Request - Speeding Up The Rescan Of A Network of MP3 Files

[Guest]

Since I have a large collection of MP3 files, something that would GREATLY help me out (since MM, at times, will hang when rescanning 70k files, which is highly irritating after leaving it alone for 14+ hours and having to do it folder by folder manually):

In the "Add Folders" dialogue window (which, BTW, needs to alphabetize the folder names, which it currently doesn't), add a means to define if the user wants to skip over any folders with a folder creation date of 99/99/9999; when that checkbox is checked and a valid date is entered, the folder creation date is checked prior to taking action on its contents; if earlier than the cutoff date its contents aren't even checked/compared with MM; if equal to or greater than the cutoff date then MM does it's thing to add the music info to the database.

My scenario right now is adding approximately 170 new CD titles to my database; my server has 5500 CD's on it... and I just wasted 14 hours rescanning the entire server and have MM hang with roughly 70% of it completed.. and now I'm stuck doing it manually (to bypass wasting another 14+ hours)...

Hoping to get some feedback on this idea, especially from other MM users with large collections... seems that everytime that I leave something on the wishlist forum that it doesn't go anywhere ;(

[Javier]

I sympathize with you. I'm trying to consolidate about 70gb of M4a files from my Itunes folder into my MM database (currently at 114K files) and MM crashes on Rescan. Yes, I can restart the application, re-highlight the Network folder and start again, but that's a pain. Itunes saved everything into FXX folders and my XX goes to 59, so I have to manually scan each folder because for some reason you can't scan the entire drive at once. But the crashes are becomming unbearable.

I've used MM for nearly 3 years now and someone has to take a serious look at this. With large music libraries, no one puts them on one disk (they weren't that available or that cheap until lately) so the network option is what you had to do, but it's not really any fun getting your music in.

[anon coward]

just adding a "me too" to this request.
As an example, how come picasa doesn't take as long to scan my network for pictures metadata?

[Lowlander]

You have several settings that might speed up your scanning.

The first setting is update track info when rescanning. If you turn it off MediaMonkey will only scan new tracks not once already in the library.

If you turn it on (advisable if you change/move tracks outside of MM) you need to consider to also enable only for changed timestamp. This will only scan files that have a different timestamp (normally due to edits) than the library timestamp for the file.

The last option is the filemonitor which can automate this process for you (MediaMonkey Gold).

Another things is if you can figure out why MediaMonkey hangs during scan. This might be due to a temporary network hickup. Maybe MediaMonkey should have better resume on network failure mechanism which would permit some hickups without failing.

Another method is to add new cd's to a new folder and only scan that folder. Then you can use the auto-organize feature to move them to the normal folder structure you use (I use this myself).

[Peke]

One more addon. AAC, M4A and other few other popular file formats can make mess in Scanning. They use Third party plugins and not certificated and without garantie that they will work (althru most of them do work).

Lots of times I'm trying to help the best I can, along with lots of users here (on which I thank them) even it is not strictly related to MM and its native support.

Regarding issue:

Another method is to add new cd's to a new folder and only scan that folder. Then you can use the auto-organize feature to move them to the normal folder structure you use (I use this myself).

I Agree with that completly. The new ones should be separated from music archive and tup into it afted whole check (Duplicate search, Tag Fixing and then Auto-Organize).

MM Saves scans of each file in library as soon as it starts scanning of next one, so locating where MM stopped is relatively easy. Setting MM to skip thru already scanned files is good hint and can be time saver for large collections.

[Javier]

I really appreciate the suggestions you guys have made, and I've tried them all, but I've had no luck. I'm still re-scanning after every 100-200 songs (only 6k more to go). Once they are in MM everything seems to work fine so the plug-ins are working on that end. The hint that it may be some network glitch might be true, but MM is the only program that hiccups here, and again, only on the re-scan not on the playing the music side. Once they are in the library everything is as it should be and I can play from network drive to network drive until the cows come home and never have a drop out of any kind.

I thank you guys for being around and offering your suggestions. As a long time lurker, I've learned a lot, and if it wasn't for the fact that I'm leaving town for a long trip (and need to configure my music devices with new music) I'd just suffer through this quietly, but patience is not my strong suit.

I'm thinking of building a new computer with drive space for all my separate shares and doing all this locally (eliminate the network part at least) but here's the question, I have a lifetime license but I suspect that uninstalling MM from the unit it's on loses the license, and it was so long ago I know that email was long lost, so what's the process for getting it sent out again so I can move MM to another computer.

Thanks again

[Teknojnky]

registration info is stored in your registry @

Code: Select all

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Songs-DB]
"UserName"=""
"Password"=""

Obviously with your specfic name and password key.

You can export that whole songs-db key to save the registration and several other settings then import it to your new computer.

[Anubis]

I'm surprised, if MM is "crashing" and you can reproduce, why not run the DEBUG version and capture it and send it into the dev's?
Just a thought....

[Peke]

Anubis,
Who will come to that, I was ocupied with solution that this didn't come to my mind Silly me.

[Lowlander]

The license can also be recovered from the download page of MediaMonkey (little link).

There is also tips on the forum how to use MediaMonkey over the network and share the DB.