquiring an additional 60GB disk that will contain verbatim copy of empeg disks, strictly for backup purposes. RioReceiver I am in process of buying will probably feed from another disk.

I think people are missing one of the big benefits of offline operation. It's not just about adding one album here and there, it's the ability to have all your empeg-loaded music backed up offline. This would allow you to do a restore should the music on your empeg become corrupt. Without having to figure out how you had everything sorted on the empeg.

I don't want a way to sync based on a local filesystem. I want the local copy to be managed by emplode with all its database goodness.

For people with smaller empeg drives, this could also allow the ability to push small subsets of the total collection onto the empeg (not an issue for me because I will always upgrade the drives to be able to hold ALL my music).

So, seeing as Roger, the guy we know is responsible for emplode, thinks it's a cool idea.... Go Go Go!

Bruno

In reply to:

---

(not an issue for me because I will always upgrade the drives to be able to hold ALL my music).

---

if you can't put it all on there then what's the point anyway. wasn't why this whole empeg thing was started for

I totally agree. I think that "on-line/off-line" switch on emplode would just be perfect. You could create a mirror of the empeg content on hdd and manage it via Emplode, and have emplode take care of sync-ing the two (three, four?) locations, at your request.
I can imagine a set of simple options saying

Locations A, B
1) Mirror A on B
2) Mirror B on A
3) Ask user (file by file, or playlist by playlist)

Etc.

Currently I'm hacking on doing this properly -- if you make a change to A, it's propogated to B; if you make a change on B, it's propogated to A; if you change the same thing on A and B, you get a conflict raised, with some resolution options.

This scheme works better than rsync in both directions, in the face of a simple renamed file.

What are your plans for multiple-linked items, *1 tag files vs. ID3 tags and similar 'empeg database vs. mere filesystem' issues?

For strictly backup purposes ftp-ing everything in /drivan/fids directories to a large and cheap disk is good enough (with perhaps a script or two to allow for incremental backups).

If one wants, a scripts could be added to apply *1 tags as ID3s in tunes themselves, and prehaps to rename them. Then something like MusicMatch Jukabox, MoodLogic, DigitalDJ or similar can be used for playing from the PC. More adventurous users could recreate their favourite directory structure (preferebly using some kind of links). But the point is, empeg remains 'master', anything else is backup.

Now, keeping several non-empeg sources in sync and treating them rather than empeg as masters will be a bit more difficult.

I don't have any -- this is for syncing 2 Unix boxen. I'm hoping that I'll think of something intelligent to do with the empeg when I get that far .

Roger, simply, thank you!! This is FANTASTIC!

uh oh. I have some music loaded off of CD-Rs. I have some music on my work computer. I have some music on my home computer. Some on my laptop. The fact is my empeg has more storage space than all of the computers combined. Yikes. How do you properly synchronize in the face of that?

Calvin

You don't?

Seriously, this is where the off-line stuff would come in handy -- you could mark items in your local database as unavailable, and they wouldn't get pushed to the other end, until they became available.

Or get an external firewire harddrive! You can get a 60gb drive for about $120 and a Firewire/USB2.0 external case for $149. Thats what I'm doing to back up my collection. My notebook only have a 10gb drive and my home pc only has 12gb.... my empeg has 50!

If roger pulls through a proper two way sync, then I will most likely purchase something like that.

Calvin

I have: I keep my music collection in 3 places (2 different PCs and the empeg). When I move folders or rename files, using rsync means that I always end up with both copies reappearing on both ends. I can't use a single-master model, 'cos I rip CDs at both computers.

I use a program called unison for this kind of stuff on my unix boxen. Uses a rsync like algo (compares blocks of files using checksums and only transfers changed blocks) but does bi-directional syncs. Very cool. Homepage is http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison

-Mike

According to the Unison web page it also works on Windows, which is excellent. I have been looking for something to sync some folders between my Windows and Linux servers.

Yeah, seen that -- looks good. Unfortunately, there's two reasons why I can't use it in emplode:

1. It's not written in C or C++
2. It's GPL licensed.

So, I'm going to write my own synchroniser in C++, and then see if I can wedge it into emplode.

Yeah, seen that -- looks good. Unfortunately, there's two reasons why I can't use it in emplode

Yeah, I was actually just suggesting it as a way to keep multiple PCs in sync so you can sync to the empeg from either. Glad to hear you are going to be working on two way syncs in emplode though. Very useful feature.

-Mike