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[Cotton-Eyed Loo]

Howdy,

Now that my home system is up and running like a dream I want to use the Media Server feature to gain access to my collection from around the world, mostly from my desk at work.

I have all the basics working, I can see and search through my library from work but here are two issues I could use help with:

1) because my home internet connection is slow upstream (100kbs or so) I need to buffer an entire track in advance - ideally I could buffer at least two entire tracks so that I don't have to wait between songs and I can take advantage of lag in bandwidth consumption to pull down data for songs that are in the play queue.

2) because I normally play uncompressed music (stored as APE files) I need to either mirror my entire library in some other format [say VBR mp3] or dynamically build temporary mp3 files based on the current play list. I do not want to change my primary storage scheme to be lossy. I'd really prefer not to save 4500 songs in two formats - but this might be an option if there is no other way, especially given #3.

3) Unrelated to playing at work. I am preparing to buy a portable digital music player (10GB ). As with my work setup I am content to listen to compressed data to expand my variety but I'd rather not have to keep two copies of my entire collection just so that I can sync some onto a handheld. Having never used a PDMP with MJ I have no idea what to expect - can I have 'convert' be the first step in 'sync onto device'?

I'd love some suggestions or comments on how to: force larger buffer [especially greater than one track], encode dynamically for streaming based on demand queue, encode dymanically for syncing based on sync queue.

thanks,
loo

[Matt]

Hey Loo,

You can't really do #1 or #2 with MJ now.  For now, you'll need two copies of your library.

However, you may want to consider just buying a $100 hard drive to put your favorite few hundred CD's on, and then take that to work.  If installation is a problem, check out the USB or firewire drives. (but they're more spendy)

As for #3, MJ will do conversion as it uploads to a handheld.  Other users may have more advice here...

Take care and let us know what you cook up.

-Matt

[JimH]

If you do USB, make sure it's USB 2.0.  It's neck and neck with firewire now.  May become the new standard.

[LouVanCrinkle]

Wait wait wait and you shall receive. Seems like you rolled this into MC11 - THANK YOU. Time and time again you guys prove what a consumer sensitive software team you are. I have many friends who are delighted to have taken my advice and adopted MJ and then MC.