What can we expect for the future?

[Hans]

Being on Minim for some weeks now I must say I am happy with the speed and the search trees / options.
There are two aspects that I am not quite happy about:
1 If I add music to the my database which happens every few days Minim will not automatically update (not real-time or not very nowand then).
2 If I don't use my computer where Minim Watch us running MinimServer is not working either.
These two points are the only reason that I have Twonky still running in parallel.
Do work-arounds exist for the mentioned items or Simon, do you plan updates to improve this?
Can we expect other features and improvements in the future?

[simoncn]

(12-08-2012 20:59)Hans Wrote:  Being on Minim for some weeks now I must say I am happy with the speed and the search trees / options.
There are two aspects that I am not quite happy about:
1 If I add music to the my database which happens every few days Minim will not automatically update (not real-time or not very nowand then).

It's somewhere between difficult and impossible for me to add this in a way that doesn't impact performance with large music collections and works as you'd expect with all control points. Also, it would take longer for you to see the new music than it does at the moment by pressing Restart.

Quote:2 If I don't use my computer where Minim Watch us running MinimServer is not working either.

I don't understand this. There's no reason why MinimServer wouldn't work if MinimWatch isn't running. The only thing you couldn't do without MinimWatch is restart MinimServer after adding new music, but you'd need to be using a computer when you add the new music.

Please can you explain this in a bit more detail.

Quote:These two points are the only reason that I have Twonky still running in parallel.
Do work-arounds exist for the mentioned items or Simon, do you plan updates to improve this?
Can we expect other features and improvements in the future?

There are a few new features planned for future releases:

Add the ability to use "last name, first name" tagging for sorting purposes, with optional automatic reversal when displaying the name.

Add the ability to control the order in which tag names are listed, and allow non-English translations of tag names to be displayed.

Improve the way artist information is merged from different tag values (Artist, Conductor, Orchestra, etc).

Support the UPnP Search operation.

Add support for .m3u and .pls playlists.

Various other minor improvements.

[winxi]

(12-08-2012 20:59)Hans Wrote:  There are two aspects that I am not quite happy about:
1 If I add music to the my database which happens every few days Minim will not automatically update (not real-time or not very nowand then).

I'm used to this feature from twonky, but i don't miss it with MinimServer at all as the rescan works incredibly fast (in fact, i wonder how this can be achieved). BTW, twonky forces a database rescan at every server restart which takes ages. thus, twonky needs about 20 min. for my ~25000 audio files to be fully available, Minimserver will need just half a minute.

IMHO, the thing that could be optimized about MinimServer rescan is that MinimServer should continue being advertised to the LAN during the rescan process either showing no contents or even better: showing the contents that were available before the rescan. In some control points, if the server disappears, the control point will automatically select another server available, and one will have to switch back manually to MinimServer when the rescan has finished. But that's just complaining on a high level i guess

[simoncn]

(13-08-2012 08:09)winxi Wrote:  

(12-08-2012 20:59)Hans Wrote:  There are two aspects that I am not quite happy about:
1 If I add music to the my database which happens every few days Minim will not automatically update (not real-time or not very nowand then).

I'm used to this feature from twonky, but i don't miss it with MinimServer at all as the rescan works incredibly fast (in fact, i wonder how this can be achieved). BTW, twonky forces a database rescan at every server restart which takes ages. thus, twonky needs about 20 min. for my ~25000 audio files to be fully available, Minimserver will need just half a minute.

IMHO, the thing that could be optimized about MinimServer rescan is that MinimServer should continue being advertised to the LAN during the rescan process either showing no contents or even better: showing the contents that were available before the rescan. In some control points, if the server disappears, the control point will automatically select another server available, and one will have to switch back manually to MinimServer when the rescan has finished. But that's just complaining on a high level i guess

That's a good suggestion. This would be a new Rescan operation in addition to the current Restart (which is equivalent to a database rebuild in Twonky, but much faster). Ideally, the Rescan operation would incrementally update the current contents list with any new music found and remove music that's no longer available, without disrupting any control point browsing or music playing currently in progress. It would be as fast as or faster than the current Restart, and the changes needed to implement it wouldn't significantly impact browsing performance for large collections (> 100000 items).

It would be extremely challenging to achieve all of the above. If it can be done, it would require major changes to the internals of MinimServer. This means that it's something for the MinimServer 2.0 wish list rather than a 1.0 work item.

[winxi]

(13-08-2012 08:56)simoncn Wrote:  That's a good suggestion. This would be a new Rescan operation in addition to the current Restart (which is equivalent to a database rebuild in Twonky, but much faster). Ideally, the Rescan operation would incrementally update the current contents list with any new music found and remove music that's no longer available, without disrupting any control point browsing or music playing currently in progress. It would be as fast as or faster than the current Restart, and the changes needed to implement it wouldn't significantly impact browsing performance for large collections (> 100000 items).

It would be extremely challenging to achieve all of the above. If it can be done, it would require major changes to the internals of MinimServer. This means that it's something for the MinimServer 2.0 wish list rather than a 1.0 work item.

As mentioned before, i personally consider this 'nice to have'. But i'm also very satisified with the actual restart-situation as music playing currently isn't disrupted and the restart perfroms so fast.

BTW, Simon, it made my day to read that UPnP Search is on the list of planned features

[simoncn]

(13-08-2012 09:06)winxi Wrote:  BTW, Simon, it made my day to read that UPnP Search is on the list of planned features

The challenge with this will be making it perform well. Doing a full-text search on 100,000 items might take a while.

[Hans]

(12-08-2012 21:58)simoncn Wrote:  

Quote:2 If I don't use my computer where Minim Watch us running MinimServer is not working either.

I don't understand this. There's no reason why MinimServer wouldn't work if MinimWatch isn't running. The only thing you couldn't do without MinimWatch is restart MinimServer after adding new music, but you'd need to be using a computer when you add the new music.

Please can you explain this in a bit more detail.

Oops... I stand corrected. I have tried it again and now it was OK. But really it happened more than just once in the past that Songbook Lite in this caseonly found Twonky. Probably just bad luck!

[simoncn]

(13-08-2012 12:42)Hans Wrote:  Oops... I stand corrected. I have tried it again and now it was OK. But really it happened more than just once in the past that Songbook Lite in this caseonly found Twonky. Probably just bad luck!

This is known problem, and there will be a fix for it in the next release. The fix is to add a new property to allow the user to specify a fixed port number for the UPnP server component (in addition to the current property that controls the port number for the HTTP server component). Songbook Lite and ChorusDS have discovery problems when the server isn't using a fixed UPnP listener port.