Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] In the mood: predictive playback for Rhythmbox

[Kevin Hunter <hunteke earlham edu>]

At 6:36a -0400 on Fri, 01 Aug 2008, Tino Meinen wrote:
>> if all of the song were analyzed, it could take days to complete 
>> the library.

Hmm.  Just doing some quick back-of-the-envelope calculation with the
previously mentioned 150GB:

(1 song / 4 min) * (1 min / MB) * (1,024MB / GB) * 150GB = 38,400

So, at an average length of 4 minute audio files and roughly 1 MB per
minute, the above library had roughly 38,400 songs.

My first thought is that there is *no way* someone will be able to
listen to all those songs in a reasonable amount of time.  That's
roughly 2,560 hours, 107 days, or almost 4 months of (ostensibly unique)
audio!  Starting with that thought, as long as your code works and can
complete audio file analysis *faster* than the wall clock equivalent of
listening, who cares?

>> I'm not sure that I (or anyone else just testing) would be 
>> willing to wait for that,

I hear you on wanting fast turnaround time while testing.  Are there
other parameters you could tweak?  Like quality of analysis while testing?

I'm also curious what the hold up is from 2,500 to 38,500 songs.  If
2,500 is barely measurable, 38,500 should not take that much longer, eh?
 Does analyzing a song depend on other songs?  Maybe the slowdown isn't
your analysis routines but your lookup process?

> If a song could be analysed while you listen to it, then the 
> database could be improved gradually as you go through your 
> collection.

This is where the "process-in-chunks and save-your-progress" methodology
could really help.  Let it not get in anybody's way while Rhythmbox is
executing, stop when it's not executing, and restart from where it left
off next chance it gets.

Hope my 2 cent musings are helpful.

Kevin