More > Media Center 12 (Development Ended)
Otto's Gone Schizo
glynor:
--- Quote from: Matt on July 07, 2006, 08:30:08 am ---We recommend leaving "Enable watch folders" checked.
Then there's no need to ever manually use "Check Folders Now..."
--- End quote ---
I tried it last night, just to see what would happen.
On my video editing machine (in the basement) I had 43 new hours of DV encoded (MOV wrapped) video. This worked out to about 540 GB of data. It was sitting on a Seagate 750GB drive in a nice USB2.0 external enclosure and connected to a Mac (the drive is shared using SAMBA on my network using Gigabit ethernet). I brought the drive home from work to use it as a test, but this is a very similar situation to how I use MC about once a week at work currently.
That's not to mention the other 10 hours or so of video my BeyondTV system had recorded on the "tivo drive", the newly converted XviD avi's that ended up in my regular "new" folder, and a smattering of FLACs and SHNs downloaded from etree.org. This stuff was all of lesser importance though, as the files are fairly small overall.
It took about 6.5 hours to finish importing, crashed 6 times (I'm assuming thumbnailing again), and slowed my network to a crawl for that entire period (except for immediately after the crashes until I restarted MC). This means that I can't use the auto import. And that's without using the work system where our photographers sometimes generate 2-3 hundred new 12.8 megapixel RAW+JPEG pictures in a single shoot. What part of this isn't clear?
If it's going to take that long, and transfer half a terrabyte across the network, I need to be able to control when it starts and ends (and it's important to see the "finished importing" report). I agree that Otto's a nice feature. It's not set up the way I'd prefer, but that's not a huge deal. I really just need to have access to the old standard import function (even if it just uses Otto's list of folders). A toolbar button and the automation commands to initiate the import, and an easy way to see when it's done and what was imported (and removed). A cancel button is also pretty essential.
One of the most important ways I use MC in my workflow is to consolidate all of my new media from a variety of locations before I add any tags to it, and then tag and edit them, and then move them to their "final" locations (project folders and archive areas). It seems like the workflow most of you describe is the opposite... You create and tag the files elsewhere, then move them into a folder where MC will "see" them, and then leave them there. To me, that's missing the real power of MC's organizational capabilities.
I realize that my examples are extreme, but I'm certainly not the only one who has a HTPC DVR drive on a network and might import 20-30 GB of MPEG-2 data in one fell swoop. I imagine if you're running 100Mbit ethernet, and you need to transfer that much data you'll need to be able to control how and when it does so.... Imagine "accidentally" leaving MC open and trying to place a Skype call? Or playing Unreal Tournament (which is a good example, I often leave MC open playing music while I play games)?
Doof:
Otto works great for me. But I guess I'm not doing anything weird.
I rip using MC's Secure Mode - rip to single file - APE High
Anything I download goes into a P2P - Incoming folder
I import pictures from my camera into an Import folder under My Pictures and the same for DV off of my DV camera.
Otto's set to watch all of these folders. I have a smartlist set up to show me any files that reside in any of my import folders, but only really need to check it if I'm doing a download and don't realize it's finished.
Actually, the only thing that would be cool to add to MC for me in this area, would be like some little indicator "LED" type thing in the status bar letting me know that Otto just added something to the library.
Doof:
What exactly is being transferred across the network during an import? It shouldn't be transferring the entire file, should it? Or does it have to just to read the tags and other stats from the file?
glynor:
--- Quote from: Doof on July 07, 2006, 09:05:02 am ---What exactly is being transferred across the network during an import? It shouldn't be transferring the entire file, should it? Or does it have to just to read the tags and other stats from the file?
--- End quote ---
My guess would be that it does. It certainly seems to need to (based on my tests last night) at least for DV MOVs and MPEG-2 files!
I had a network monitor running, and it pegged out at near 40% of the 1 Gbit theoretical max for most of the time (which is basically as high as it goes). The importing machine also "dropped" a bunch of pings that I had running towards it from my Linux box -- which it never does normally.
glynor:
I should just say... It's not that I'm asking for anything new. I just want to be able to keep using it the way I've always used it. :-[
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