Reply to thread

^ Yeah, I see what you're saying about ID3 tags, but if we could find a way to comprehensively read the database from another program like iTunes, and present the user with all the information they would normally see when using their favorite program, including playlists, album art, lyrics, ratings etc. then we'd quickly have a solution that "just works", is updated every time iTunes or [insert favorite music program here] is, and doesn't require mediaportal to actually store any information about the music collection itself.

Basically just some sort of parser is needed, I guess, to get all the information from whatever program and then it needs to be presented nicely. No storage required.

If we just used the ID3 tags, we would get the information like artist, album, composer, year, etc. and possibly some album art if it's inserted correctly into the file, but we'd be required to either:

a) Have mediaportal create and maintain its own database according to what it finds in the ID3 tags, or

b) Read the tags each and every time the music section is launched, and sort all the information each time.

Both of those options have problems because a) would ultimately mean that the mediaportal database wouldn't always match up with the external database as changes are made, etc. and b) would be very slow and resource-intensive to do, particularly if you've got tens or hundreds of thousands of songs in your library, occupying several hundreds of gigabytes of storage. The loading time would be incredibly long, and the interface unbearably slow.

If we just read the iTunes/whatever database each time, it would be much quicker than parsing all the ID3 tags each time and sorting them into their own database, and it would be much more efficient and accurate (not to mention user-friendly) than maintaining a separate database just for MP.