| «« Removable Media Support | Database Conversion on Software Updates »» |
|
About
I'm Ryan Lowe, a Software Engineering graduate living in Ottawa, Canada. I like agile software development and Ruby on Rails.
I write this blog in Canadian English and don't use a spell checker. Typos happen.
Projects
» Full-time Ruby on Rails freelancer
» Full-time with Rails since May 2005 » Former committer for RadRails (now Aptana) » I also have a few Rails side-projects in development: 1. wheretogoinTO.com Toronto nightlife 2. Hey Heads Up! TODO list and sharing 3. Layered Genealogy family history research 4. foos for foosball scoring 5. fanconcert for music fans (on hold) Hiring Rails developers? I can telecommute by the hour from Ottawa, Canada »» Email: rails AT ryanlowe DOT ca
BulletBlog
Now hosted on Hey! Heads Up -- check it out!
Syndication
Pings
Recent
Derek Lowe's (Ryan's older brother) words at Ryan's funeral
blog@ryanlowe.ca no more Forging Email Headers: Good, Bad or Ugly? Sarcastic Dictionary (Part 1 of Many) Tags Hierarchies Twisting Rails is Risky Business Risky Business? My Take on Early Alphas Whoa, it's August 2007 Closing Comments A Postscript to "Growth at the grassroots" »» All Blog Posts
Linkage
del.icio.us/ryanlowe
technorati/ryanlowe.ca/blog Aurora Roy Jim Andrew Trasker Travis Kibbee Karen Dr. Unk Ayana Van Bloggers Joel Spolsky Robert Scoble Tim Bray Dave Winer Raymond Chen James Robertson Ruby/Rails Bloggers rubyonrails.org weblog David Heinemeier Hansson Dave Thomas James Duncan Davidson Mike Clark Jamis Buck Signal vs. Noise Tobias Luetke Amy Hoy: (24)slash7 Jeremy Voorhis Eclipse Bloggers Planet Eclipse EclipseZone Luis de la Rosa Eclipse Foundation Kim Horne Billy Biggs Ian Skerrett Mike Milinkovich Bjorn Freeman-Benson Denis Roy
Archives
  
|
Metadata in Read-Only Files
While I was thinking about removable media support in AudioMan an interesting problem occurred to me. Removable media could be read-only things like burned CD-R, CD-RW or DVDs. It could also be read-write media, like flash memory or an external hard drive. People also have the ability to add to a burned disc by leaving the "session" open. The main thing though is that once a song is burned on a disc its metadata cannot change. If the metadata wasn't entered correctly before the disc was burned then you are up the creek -- that makes sorting/browsing/searching the files more difficult. So it might be nice to be able to enter this information in AudioMan anyway, even though its not the same as the metadata in the file. That way you'll be able to browse and search your collection better, without having to worry about missing or incomplete metadata. The information will only be stored in AudioMan's database. Would it be useful to display the actual read-only partial or missing metadata as well? I'm thinking it might be useless after you enter updated information. Posted at July 14, 2004 at 06:20 PM ESTLast updated July 14, 2004 at 06:20 PM EST Comments
"Would it be useful to display the actual read-only partial or missing metadata as well?" No. The whole point is to work with the latest up to date and correct data. Even if the file name is wrong. e.g. You have song A, but then apply metadata that correctly labels it song B. You wouldn't want to display the old data even if the file is still A.mp3. To elaborate, this is a tricky question. Do you make it so that the user can correct this Read-Only data and then apply changes to a layer in the AudioMan Database but trick the user into thinking that he/she *is* updating the metadata? Well, we don't want to trick the user. He/she is our friend. You can do the following: 1. Let the user know this is Read-Only. Allow fixes to the metadata of the songs, but the changes will remain in the AudioMan Database, but the next time you pop in the CD, your fixes will be there. However, some would argue this is fruitless work since it's only good in Audioman, and not in your winamp (or whatever you use) player. But hey, atleast you know which song is which. 2. Let the user know this is Read-Only. Allow fixes to the metadata to the songs, but in the future if the user decides to drag and drop all his songs back on his hard drive, he can "apply" all those fixes automagically to the songs. Thus giving meaning to all of his/her effort. I know, I haven't thought that one technically through. Could be tough, could be easy. To early for me to guess. » Posted by: roy at July 14, 2004 09:29 PMI believe that the changed metadata should be the data displayed in Audioman. There should be a mechanism that distinguishes this changed data from the original metadata contained on the read-only media. A certain colour could be given to the changed read-only data. The data could then be updated, if the user agrees, when the song is transferred to a re-writable storage medium. » Posted by: James at July 15, 2004 11:34 AM |
