It seems as though the stacks function has become a forgotten memory in the wake of changes to the theater view and networking. What we have is barely functioning for me and has led to more headaches than it has solved. I run two concurrent libraries (one with my original FLAC rips) and one with portable-quality copies. Here are my problems/ideas:
1. Autostacking must be improved. It is a chore to go through 100,000 files looking for anomalies in the stacking behavior. Begin checking filepaths (up to a certain level eg My Music/(FLAC/MP3)/Artist/Album/Filename.xxx) or artist/title/album groupings.
2. Allow a converted cache to be built without the need to connect a handheld device and automatically stack it. The only way I can work around this right now is adding my external drive as a handheld device and converting directly to the drive. This a) doesn't stack anything and b) is cumbersome and slow. If I enable the stack, then I have TWO copies of my converted files in two different places, one stacked, the other not.
3. Add an option to the converter dialog to stack converted files.
4. Improve the application of changed tags from the higher stacked file to the lower. For some reason this is hit or miss for me. Some metadata is transferred fine, others are not.
5. Use the lower stacked file (the portable-size one, in my case) as the default source for the library server. Maybe make it a client-side choice based on bandwidth concerns? If I'm on my home network, I would want to stream the FLAC file, if I was on the internet somewhere else, I'd want to use the MP3/AAC.
I'm in a bit of a rush right now, so if I think of anything else, I'll add it later.
Thanks!
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Topic: Improving the stacks function... (Read 919 times)