From: <Matt.OReilly_at_wachovia.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 10:58:56 -0400

A couple of brief thoughts on this...

1 - Would it be possible to build a "delta" playlist of some sort? I would
hate to have to re-scan 15gb worth of files when I added one new track to
the machine. I'm not sure how this could be accomplished, though it seems
that since the fs is Fat32 (is that right?), you could set the archive bit
to "off" when the playlist has been built, and just scan for files with the
archive bit set to "on" when adding to, but not rebuilding, the playlist.

2 - Do you have any ideas about how to index the files within the
memory-resident portion of the playlist? This is a great idea, I think, if
it can be made so the HDD doesn't have to spin up every time a song changes
just to read the playlist. ('Course, it has to spin up to read the track
anyway, doesn't it...? Hmmm...)

3 - Regardless of playlists, one of the most frustrating things about
playback with the Archos is the lack of directory-crawling when playing
back w/o a playlist. Fixing this would be a great boon, I think. Just
simple sequential directory traversal would be heavenly...

I hope I haven't duplicated things that have already been articulated.

Thanks,
Matt



                                                                                                                     
                    "stuart martin"
                    <wavey_at_wavey.org To: <rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se>
> cc:
                    Sent by: Subject: playlist ideas
                    owner-rockbox_at_co
                    ol.haxx.se
                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                     
                    04/23/2002 10:31
                    AM
                    Please respond
                    to rockbox
                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                     





Guys and girls,

Given the limited 2MB of RAM available to us, we have decided to keep the
playlist implementation mostly disk based rather than entirely memory
resident. Obviously, the more RAM we can leave to buffer audio data, the
better the performance and battery life of the device.

Accordingly, the memory resident part of the playlist will be simply the
name
of a disk based m3u playlist, along with a list of indices into that file
for
each track listed within. For pre-existing m3u playlists, this will be the
name of the file itself. For playlists built interactively by the user, a
special file will be created to contain the selected tracks.

Accessing the playlist will default to the order within which tracks appear

in the playlist on disk, but a user option to randomise this will be
available, which will merely randomise the list of indices. The user will
be
able to move backwards or forwards through the playlist at will, and an
option to automatically restart the playlist once the end is reached will
be
available.

A common desire is disk-wide random play. One way of achieving this would
be
to pre-scan the disk and place the names of all detected tracks inside our
special playlist file. Although this will be a slow process, it is likely
to
be a rare occurrence (although at the user's control, should they update
their collection often). Once the scan is completed, random play can be
achieved as before.

Most user settings can be persisted on the disk in the otherwise unused
pre-
fat sectors. These include volume, balance, etc., and can also include the
current playlist filename, the playlist indices, the current index, and
even
the time of the current track to allow mid-track resume.

Any comments on the above are welcome, including wishlist entries.

The efforts of the team are snowballing now, and there's a real sense of
progress. Feel free to join us on irc to encourage us along or even to help

out with the implementation.

cheers,
wavey
Received on 2002-04-23