[Wish] Reading Archives

-Wyse- · Post by **-Wyse-** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 12:59 am

I don't know if it is feasible (although i couldn't imagine why not), to be able to read Archive's as though it were just albums.

This firstly saves diskspace, secondly it offers greatly enhanced manageability (no more misarchiving one song of an album, etc)
Thirdly, it would be much easier sharewise. I'm now forced to have my collection twice, once archived as albums (*.rar +- 250mb Album (APE)), and once as single files for playback....

I wouldn't mind NOT being able to edit them, whilst as archive, i'd first check them, and once satisfied with the tags add them to an archive.

Ikkempc · Post by **Ikkempc** » Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:46 pm

+ 1

Thufir Hawat · Post by **Thufir Hawat** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 7:54 am

Very nice idea! foobar2000 has this functionality

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 11:06 am

+2!

Post by **Lowlander** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 12:46 pm

Depending on the audio format you have compression might not have a lot of size benefit. This request shows up once in a while on the forum.

Thufir Hawat · Post by **Thufir Hawat** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:09 am

Its less for the size benefit as for better handling of whole albums. In an archive one can bundle the audio files, the cover images, a playlist, some nfo/txt files AND one can create the archives with recoverie info s.t. even with a broken cd one get the whole album.

onkel_enno · Post by **onkel_enno** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:25 am

So what's the difference between a single directory for each album and a single archive for each album? I don't see any advantage.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 9:26 am

onkel_enno wrote:So what's the difference between a single directory for each album and a single archive for each album? I don't see any advantage.

The advantage is:

Its less for the size benefit as for better handling of whole albums. In an archive one can bundle the audio files, the cover images, a playlist, some nfo/txt files AND one can create the archives with recoverie info s.t. even with a broken cd one get the whole album.

Think of it as putting your perfected albums in a secure vault, complete with full security and insurance!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 9:41 am

Can't you just use something like winzip for this? Doing something like this in MM (which I also consider to be unnecessary) only serves to take the Developer's time away from more important and more universally appreciated improvements.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 11:19 am

Sure you can do this winzip or rar or any number other 'zip' or archive programs...

the problem is MM can't read them..

Post by **Lowlander** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 2:46 pm

Actually archives would be worse as when the archive gets corrupted your loose the whole album. When using files in a folder a files gets corrupted you loose that file which if your lucky is an album art file instead of a song.

Folders work well in MediaMonkey as MediaMonkey moves external files along with the songs when using auto-organize files. Of course not all file types are supported, but you can always request the support of additional file types to be recognized by auto-organize files.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:41 pm

Actually archives would be worse as when the archive gets corrupted your loose the whole album

Totally agree.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 6:33 pm

Except you can generate recovery info, at least with RAR.

Recovery record and recovery volumes allow to reconstruct even physically damaged archives.

http://www.rarlab.com/rar_archiver.htm

Steegy · Post by **Steegy** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 9:20 am

Nice feature, but I don't see a priority for this.

Reason:
- takes developers time with for only a small number of users
- why would an archive be handled correctly and now a folder not? An archive is just a folder (structure) that's compressed..., so reliability doesn't really matter here.
- archives wouldn't be much smaller, as most music (mp3, wma, ogg, mp4, ...) and cover images (jpg, ...) are already compressed, so size doesn't really matter here.
- it would make MM quite a bit slower (compressing & decompressing).

The main reason I see is that people want to protect their music from themselves (compressed files don't cut/copy so easily) and that they don't have to manually compress a music folder if they want to send it somewhere as one file (btw: this can be done using a script).

And BTW: I think "just reading" archives wouldn't be enough for most people that use MM as music manager (it would be nice, but might create more demanding wishes).

Indeed, archives can become unrecoverable damaged, sometimes even if they have recovery info.
An compressed album as secure vault: delete only one file and the whole album is gone. Yeah...