From the discussion going on in this forum, I have figured out that there several levels of awareness from user regarding audio file integrity.
- Basic users just let Media Center update tags on the fly (as they are editing them) and write to audio files at will;
- More advanced users disable writing on tags on the fly and let Media Center update tags only on demand.
I have found that even more advanced users can have some more needs pertaining data file maintenance. They would surely benefit from adding two fields into the Media Center database, natively managed by MC itself.
- An archive bit that, similarly to a standard file system, indicates whether the file is in sync with the tags in MC's library. When the archive bit is on, everything is in sync. When the archive bit if off for a certain file, it means that tags in file need to be updated from library.
- A checksum field that stores the checksum (MD5) for the audio file. Using this field, a checksum verification can be run periodically (before starting a backup). If some checksums fail, it means there is something wrong with the files, and they must be checked.
Updating tags into file from library would of course require the calculation of a new checksum in order to keep everything consistent.
It seems that the overall system (archive bit + checksum) is robust, but requires some administrative efforts. Are advanced users ready to use such a powerful feature?
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Topic: Checksum and archive bit (Read 1179 times)