I've been considering using mp3tofid for a while to make syncing my empeg easier when I fix up tags or add a bunch of music (which I've done recently). After a small case of dependency hell, I now have mp3tofid v4.03 compiling and running happily on my MythTV machine.

On my PC my MP3s are organised as


I also have a couple of "special" top level directories called "Comedy", "Various", "Soundtracks", "New Uploads", "Language", "Singles" and "Audio Books" for generally non music tracks. With jemplode I've ordered things such that these special ones are at the end and "A" to "Z" are uninterrupted.

The issues I see with mp3tofid:

1) I can't order those special directories to the end, regardless of what I do. I can run jemplode afterwards but any resync with mp3tofid will reverse that immediately. This not a big issue but will be annoying. I could create another playlist in the top I guess and put everything in there.

2) I have a custom shuffle that puts all my marked tracks in a random order at the beginning followed by the rest of the tracks (shuffle0=Marked,marked=32768,random=1 in config.ini). This alls a favourite random on any playlist. If I use mp3tofid I'll lose all my marked files which I'd really prefer not to. Has anyone considered some method to prevent losing marked status and play counts? Very difficult with the fids changing. In fact if I don't clear the dynamic data after the mp3tofid sync random other tracks will get marked. I was thinking some kind of logic to get the marked tracks from a jemplode export and then creating a script or similar to "remark" the appropriate FIDs back on the empeg.

3) My MP3s are currently stored on a windows XP machine (i.e. NTFS). The inodes "created" by the samba share will change upon rebooting/remounting this share resulting in mp3tofid getting confused. I can understand that and can move the MP3s to a linux machine I guess. It will make tagging etc slower though since it's on the other end of a wireless link. Just annoying.

4) If I ever re-create the filesystem on the PC (upgrade machine etc), I'll lose all the inodes and any marked tracks I've created (or kept intact subject if 2 is at all solvable) will be lost again. At the very least I'd have to resync everything again.

5) My "New Uploads" playlist consists of links/shortcuts to newly added music to put it in easy reach. I create these in jemplode now using the Deep Paste function for new albums I've loaded. I could use something like ctime but then the album would be out of order. How can I recreate these links from a Windows machine accessing a samba share for mp3tofid to follow.

Anyone have any suggestions or input to get around my "issues"? Should I just stick with jemplode?

Thanks