Hi.

Since I store all my MP3s on the empeg as well as on the PC, I really miss a way to pre-organize my MP3s on the PC (and back these preoganized files up) and afterwards upload the whole bunch to the empeg. This preorganized MP3 database might be in the form of a modified fid structure like on the empeg (with the effect of easily supporting multiple references to a single file, but being proprietary) or using cascaded m3u playlists (which are supported by some (PC) players IIRC).
This would make it easier to rebuild the empeg database after a disc crash, because one wouldn´t need to re-enter all those extra playlists that are not reflected by the directory structure on the local hard disc.
Even more useful, this might introduce a way to implement the already requested emulation of a USB drive, because it would be possible to have a 1-to-1 match of disc contents on the PC and on the empeg (were the empeg might just return empty files on the attempt to read a mp3 file, but the actual content on attempts to read directory structures or database files). No need to worry about ways to introduce dupe detection or other workarounds to the problems listed in the relevant thread on the bbs.

cu,
sven
(MkII 12GB blue now green, #080000113)

I really miss a way to pre-organize my MP3s on the PC (and back these preoganized files up) and afterwards upload the whole bunch to the empeg.

You can do this right now.

Simply organize all the files on your PC in a folder/subfolder structure, with the names of each folder corresponding to the names of the playlists that you want. In my case, this structure is mostly artist/album, with some other structures ("Various", "Humor", etc.) sprinkled in.

Then, when you fill your Empeg for the first time, just drag the contents of the parent folder onto Emplode. It will create a playlist tree that is the same as your PC's hard disk structure.

As far as updating based on this structure is concerned, I think I heard that there might be some features coming in 1.1 to help you in this respect.

This doesn't take into account "mood" playlists, where you make copies of the song files in other playlists. For me, though, it's not a big deal to re-create my mood playlists. Remember, I've actually DONE this once when I had a hard disk fail, so I know what I'm talking about.

___________
Tony Fabris

Hi Toni.

I know perfectly well that emplode is capable of handling the dropping of a directory tree. However, if you read my post again, you will see that I requested a more sophisticated variant of the method. I know how you organize your files, but it just isn´t the way that I organize them. I know my structure is redundant because it replicates some of the search functionality. My structure (on the empeg) looks like this:

artist	album	song
-->	"songs"	song
Mood	song
"All songs"	song
"All albums"	album	song

and so on. I would really like to have two things:

1. a PC (win or Linux) player that supports this structure
   
2. a way to import such a database from local harddisc to emplode/empeg

While I might be capable of producing the first (using LAME decoder or by writing an app that controls winamp), the second would clearly be a task for empeg in my opinion.

cu,
sven
(MkII 12GB blue now green, #080000113)