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

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

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 10:19 PM, Yelve Yakut <yelve gmx de> wrote:
>
> Thanks for the answer Peter. Even though I also happen to be a user
> with "some technical knowledge" I urge you to see features from a
> users point of view.  So the user story is "I want the possibility to
> listen to music with an unplugged music library."

This is the RB *development* mailing list, but I was trying to keep
the end user in mind.

I have some experience with RB and storing music on an
external USB HDD - until recently this is how I had my desktop
setup (but I have now upgraded to a larger main HDD). If I
wanted to play music on my laptop I might still use my USB
HDD.

Did you think my iPod sync analogy made sense? i.e. The external
HDD is the "main" library, which gets synced to the lower capacity
internal HDD of the laptop/netbook.

> In fact main memory or HDD can be used for that purpose. I just made
> up 2 examples:
>
> It could be a "precache N songs" option which could fit well into main
> memory (dont forget about swap)
> so when loading a playlist it would always load the next N songs into
> memory and when most of the preloaded songs are listened it would
> again fill up the cache with N songs
>
> Another idea would be a special playlist/folder. Thats a playlist on
> the left bar which hold copies of songs on HDD. Here's a use case:
> 1. I drag and drop my current playlist into that "special folder" on
> the left bar.
> 2. That in turn invokes a copy operation of the original files into a
> temporary folder on a local drive (/tmp).
> 3. I can play that "special folder" like any other playlist
> 4. closing the application will delete the contents of the local
> temporary folder (another reason to use /tmp)

The idea of a new "cached play queue/playlist" (your "special
folder") seems to me quite complex (both as a user, and to
code).

I quite like the "precache N songs" idea, when the next N songs
can be determined from the play queue and the currently play
list or search (even if on random). Probably the simplest thing
would be to pre-copy anything not on the local drive (e.g. music
on a network share or external HDD) to the local drive. For an
end user this can all happen automatically, with a single setting
needed (the number of songs, or perhaps just a cache size).

There are of course some technical issues here - like how can
we tell if a second HDD is a removable HDD or not - and some
power measurements would be needed to see if this actually
saved power (or used more as the main HDD would be used
more).

Peter