redirection of media files

[poppie]

I am using Musicbee to manage my collection for quite a while now, and in my opinion there is only one feature missing.
Media Monkey (as well as the VNC Player) support redirected media files via asx. The problem I have (and I’m sure some others too) is, that several files are duplicates, but belong to different albums (e.g. best of, compilations etc.). Removing all of them and keeping just one version isn’t an option, if you want to keep an album complete.  A great tool for Mediamonkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=39312) solves this problem in a very neat way. It creates a file, which keeps (and shows up in the player) all necessary information about a track (including album, track-number , play count, volume adjustment etc.) but redirects the player to a “master” file, which will be actually played. The information is stored in a kind of XML type file (if necessary, I can provide one of them). My feature request would be to support these kind of files. Personally, creation of an asx file via MediaMonkey would be fine for me (it is also possible to undo the asx – simply copying the master file and rebuild the tags). Maybe there is already a way to handle redirections in MB, but I didn’t find a way to do this yet.

Thanks

poppie

[Steven]

if you send me one via PM that would be helpful.
One thing i'm not clear about right now is where you have say 3 duplicates, is the idea that 2 of the files are deleted and those 2 files are replaced with an asx file that references the 1 remaining file?

[poppie]

Hi Steven,

You're absolutely right. The following asx-file would replace a a track named: "(38) Accept - Balls To The Wall"  from the album: "40 Greatest Metal Songs (VH1)" by a reference to "(1) Accept - Balls To The Wall" from the album "Balls to the wall".

So, any time you play the album "40 Greatest Metal Songs (VH1)", the track No. 38 will be played from the "Balls to the wall" album.

I hope, I make myself clear :-)

I'm not sure abaout sending a file via pm, but anyway, the file is just plain text.

For example: this would be "(38) Accept - Balls To The Wall.asx" stored in the "40 Greatest Metal Songs (VH1)" folder.

<ASX version = "3.0">
  <PARAM NAME = "Encoding" VALUE = "utf-8" />
  <TITLE>MediaMonkey redirection file</TITLE>
  <ABSTRACT>Generated by Track Redirection script</ABSTRACT>
  <COPYRIGHT>(c)2009 Zvezdan Dimitrijevic</COPYRIGHT>
  <ENTRY>
    <REF HREF = "I:\Musik\A\Accept\Balls To The Wall\(01) Accept - Balls To The Wall.mp3" />
    <TITLE>Balls To The Wall</TITLE>
    <AUTHOR>Accept</AUTHOR>
    <PARAM NAME = "WM/AlbumTitle" VALUE = "40 Greatest Metal Songs (VH1)" />
    <PARAM NAME = "WM/AlbumArtist" VALUE = "Verschiedene" />
    <PARAM NAME = "WM/Genre" VALUE = "Heavy Metal" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Length" VALUE = "343118" />
    <PARAM NAME = "WM/TrackNumber" VALUE = "38" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Track Volume" VALUE = "-3,57999992370605" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Bitrate" VALUE = "192000" />
    <PARAM NAME = "FileSize" VALUE = "8273631" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Timestamp" VALUE = "2010-07-28 21:44:44" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Added" VALUE = "2010-08-04 18:21:05" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Sample Rate" VALUE = "44100" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Channels" VALUE = "1" />
    <PARAM NAME = "IsVBR" VALUE = "0" />
    <PARAM NAME = "Peak Value" VALUE = "0,927155017852783" />
    <BANNER HREF = "(38) Accept - Balls To The Wall.1.jpeg">
      <PARAM NAME = "Item Storage" VALUE = "0" />
      <PARAM NAME = "Item Type" VALUE = "3" />
    </BANNER>
    <BANNER HREF = "Various Artists - 40 Greatest Metal Songs (VH1).jpg">
      <PARAM NAME = "Item Storage" VALUE = "1" />
      <PARAM NAME = "Item Type" VALUE = "0" />
    </BANNER>
  </ENTRY>
</ASX>

poppie

[Steven]

i've put in support for reading and updating the asx files - i'll do the process of identifying duplicates and creation of the initial asx file at a later date.
If you want to try it out today let me know and i will send a link, otherwise it will be in the next update