So How Do You Watch Folders?

Hi Clamm,

Thanks for replying to my message posted on the Get Satisfaction site.

> Clamm, an employee of Songbird, replied to So How Do You Watch Folders?,
> a question about Songbird.

> Hi there,

> Watch folders isn't available for OS X 10.4 but I suppose you use WINDOWS:

Yes, I am using Windows (XP).

> In that case the watch folders option should be found under Options -> Media
> Importer -> Watch folders...

Thanks.

But when I went there before, all I noticed was a list of EXTENSIONS.

This did not seem at all helpful.

The extensions are all highlighed with icons.

Going there now, I notice a side menu against a grey menu with other options.

This SHOULD be made clearer.

"Anyway. Before you do that you must delete all the entries from your
existing profile. ..."

Does the Songbird help feature explain this? If not, it should.

What is the "existing profile"? Where is at? Where is it documented?

In fact, Songbird really doesn't seem to have ANY real HELP feature,
isn't that true? Instead, Help takes you to a web site where you
can search amongst questions asked. It may provide some HELP,
but it's not an actual Help feature, one designed to display
the features of the program to its users.

There should be a HELP feature and documentation, e.g., a manual.

Without these, the program remains largely an enigma, one that
perhaps remains unused.

"... Songbird will only care about changes made after the watch folders
setting is activated and only regarding a specific folder. So the
ghosts would remain in your library if you don't delete them. This also means
that pointing watch folders to a folder where already is music won't force an
library update."

This is a BUG or poor design.

"So import the songs with the media importer... (There's no need for the
iTunes importer. Just point to the folder where all your music is stored).

"Maybe this helped..."

Yes, it did help. Thanks. I actually got Songbird to play something,
which I hadn't been able to do since I moved the recent eMusic tracks
from drive C:.

> Once again the steps:
> 1. Mark all your songs in the songbird library and delete them

How is this done? Sounds rather tedious.

> 2. Add your songs again by pointing to your music folder in the media
> importer

This assumes ONE music folder. I did have ONE initially but now have 4.

E:\Music
F:\Music
F:\eMusic
G:\Music

Both F: and G: are external USB drives. I ran out of room on E:,
my 2nd internal drive.

The folder of F:\eMusic was to help me see if I actually got all
my eMusic downloads.

Both Creative MediaSource and MediaMonkey allow for watching multiple
folders. MediaSource's feature is called a 'sniffer'. It seems
to me to be an ESSENTIAL feature. (I believe that either Foobar2000
or XMPlay also contain a similar feature.)

> 3. Activate "Watch folders" and point to the same folder

I did so for F:\eMusic (which only contains my most recent eMusic
downloads). Songbird then asked me if I wanted it to import my
entries. This seems like a dumb, redundant question. Of course
I did. Why else would I ask it to watch the folder? Just to waste
CPU resources?

I hope that this use of Get Satisfaction helps not only users
(they ARE needed) but also the company, to see what flaws exist
and how the product can be improved and made more usable.

It does need to be better, not just free.

Sincerely,

Dr. Heyman

Hi again...
Yes you are right... The documentation found in the help menu definetly lacks a lot of information. Will adress this further because at least in my opinion you are totally right.

And yes... GetSatisfaction is Songbirds ear to customers and everything posted in here (like the ideas section) influences the future design. There are several tools which help the Songbird team to deicde what should be done next.

I didnt it explain it properly... You can add music from as many folders as you wish. Just drag and drop them onto songbird. Only "Watch folders" supports one folder until now.

Its not a failure that you manually have to delete ghosts. Imagine a lot of people use Songbird on their laptop and have some of their music on an external drive at home. Starting songbird without that drive shouldnt delete that ghost files, because they're ghosts only as long as the drive isnt connected.

Asking you if you want to import your entries isnt a dump question. Importing takes quiet some time and comparing the entries in large libraries with contained files would also. So its saving resources asking you that question.

It will get better... Stay tuned... ;-)

Cheerio
☆\(*^▽^*)/☆

So, "Watch Folders" only ADD items to the library, but it won't remove them?
Is not a 'sync' per se, just a way to add, but not to keep sync'ed?

