Announce: Album Catalog Creator v3

[SilverRS8]

Frank,

First of all, I've been using AAC for a long time now and I think it's a great program. I'm trying to understand some of the options that are not that obvious to me.

I think I understand what you're trying to tell me, but it doesn't fully answer my question.

I have played/experimented with the CLI of squeezeboxserver and I know for a fact that the CLI gives all the information you need about artists, albums and tracks to make a catalog like AAC does. The CLI even provides a (partial) link to the (cached?) coverart.

Because of the need for the MySql driver you're probably accessing the database directly without the CLI.

EDIT: Because you don't use the Starting folder option, you will get everything in the SBS database in the catalog and hence also agg, flac etc. However If you want to narrow down the scope of the catalog, you can only do this on the mp3 folder in your current set up.

I recall having read something about the need for a drive letter to get the albumart, but while looking at the catalogs html output file, I can see that the links to the album art do not have a reference to the drive letter or directories at all.

So I wondered, why would AAC need a path to the directories where the music files are stored?

If I understand you explanation correctly, the starting folder can be used as an index to get only partial information on the catalog.

In my case the M: drive points to the mp3 files only while the catalog contains all albums which includes mp3,aac,ogg,wma and flac files. These aac, ogg and other files are NOT accessable through this drive M: !

So far I enter a drive letter in the Remote Server/NAS options screen, a 'Full remote physical path to music share' and 'Starting folder' on the 'optional' filters because the program requires it.

So, I'm trying to understand the need for a drive letter pointing to the actual music files, and if it is a way of filtering out unwanted stuff, why does my catalog contain all the music and not only mp3 files?

When the starting folder is not used, you don't need a drive letter. When Starting folder is used, the drive letter and mapping is only used to enable the Browse button for an intuitive interface which help prevent errors. Another option would be to not use a drive letter and let the user enter the path manually. Which, will result in path errors (on linux NAS based devices these are also case sensitive) and will cause strange ACC behaviour (no album art etc).

The actual reference to the album art is not related to the drive letter (in ACC v1.x this was actually the case as this version would offer an option to link to album art files or get them from SBS).

For reasons of simplicity I made the drive letter requirement mandatory although not required when not using a starting folder.

EDIT: Because you don't use a starting folder, the whole SBS content is included in the catalog and hence also OGG, Flac and other formats. If you do want to use the Starting folder option, you will narrow down the scope to only your mp3 using your current setup.

[SilverRS8]

In my case the M: drive points to the mp3 files only while the catalog contains all albums which includes mp3,aac,ogg,wma and flac files. These aac, ogg and other files are NOT accessable through this drive M: !

So far I enter a drive letter in the Remote Server/NAS options screen, a 'Full remote physical path to music share' and 'Starting folder' on the 'optional' filters because the program requires it.

So, I'm trying to understand the need for a drive letter pointing to the actual music files, and if it is a way of filtering out unwanted stuff, why does my catalog contain all the music and not only mp3 files?

Looking at your ACC log file again I see that you have an incorrect full physical path specified which may explain inconsistent behavior as you are right. ACC should only show the mp3 files because you have specified drive M:\ as starting folder.

You have entered 'mp3' as full physical path which is not a path notation. Press the test button on the remote server option screen and an example is displayed on the bottom of the ACC screen of a path as stored in the database. Use this syntax to specify the full physical path to the folder that is shared (and which you access from the windows machine using drive M). Also refer to the balloon help at the 'full physical path' option.

[MikeDelta]

When the starting folder is not used, you don't need a drive letter.

After some experimenting I've got the filtering with the starting folder working. I had to remap the drive letter to another directory level to make that work. That's great!

But I won't be using the filter option very often. I intend to make a full catalog once, and then a monthly update by creating a catalog with a specific start date.

So, I only want to use the 'From Date' in the optional filters and leave the 'starting folder' empty.

Doing this will create the original ODBC error.

There is no way to remove/unselect the drive letter in the 'Remote Server/NAS options' screen.

I think it's accidently working now because of an unintended misconfiguration on my side.

So, suppose I want to create full catalogs (sometimes catalogs with a specific From Date') and I do NOT have a drive letter mapped to any music directory (because the music is on another machine) what options do I need to set in AAC?

