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[Jaguu]

Testing your handheld features with my notebook, whether they properly work or not.

1. Created a handheld named "Notebook" with the Share of my image directory on the notebook
2. There are already images there (about 13'000 jpg files), so clicking on  handheld player,  starts initializing the notebook.
3. A message appears saying that the notebook will be initialized and to wait for a few minutes. Then the screen starts to flash continuously with the two alternating messages "Storing handeld information" and "Initializing Portable". This has gone on for the last 20 minutes. Something is definitely going on, as the light of the HD on my notebook flickers all the time.
4. To me this seems a rather awkward method to read first all the information on the notebook. Tools like "Karen's replicator" do this on the fly and much, much faster.
5. So I don't know whether it is buggy, should work or need to be patient!
6. Needless to say, MC11 blocks the screen quite heavily and it is difficult to do other work!

Network connection is through Wlan.

Will wait and see what happens and report later on...

[GHammer]

I have a share on a laptop. I can use it with no problem using Windows Explorer.


I add the share as a handheld.

I configure to convert to MP3.

I send an APE file to the handheld.

After it initializes, I start the transfer.

After a short time of converting and sending, I get an out of memory error and the transfer stops.

Also, where is the 'Skip same file type option"? I do not want/need to convert from mp3 to mp3.

[Jaguu]

7. At the end of a very long time only "Initializing Portable" was displayed, but finally the Handheld Action Window took over again.
8. Dropped the image folder on the action window and it reported that only 586 files needed to be transfered.
9. Started transfer and in a few minutes it successfully transfered 586 files (2 were missing)
10. Unfortunately the files were all copied to the base image directory on the notebook and not in their appropriate folders, which makes the syncing a little bit problematic. Is there an option to preserve original folder structure?
11. The whole procedure took about 45 minutes, which is in my opinion was quite long
12. A resync correctly displayed that there was nothing more to sync.
13. At every resync I have to drop the image folder again and again. Is there a way to remember which folder has to be synced with which folder on the notebook?
14. When syncing I also got the following message: "You are attempting to transfer multiple files with duplicated information. Would you like to continue with the transfer?
What does that mean? I simply don't get it? Clicking yes obviously does transfer files. What if I click no?
15. It does not seem that on the notebook MC11 import the files automatically. They have to be imported by hand!
16. How do I know that the two folders are identical both on the pc and on the notebook? 

Thanks for helping!

[GHammer]

16. How do I know that the two folders are identical both on the pc and on the notebook? 

Right now, during testing, I'd use a 3rd party tool to compare the directories.

[Tolga]

also, you can use mp3bookhelper, to check that the mp3 contents are the same, even if tags are different. (It creates checksums for the part of mp3s that contain only music, and then you can diff these files, i.e. using csdiff).

[SteveG]

After a short time of converting and sending, I get an out of memory error and the transfer stops.

Please reconfirm that this is not a hardware or configuration issue. Before a file transfer, MC checks that there is enough space on the designated transfer location. If the available is exceeded, you see this message. I have seen this message triggerred incorrectly when the device drops its connection.

 

Unfortunately the files were all copied to the base image directory on the notebook and not in their appropriate folders, which makes the syncing a little bit problematic. Is there an option to preserve original folder structure?

Use the option in the drive configuration to set up a base folder. Then, right click on the folder and use 'Rename Upload folder' to create folders based on tags.

[GHammer]

Please reconfirm that this is not a hardware or configuration issue. Before a file transfer, MC checks that there is enough space on the designated transfer location. If the available is exceeded, you see this message. I have seen this message triggerred incorrectly when the device drops its connection.

No, there is plenty of room available and the available space shown by MC shows this.
I do not think it is a disconnect. It is a wired connection to the same switch.
And it does not drop ever when I am using other apps to access the share.

If I map the drive then use the mapped letter for the handheld I do not have this problem.

[Jaguu]

15. It does not seem that on the notebook MC11 import the files automatically. They have to be imported by hand!]

The library on the notebook seems to be updated automatically!

16. How do I know that the two folders are identical both on the pc and on the notebook? 

Comparing file statistics gives a clue!