No it also shoud remove items from the library if you delete them directly in the watched folder

I have a problem or issue related to this, I think. My apologies if this should be a separate post but I guess I need an answer to my question before I know how to post it. These 'watch folder' issues make a bit more sense to me having read this entire thread. I do now understand why they are set up this way as I use multiple computers, drives & folders. However, when it comes to truly managing my media, I'm wanting to allow Songbird much more control over it on each individual computer & drive I use. My problem is this:

When deleting from my library I noticed that I can't get Songbird to delete it from a watched folder unless I opened the file location & delete it from that folder while actually in that folder. I understand why that is based on what is discussed previously about the intended design of 'watch folders'. However, this causes some extra work and tedium to my media management. With subscriptions and growing personal discovery, is there, can there, or will there be a way for me to have some way of deleting from my 'watched folder or folders' a file...when it is also deleted from my Songbird library. Maybe with an extra box to be ticked during 'library' deletion or some other type of configuration in options.

Currently (if I'm correct), it doesn't allow me true or complete overall media management. Opening every file location so as to delete a file from the watched folder in addition to deleting from my Songbird library is a lot of effort. I realized I wasn't cleaning up really anything but my Songbird library while leaving a lot of redundant & unwanted media in that watched folder, That takes up valuable hard drive space and sets up a nightmare in regards to my occasional use of my other media players.

Maybe I'm missing something or it is somewhere on the road map.

I should also clarify, that I do understand that when opening that file location & delete it from from the watched folder it does also delete it from my Songbird library. I'm just trying to save a step or two that is multiplied numerous times as I use Songbird extensively for subscriptions & discovery.

In short for me Watch Folder is not working. I am on Windows Vista. I watch my Music folder which has several sub folders. I add and remove music from this folder regularly, but this doesn't reflect back in Songbird.

Songbird does seem to add new music files that appear in my Watched folder but it does not remove any files from my Library that I have removed from my Watched folder and I get left with a lot of ghost files on my Library.

My only solution is whenever I remove a lot of music files from my watched folder. I simply remove all my files from my Library and re-import the folder again. It works but it is slow and needless.

I would love to see the Watched folder tool work correctly, and additionally I would love to me able to add many watched folders and to be able to ignore certain sub folders, in the same way Picasa manages the folders it scans for your photos.

Hi there. Have the same prob than Stephen Judge.

I add more music but it doesn ́t detect it. Even in days. How often does it check it? think it should every day or something.

U_U

Can we turn these issues into some sort of feature request? Here is a starter for 10...: -

a) Refresh the entire library with a 'Library Refresh button' - which simply reads the content of the music folder and flags all changes, additions and deletions - then asks you to accept or decline the changes in each category.

b) Separately from a) to lookup the music found in the folder(s) and correct, update and rename according to the structure specified by the user

c) Separately from a) and b) to allow to sync to back to the iTunes library / Media Player Library (don't try to duplicate iTunes functionality - there really is no point, people will have iTunes if they have an iPod or iPhone).

In other words add three clear separate and manually triggered functions that allow users to find, tag and sync their music.

There is a shortage of a simple tool to properly manage music files. It seems that many people are dissatisfied with music management in both MS Media Player (no iPod / iPhone connection) and iTunes (no sensible refresh on music folder). I have a Creative Zen Vision M for the car and an iPhone. I need something that will allow me to manage my collection without ghosts or duplicates. I need the tools to identify the music in my folder and tag it. This should be the focus for the product. |Concentrating on whizzy stuff without getting the basics right is pointless.

Fundamental file management of music is crucial to the success of Songbird.

I tried to push the issue to them, but still unsuccessful. They seem to be more interested in other things unfortunately and this issue is (surprisingly) ignored.

After some struggling, I ended up uninstalling songbird and created my own cmd and vbs scripts which manage itunes library directly. However I would still like to see a better solution than I currently have.

Instead of creating new fancy ui layouts, songbird team should focus on fundamentals like music library management. This is my opinion, of course - I can not mandate what they should and should not do, however it seems to be very obvious. This is not even in roadmap.

MM. yes.

You're right.

But you can add the music by hand, don ́t you think?. That ́s what i ́m doing now... boring, but well....

>>"Instead of creating new fancy ui layouts, songbird team should focus on fundamentals like music library management. This is my opinion, of course - I can not mandate what they should and should not do, however it seems to be very obvious. This is not even in roadmap."

Alas, I suspect none of us can mandate what they do - but it is sad that we feel the only option we have is to vote with our feet. Anyone got any ideas how we could progress this constructively. It seems we all want something similar - we just need to specify it and open a dialog with the people that can make it happen. I am reasonably sure that it would massively improve Songbird to have a solid database engine driving it...