[SilverRS8]

After some experimenting I've got the filtering with the starting folder working. I had to remap the drive letter to another directory level to make that work. That's great!

But I won't be using the filter option very often. I intend to make a full catalog once, and then a monthly update by creating a catalog with a specific start date.

So, I only want to use the 'From Date' in the optional filters and leave the 'starting folder' empty.

Doing this will create the original ODBC error.

There is no way to remove/unselect the drive letter in the 'Remote Server/NAS options' screen.

I think it's accidently working now because of an unintended misconfiguration on my side.

So, suppose I want to create full catalogs (sometimes catalogs with a specific From Date') and I do NOT have a drive letter mapped to any music directory (because the music is on another machine) what options do I need to set in AAC?

Confirmed to be a bug when only using the Date from filter and no other filters. I will resolve this in 3.3 RC2.

Frank

[SilverRS8]

Bug fixed and available as v3.3 RC2. Please let me know if this is ok now.

Frank

[MikeDelta]

Bug fixed and available as v3.3 RC2. Please let me know if this is ok now.

Frank

The ODBC error is gone. I can make a catalog with only a 'From Date' entered and leaving all other fields blank.

But I've noticed something else and I'm not sure if AAC is supposed to do that:

1. I've been experimenting with the printing options (Maximum track on row page and Maximum album rows per page) to see if I can print to PDF without the occasional blank page.
2. Because of the size of my music collection I restrict the number of albums by entering a 'From Date' (a full catalog takes about 30 minutes to create).

But the first time I create a catalog after the printing options change, AAC doesn't use the 'From Date'. I get a full catalog. The second time I start AAC (without changing any option and leaving the 'From Date' unchanged) I do get a catalog from the set 'From Date'.

Subsequent runs of AAC with other dates give catalogs from the set 'From Date' until I change another setting.

Even changing the 'Header Background' on the Layout section produces a full catalog at the first run and partial catalogs (starting at the set 'From Date') at subsequent runs.

Is this expected behaviour ?

[SilverRS8]

The ODBC error is gone. I can make a catalog with only a 'From Date' entered and leaving all other fields blank.

But I've noticed something else and I'm not sure if AAC is supposed to do that:

1. I've been experimenting with the printing options (Maximum track on row page and Maximum album rows per page) to see if I can print to PDF without the occasional blank page.
2. Because of the size of my music collection I restrict the number of albums by entering a 'From Date' (a full catalog takes about 30 minutes to create).

But the first time I create a catalog after the printing options change, AAC doesn't use the 'From Date'. I get a full catalog. The second time I start AAC (without changing any option and leaving the 'From Date' unchanged) I do get a catalog from the set 'From Date'.

Subsequent runs of AAC with other dates give catalogs from the set 'From Date' until I change another setting.

Even changing the 'Header Background' on the Layout section produces a full catalog at the first run and partial catalogs (starting at the set 'From Date') at subsequent runs.

Is this expected behaviour ?

Nope this is not expected behavior. Good testing! I'll create a fix for it. Thx

[SilverRS8]

Fixed it and available as v3.3 RC3.

[fphredd]

Hi Frank,

I just wanted to throw out there that I've now tried the instructions for 2 Readynas Pro's and get mySQL error on both.

Do you have a suggested donation level?? I don't want to insult you... ;-)

[SilverRS8]

Hi Frank,

I just wanted to throw out there that I've now tried the instructions for 2 Readynas Pro's and get mySQL error on both.

Do you have a suggested donation level?? I don't want to insult you... ;-)

Hi,

Haha there's no way to insult by donating below a certain level. For me its an sign of appreciation. If there was an insult to think of it would be to really love the program and not donate ;-)

I would love to help you out on getting ACC to work on your ReadyNAS but not having one myself makes it hard to figure out the problem. In v3.3 I coded 4 different connects to the remote server. This action is only performed when pressing the Test button in the remote Server options screen. It is not performed when clicking 'Create catalogs'. If their was a succesful connect when trying the Test button, that method will be used from that moment on. Have you tried v3.3 and pressed the test button?

Frank