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[jgreen]

I'm not sure why you wouldn't want a "retry" button for accessing CD info on yadb.  Yes, I could walk down the road and knock on a neighbor's door and ask to borrow their internet connection, or drive an hour to find an internet cafe.  But being able to "retry" accessing info for ANY PARTICULAR CD, even one (gasp) previously marked as "data unavailable", seems so much simpler. 

[JimH]

jg,
Ya, you have a point there, but as you may know, a person can right click on a CD (in the tree) and get (more or less) a retry.

Nevertheless, we are working ourselves into a virtual lather over metadata, upon which this problem she is included.  Stand by.

jr

[jgreen]

JimH--
That was a good suggestion and I was really hopeful--really.  But I get a "failure to connect" error dialogue 100% of the time I use your method to retry a failed connection, while other programs are skipping onto the internet all around MC.  This leads me to suspect that MC is not actually retrying, but simply aping the dialogue box for the initial failure.

Also, I'm now actually thinking MC yadb lookup is having a harder time getting an internet connection on my computer than other programs I won't name, but whose initials rhyme with E.A.C. 

[John Gateley]

jgreen - something is going on. I use the right-click "lookup CD from database" for testing all the time, it works fine for me.

To make sure I understand: the first time you put a CD in it will look it up, and give success or maybe failure (especially given the "construction" going on with the site last week) but when you use the right click it fails 100% of the time to connect?

j

[jgreen]

John--

Thanks for looking into this.  Here's what's been happening, AFAICT:

I insert a CD to rip, and if my EV-DO connection is dormant, MC will almost always fail to wake it up.  If I (successfully) send for a google page through firefox, my default browser, while doing this, MC will connect more often than not.  NOTE:  other web sites or programs have similar issues connecting through the EV-DO, more or less.  MC is one of the less successful.

The few times I tried it, once MC failed to connect, the right-click method NEVER succeeded.  I just tried it as an initial attempt, and it didn't work, either.  Track record for the right-click method:  0-10.

[jgreen]

Okay, here's a question:  does the MC yadb lookup go through IE?  If so, is it subject to the user-defined settings for security (active X, Java, etc)?  Because I can tell you I've got IE trussed up pretty tightly in that dept.  My new theory:  MC relies on an active X control in IE to do this, and I've got all of those singing high C.

[John Gateley]

Yes, MC uses the IE engine to connect to the YADB website and get the info...

j

[glynor]

Yes, MC uses the IE engine to connect to the YADB website and get the info...

I realize it's pretty darn low on the ol' Priority Pole but since this has repeatedly caused other problems in the past, is there any plan in place to replace using the MS ActiveX control in MC with a built-in internet engine?  There are plenty of non-restrictively-licensed open source engines out there (cough -- gecko -- cough) that could be used without having to write one in-house from scratch...

[jgreen]

Collectively, you guys have pretty much answered my question.  I would emphasize that my system is particluarly balky in accessing the internet, AFAICT.  That being said, EAC has been able to do so 100% of the time, beating all other programs, Firefox included.  To review, EAC is FREE, so whatever system they are using can be FREELY copied.

Is this a "deal killer"?  (jgreen contemplates throwing a tantrum.)  No, of course not.  But until I hear of a change in the yadb lookup I'm just going to keep using EAC, which is a royal PITA since everything has to be kept track of, and the naming rules are so limited.

[glynor]

That being said, EAC has been able to do so 100% of the time, beating all other programs, Firefox included.  To review, EAC is FREE, so whatever system they are using can be FREELY copied.

Actually, from EAC's web site...

Even if you are free to copy the program for private purposes, it is not allowed to 

    * Make changes to the executable and distribute it
    * Disassemble / decompile the executable
    * Spread it together with other programs on CD-ROM, web sites or any other media without my permission. It is allowed to put it up on free FTP sites or make links directly to my homepage. Of course you can pass a copy of it to your family and friends.
    *  For commercial use a special license is needed

EAC is free as in beer, but not as in speech.  I wasn't suggesting that they use firefox for the control by the way (which would mean you'd need firefox installed to use MC, an absurd proposition).  I was suggesting they use the available source code for the gecko engine to build their own control (there might even already be a control available that does this for free) and use that inside MC.  This'd be legit.  Gecko also isn't as encumbered by many of the GPL restrictions I know JRiver would be wary of (which is why I suggested it).

EDIT:  Actually, Gecko is available wrapped in an ActiveX control.  Read more here.

[JimH]

jgreen,
As a work-around (I know, I know, but..) you could click on MC's Start Page first.

Maybe your network card can be configured differently?

[JimH]

jg,
We spent a lot of time thinking about your problem today.  I hope you'll see something soon.

[jgreen]

JimH and jriver crew--

Just to repeat, thank you for looking at this, it seems to be working fine now.

With a pantload of CDs to rip, I was looking at using 3 different programs to rip, convert and tag, versus MC which can do all of this stuff at once while playing music and tagging files.