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Otto is feisty and broken

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glynor:
I just thought I'd throw my opinion in here too (better late than never)...

MC12 is decidedly ho-hum to me.  I like the new skin, and the new unified interface.  I also like the display window a lot.  I really like some of the new video and image options.  However....

Otto is still too fiesty and broken for my tastes, and I agree that it is the only "high-profile" addition.  AND, I agree with others that the reaction is likely to be "finally" not "I have to have it".  All-in-all, I think it needs quite a bit more (at least 2 more "big ticket" features) before I'd say it deserves a major point release upgrade (and a new purchase price).

At this point, if I had to pay it would be a tough choice.  I'm still using MC11.1 on most of my machines because of my problems with Otto.   ::)

Oh, and as far as the services... I understand what you're saying Jim, but...  What are the market share on those services?  And what's the market share on the iTunes Store?  Maybe that will turn around and maybe it won't, but that's certainly not going to have any mass-market appeal to your user base right off.  Those things mostly appeal to corporate partners right now.

JimH:
Glynor,
Can you expand on "feisty and broken"?

Thanks.

glynor:
I posted my complaints here some time back, and most of them are still very applicable.  It's just not usable for me.  A quick run-down:

1. Too slow (not even close to fast enough), and not controllable as to when/if/how it scans the watched folders.
2. I can't maintain a list of folders that I want to run manual imports on (with excludes and whatnot) separately from the list of folders that I want Otto to watch.
3. Doesn't provide any real feedback on what it is doing.  Things just change with no explanation as to why or how.
4. To clunky to get into Tools-Options-Library to run manual imports now (since I have "Otto's Auto" disabled).
5. It re-imports things that I don't want imported (for example the old FLACs that I've converted to MP3s but haven't moved/deleted yet).  The alternative, to enable "Don't Reimport" isn't workable because I usually WANT to have everything show up (I don't want a bunch of orphaned files that MC ignores).  I just want to be able to easily "temporarily suspend" Otto (or schedule it as I mentioned above).

There are other smaller problems with the new system too.

One problem is that I've been using MC12 with a small subset of my real library, so I haven't really been able to test Otto in a "production" environment for some time.  I think I'll try to do that this weekend, but I haven't seen much in the build threads about any of these concerns really....

Matt:
You may be making it more complicated than it needs to be -- try letting it watch your whole library.

JimH:
When you set up any new folder, you can tell MC to watch it or not watch it.

Under Tools, there is an option to "Add folder to library".  This does an import of a single directory as you want (N:\music).

When you convert FLAC to MP3, you can have MC replace the FLAC file not add a new one.

The last two builds are a lot better in several respects.  If you haven't tested them, please do.

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