What does "Initalizing Portable" exactly do that it takes soo long?

The m3u playlist synched to the notebook contains lines with only a "," and no pathname. What happened here? I have about 70 files less on the notebook than on the pc! Were the missing files duplicates? Is a duplicate a file with the same name or one with identical tags?

[Jaguu]

Duplicates:

In my opinion MC11 detects duplicate files incorrectly as it checks the name field instead of the file name. Example:

File 1:
Name: Jim, Matt and Steve
Filename: ..../Jim, Matt and Steve.jpg

File2:
Name: Jim, Matt and Steve
Filename .../Jim, Matt and Steve(1).jpg

Handheld synchronisation detects those files as duplicates, although they are different images with different file names, although the name field is the same.

With audio files the name field is mostly unique, but with images or documents the name field does not need to be unique. Many of my images contain i.e. the name "Self-Portrait". They are all detected as duplicates.

In my opinion this should be corrected.
 

[GHammer]

Duplicates:

In my opinion MC11 detects duplicate files incorrectly as it checks the name field instead of the file name. Example:

File 1:
Name: Jim, Matt and Steve
Filename: ..../Jim, Matt and Steve.jpg

File2:
Name: Jim, Matt and Steve
Filename .../Jim, Matt and Steve(1).jpg

Handheld synchronisation detects those files as duplicates, although they are different images with different file names, although the name field is the same.

With audio files the name field is mostly unique, but with images or documents the name field does not need to be unique. Many of my images contain i.e. the name "Self-Portrait". They are all detected as duplicates.

In my opinion this should be corrected.
 

No easy (read fast) way to do it but I'd rather see a hash compared. Maybe MC could spawn a low priority thread to hash files while it ran?

But then the same file tagged differently would not be found.

Guess you could just hash the contents and ignore tags.

[SteveG]

What does "Initalizing Portable" exactly do that it takes soo long?

The first time a portable or a drive is defined, "Initializing Portable" analyzes the files on the device and creates a database that can be retrieved quickly in future connections.

A duplicate file is a file that has the same Name, Artist, Album, Genre and Track number tag information. You should see warnings about this. When you have duplicates, only one or the other file will be sent, not both.

Steve

[Jaguu]

A duplicate file is a file that has the same Name, Artist, Album, Genre and Track number tag information. You should see warnings about this. When you have duplicates, only one or the other file will be sent, not both.

Will you be able to add filename detection for duplicates for image files?

[SteveG]

The whole point of matching on the tag information is to make the system not dependent on filenames. I understand the concern that with images, there typically will be many duplicates under the current system. I will put some time into thinking through how best to handle this.

Steve

[Dutch Peter]

A duplicate file is a file that has the same Name, Artist, Album, Genre and Track number tag information. You should see warnings about this. When you have duplicates, only one or the other file will be sent, not both.

But this does not mean that if I change the genre of a song on my PC, that it will be synched to my external drive. And consequently the song with the old Genre (on my external drive) would be deleted (using option 'delete unselected files during synchronisation').

Or did I find a bug???

[Dutch Peter]

The whole point of matching on the tag information is to make the system not dependent on filenames. I understand the concern that with images, there typically will be many duplicates under the current system. I will put some time into thinking through how best to handle this.

My 3rth party software (Total Commander) also looks at the time stamp of the file.
When a tag changes, the file gets an new time stamp and therefore it should overwrite the old version.
Maybe a suggestion to consider.

[Dutch Peter]

But this does not mean that if I change the genre of a song on my PC, that it will be synched to my external drive. And consequently the song with the old Genre (on my external drive) would be deleted (using option 'delete unselected files during synchronisation').

Or did I find a bug???

Sorry, I changed the DateYear field which is not taken into account.
With checking the timestamp it would have ....

[Dutch Peter]

Being a world citizen now ...

I checked the timestamps of the sync files. They are overwritten during sync with the system date. I don not think that it should do that. It should copy the original date!

Total Commander does that, and therefor it can be used for analyses later on.

Is there a reason why the file date is changed during sync?