I am having some wierd problems with Win98 and Emplode and I'm hoping someone can help. Basically, when I was using Emplode on NT, everything worked great. Emplode runs under Win98 just fine, but when I drag and drop files or folders from the Win98 Exlporer into Emplode, the order of the files is all screwy in Emplode. Previously it seemed that whatever order the files were displayed in explorer, they would show up in the same order in Emplode...and subsequently on my Empeg. However, even when I have sorted the explorer window by clicking on the name column header or by using the arrange by name command....when I drag and drop them into emplode...they are in some non-sensical order there....

Does anyone have any idea at all what is going on here? Win98 is pretty brain dead I have to say, but I have no choice, there are certain audio related apps which require Win98, and that's where I'm doing my MP3 ripping too....so...

???

A complete description of the way the song order is handled by Windows Exploiter can be found here. The work-around I describe there is my way of making sure the songs always drop in the correct order. Works for me every time.

This isn't (technically) Emplode's fault. It just drops the songs in the order Explainer gave them to it. But in my humble opinion, Emplode should pre-sort either by file name or by ID3 track number when it gets a drop from Exploder. Empeg guys: Is such a feature in the works?

___________
Tony Fabris

Thanks...I'll check that out for sure...

I agree though, I think Emplode could be smart enough to upload tracks in order based in ID3 track number or sorted by name...but I will also add that this should be optional. Because if I have a song that belongs to a particular album and its track number 3, but I want it also in another playlist as track number 234 out of 569, then I don't want to have to set the track number or change the name just so it will sort properly.

But I guess what I just said doesn't make sense. If I have 10 tunes I'm dragging and dropping, that group of ten tunes should be sorted amongst themselves based on either name or track number (i prefer the track number) and then placed at the of whatever playlist they are being dropped into. Then if I want to move them around inside the playlist the way we can do today....so be it.

Please correct me if I'm wrong here...but I'd also like to see a way with emptool to upload a particular tune and explicitly assign a position number at that time...

Anyway, thanks again..I'll check out this link on exploiter...

-steve

Ok, read your thing about selection order. What a royal pain. Those MS programmers are DEFINITELY on crack!

Well, here's something to add to the pot. I typically don't select tunes. I typically have a huge tree of tunes in two levels deep of folders...(artist/album/tunes). I usually group select several artists folders (each of which have one or more albums, each of which have 10 or so tunes inside). And then I drag and drop the whole lot. Emplode turns the folders into playlists with the tunes and all intact......except....not in the right order..

It was working perfectly fine for a while. Don't ask me why all of sudden its not..unless it has to do with Win98 vs. NT. But I think a DEFINITE improvement to 1.1 would be to improve the dropping characteristics so that the files are added to emplode in SOME kind of logical and predictable order, most likely based first on track number, but if track number doesn't exist, then based on file name. That's better than unpredictable. And if Win98 cannot ensure that they will be added in the same order as they appear in explorer, then emplode should not be counting on that.

Its a major pain for me to go through hundreds of albums and upload them one at a time, and for each, manually create a playlist and then make sure to copy all the tunes by selecting them and dragging them in the right way. 500 albums...no thanks. I'd much rather just drag and drop the whole lot in one large operation....

Thanks again for this tip about the selection order...

It was definitely working for a while though. I don't know what's different about NT. Maybe I'll just mount my Win98 machine from my NT machine and run emplode on NT....it'll be way slow though...since the files will have to make two network trips....

There's a fix for this in the v1.0 branch of the code (might make it out into the wild in a hypothetical v1.02), and in v1.1. It sorts the imported tracks and directories alphabetically (by filename) at each level of recursion.

It's done by filename because it's easier, and because quite a lot of people put the track number at the start of the filename anyway.

v1.1 also deduplicates playlists and tunes when you drop them in, so you can just pick up your root music directory, and drop the whole lot in.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Well....I'll look forward to all these new features... For now I'll just be in drag and drop hell...

:-)

-steve

....it'll be way slow though...since the files will have to make two network trips....

I'd recommend getting a switch if you're doing this stuff regularly.

I just picked up a Bay Netgear 8-port 10/100 switch for quite a reasonable price -- my MP3s live on my Linux box, but I run emplode on my W2K box.

And, yes, I am that shallow that I based my buying decision on the pretty blue colour .


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

It was working perfectly fine for a while. Don't ask me why all of sudden its not..unless it has to do with Win98 vs. NT

What's happening is that your files are being imported into emlode in the order they are listed in the filesystem. If you open up a command prompt and do a "dir" on the directory you'll see that it's the same order as in emplode. When you upgraded from 98 to NT did you also convert your filesystem to NTFS? That might explain why they got reordered. At one point I used a program called "Tag&Rename" to organize my MP3's and it munged the order of all of my files.

I've seen utilities that will reorder your filesystem alphabetically but I can't remember any URL's. Try searching at the shareware sites.

-Dylan

I've seen utilities that will reorder your filesystem alphabetically but I can't remember any URL's. Try searching at the shareware sites.

I use Directory Toolkit. It does a lot of useful stuff, but I mostly use it for mass variable-text renames and physical sorting of my directories before I burn CD-R's.



_~= Dearing =~_
"WAY too happy about having #99."

v1.1 also deduplicates playlists and tunes when you drop them in, so you can just pick up your root music directory, and drop the whole lot in.

What parameters will determine what constitues a duplicate?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

What parameters will determine what constitues a duplicate?

Actually, I think this question got answered elsewhere on the BBS a couple weeks ago. If I recall correctly, a duplicate will be assumed if the tag data is all identical, and the file size is identical to the byte. I'm not certain, though, anyone have that link?

If I'm right, it brings up a question: If you have a song in the empeg that you've altered the tags after uploading (say, to expand the song name past 30 characters), then you drop the old version from the PC onto Emplode, will it duplicate the song?

___________
Tony Fabris

anyone have that link?

I think this is the one you're looking for, Tony.

Now that you mentioned it, I sort of remember seeing that post.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Yeah, that's the one, thanks.

My question still stands, though...

___________
Tony Fabris

... will it duplicate the song?

Yes, it will. I'm considering allowing the user to specify which tags they want used to decide duplicate-ness, possibly with the length. For example, you can specify that if the first 30 characters of the title match, it's the same song.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

For example, you can specify that if the first 30 characters of the title match, it's the same song.

Sounds like a good default behavior, and would take care of the situation I mentioned.

All the more reason for folks to get their tags correct before dropping the files into Emplode.

___________
Tony Fabris