Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] feature request - load playlist into memory

[Peter <rhythmbox-devel maubp freeserve co uk>]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 3:53 AM, Yelve Yakut <yelve gmx de> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I hope this mailing list is the proper way of requesting a feature.
>
> A few months ago I got myself a netbook and I love it!
> My media is on an external HDD because it wouldn't fit on my internal drive.
> Unfortunately some problems arise from that HDD:
> * notable increase in energy consumption
> * netbook concept of having a small and portable device is gone with
> that thing dangling from my pc while I try to move from one place to
> the other or cook while surfing and reading and listening to music at
> the same time
>
> So if it would be possible for Rhythmbox to load all the media from a
> selected playlist into memory, I could unplug my drive and still be
> able to listen to music.

That's an interesting idea. When you say "memory", do you mean
RAM or the netbook's permement storage (i.e. hard drive, memory
stick, compact flash, SSD, or whatever)?

If you mean RAM, then you won't be able to cache that much data
(as a guess, maybe 10 songs?) but that might be enough to allow
the external HDD to go into power saving mode. Perhaps even
caching one or two songs would help - I wonder if gstreamer (the
library RB uses internally) can do this? Caching tracks when
playing music from a remote network drive would be a similar
issue - although there the aim would be to avoid stuttering due
to network latency.

Alternatively, if you mean load selected media onto the netbook's
own hard drive (or equivalent), then it seems very similar to how
you would sync to a iPod or other music player.

[I am not an RB developer, just a user with some technical
knowledge.]

Peter