Playlist Error Caused by APE?

[Rasmussen]

MinimServer 0.8.4, Win 7 Enterprise

A handful of playlists generate the following error in the log

Code:

Error: playlist [...].m3u: unknown folder for [...].ape

I double-checked the paths, and they are correct. Is this error actually caused by MinimServer not supporting Monkey's Audio (.ape) format?

[simoncn]

APE is not a supported format. There is a list of supported formats and file extensions in this section.

[Rasmussen]

Thanks, I understand that; but what I'm asking is if the "unknown folder" error is thrown by the target being an .ape file, or is it something else that I don't see, e.g., an invisible character in the path. (AFAIC, I don't care about .ape.)

[simoncn]

I think you are probably getting this message about an unknown folder because the folder doesn't contain any supported audio files and MinimServer has therefore removed the folder from its list of folders as an optimization. This can be important because there is a limit of 65000 folders in total.

[Rasmussen]

(04-11-2017 18:22)simoncn Wrote:  [...]there is a limit of 65000 folders in total.

Oops. I'm sure this is documented somewhere, but I wasn't aware... It's a bit worrying. I've about 5 to 6 folders per album, on average. That makes somewhere between 25k and 30k folders, and I haven't yet finished ripping all my CDs. I guess I should be more frugal with my hierarchies.

[simoncn]

Why do you use 5 or 6 folders for one album?

[Rasmussen]

Basically, for the same reason that a macOS application is actually a directory hierarchy -- to keep things neat and orderly and to know where to look for certain files.

For instance (more or less at random), the album JS Bach: Les Quatre Ouvertures by Jordi Savall (Alia Vox AVSA 9890) is organized as follows.

A top level directory "Bach - Quatre Ouvertures". This directory contains the audio files; the "folder.jpg" file; and another directory "cd_info". In its turn, the "cd_info" directory contains directories for CUE sheets, ripping logs, JPG files, PDF files, and XML files, one for each, respectively. (The XML files is where I store tags.) If this were an album of cantatas, then there'd be additional directories for the original German texts and translations. So, for this one double CD album, I have 7 directories.

When I set up my music library, I did consider the issue of nesting and of path length; that's why, as a rule, I don't go deeper than 3 levels and I keep directory names as short as possible; but I never thought that the number of directories itself might be an issue.

[simoncn]

This approach is fine with MinimServer. Because of the optimization I mentioned earlier, only the top-level directory containing the audio files and folder.jpg file will be included in the MinimServer library and count towards the 65000 limit.