OK, so I copy a CD with the Central, there are no RID's in the Central's database at this point.

For that particular CD you just ripped, that is correct.

But the Central has no RID field in the comments at this point. I guess that you have to rerun riorid.jar each time you add files to the Central?

Not each time. Only when I feel like synching stuff up between my multiple devices. But yeah. I've set it up so it's just an icon I double-click on, and it only does it for files missing RIDs so it goes quick.

After these files are coded in the database properly then you place the files on the hard drive manually using the same directory tree.

I can. Actually, now that I've got full playlist synchronization and full copy/paste between devices, I'm seriously considering removing the PC's hard disk from the loop altogether.

When you had a file on the hard drive that you wanted moved over to the empeg and Central, you would copy first to the files to the empeg via jEmplode therefore adding RID's then copy the file to the Central then run riorid.jar to get the RID's synced?

Or I could use Jemplode for all of those operations since it calculates the RIDs on the fly, therefore being able to skip running riorid.jar. The only time I really need to run riorid is if I'm first populating a device with RIDs or if I ripped the CD on the Central which doesn't calculate the RIDs.

Are you deciding if the playlist entry needs to be copied manually by looking at the database fields when copying files from the empeg to the Central?

Of course not. The whole point of the RIDs is so that Jemplode can do that hard work for me. I go to the Central and select <playlistname> and hit <copy>, then I go to the Empeg and hit <parent-playlistname> and hit <paste>, then Jemplode does the rest.