Bugzilla – Bug 2333
Removable (temporary) music folders
Last modified: 2014-08-07 14:16:33 UTC
SlimServer's need (requirement) for first having to scan music file in order to play them is sometimes a large obstacle to convenience. Playing music that you don't want added to the library is impossible. Playing music outside of the Music folder is awkward and time-consuming. Browse Music Folder is a partial-solution to this problem. The biggest problem is that BMF will add the music to your library and you're left having to remove the music from the library afterwards. My suggestion is to be able to designate one or more (preferably more than one) location for temporary music folders. A user could then dump a file or files into the temp folder for immediate listening. Or they might designate a removable drive location. A browse mode of 'Browse Removable Music' could be created and use BMF-type browsing and logic, except it would put the metadata into a temporary table separate from the main library. It would be unnecessary to make the metadata searchable, so the structure of the temporary data would be simpler and the scanning/cataloging process quicker than with BMF. Alternately, scanning of metadata might only be done immediately before playback and then no metadata needs to be save.
Along similar lines… what about a user-specified list of "hidden" folders with an option to hide or unhide them on the fly? This would also be useful to those looking for some parental control options. The hide/unhide option could possibly be password protected. See this thread for more info/ideas: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=60232
Agreed. Some sort of 'Quick Play' feature is possible thanks to changes in 6.5 However - this feature will need to wait.
*** Bug 4814 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Alan notes everything shouldn't have to be scanned into the database, and notes he has something in mind for this related to bug 8303.
Ok, this is an oldie. But I've got some ideas for this. Plus the ability to play stuff without storing it in the database is something which might be helpful in other places too. Eg. it could overcome the current limitation where you can't use BMF while a scan is running. But back to the original request: how would you imagine the UX of such a temporary storage? Would this be a preference (assuming your temporary items are always in the same place)? How to deal eg. with changing drive letters for USB storage? Give access to the system's root (a list of drive letters in the Windows case)?
Blast from the past! I'd be happy with a static directory on the server (or attached disc) somewhere, similar to the music library directory. I.e. My use wouldn't need to deal with changing drive letters, just a directory from which files could be accessed and played, but not added to the library DB. - Add configuration for a "temporary" folder to the HTML UI. - Add "Browse to temporary folder" to UI and player interface. - Browsing to the temporary folder would bring up a list of the files by name which could be played or added to a playlist.
I would think giving access to the computer's root would be the most flexible. Is there a reason not to do it this way?
Yeah, I'd agree that the FS' root sounds straight forward and good enough for most cases. I'll see what I can do.
commit 31061536ed4bc64dcc23d5683648416eb4ad971a Will still need some bug fixing, but it's now available in 7.9.