Sending music across the internet without streaming


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Hello! I know this not a music forum but this is really only about 5% music, 95% automated internet file transfer and management.

So what I'm looking to accomplish is to take a collection of constantly changing audio files on a PC, have another PC thats 60 miles away pull these files into a media player and play them. Obviously theres a thousand and one tutorials online for how to stream that content across the internet but that unfortunately is not an option. Given bandwidth issues all the content is going to have to be transfered nightly at about midnight whereas the music is going to need to be played during the day from the computer itself.

So I need to have:

> some way of auto uploading to an online depository

> some way of automatically pulling this info from the depository at night

> some way to have these files feed directly into a media player

> a way to have the media player automatically remove files which are no longer in the online depository.

Money is not a big issue. I have a decent amount of desktop computer experience and minor Python coding skills. How can this be done?

Thanks for reading.

~hobbly

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If you have an extra PC - you could always store them on a FreeNAS server that you set up. Then have it upload to the other PC's system using FTP server which will allow it to upload to the other end.

Or, if you are on Windows, you could sync with something like Sync Toy, (Map the other PC's Folder as a Network Drive and connect it to that IP etc.), then have it sync when you define it in Windows.

If on a Linux type of system, you can also do a rsync setup to do the same thing.

Basically, you want to enable the other PC to receive the files first and then the rest is up to you on how you want to send it to the other PC.

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And off the top I would say ANY of the online cloud sync services would work perfect for this. Dropbox, Sugarsync, siperoak, box, ubuntu one, etc. ec..

So I know dropbox, so pretend your using that one.

You install dropbox on each machine, be it same account or shared folder - I would prob go same account. Then on pc1 you put the audio files, they magically show up on same folder on pc2. Then delete on pc1 or just add/replace the different audio files for day 2, and magically the files you deleted/changed/etc show up on pc2. Rinse and repeat

Easy to set a scheduled task on your pc1 to do whatever it is you need to do with the files. And magically sync up on pc2.

All comes down to how much space you need a day. If its 2GB your good with FREE, you can always get that bumped up higher for FREE as well if your like at 3GB a day or something. If your talking large amounts of files then you prob have to buy an account 50GB, 100GB, etc,,

Any of the services should work for this.

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Hello! I know this not a music forum but this is really only about 5% music, 95% automated internet file transfer and management.

So what I'm looking to accomplish is to take a collection of constantly changing audio files on a PC, have another PC thats 60 miles away pull these files into a media player and play them. Obviously theres a thousand and one tutorials online for how to stream that content across the internet but that unfortunately is not an option. Given bandwidth issues all the content is going to have to be transfered nightly at about midnight whereas the music is going to need to be played during the day from the computer itself.

So I need to have:

> some way of auto uploading to an online depository

> some way of automatically pulling this info from the depository at night

> some way to have these files feed directly into a media player

> a way to have the media player automatically remove files which are no longer in the online depository.

Money is not a big issue. I have a decent amount of desktop computer experience and minor Python coding skills. How can this be done?

Thanks for reading.

~hobbly

> some way of auto uploading to an online depository

There are lots of FTP sync software that'll do this for you. It'll check for folder changes and upload the newest content via FTP.

> some way of automatically pulling this info from the depository at night

Again, FTP sync software will do this for you.

> some way to have these files feed directly into a media player

This is more about what media player you're going to be using. Chances are you'll want to create a supported playlist file. The most simple is .mu3 and has good support. Its basically just a directly listing.

So you could setup a scheduled batch file to do something such as


del c:\depo\playlist.mu3
echo #EXTM3U %time% %date >c:\depo\playlist.mu3
dir :\depo\music\*.mp3 /b/s >c:\depo\playlist.mu3
[/CODE]

That'll delete any old mu3 file, set the playlist title ot the date and time it was generated and then populate the playlist with al mp3s from any sub directories.

> a way to have the media player automatically remove files which are no longer in the online depository.

again, will depend on the media player, you can have the last line of you playlist build batch file to do:

[CODE]
call c:\path.to.mediaplayer\program.exe c:\depo\playlist.mu3
[/CODE]

that'll give your media player a new play list to use, generated on the fly when its scheduled to do so.

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Ah! I knew I loved this forum for a reason! Especially sagum, I looked into the FTP sync solution and that seems ideal.

What I'm still having trouble with, however, is that with every media player I've seen I have no issue with adding tracks from a script but getting it to remove the old, now non-existent, tracks from it's library is seemingly impossible. This is going to cause a massive amount of music that is unplayable on the client computers end (in case someone wants to pick out a specific song).

Does anyone know of a media player which will build it's list off a folder AND automatically remove files it detects no longer exist?

EDIT: I should probably mention that:

again, will depend on the media player, you can have the last line of you playlist build batch file to do:


call c:\path.to.mediaplayer\program.exe c:\depo\playlist.mu3
[/CODE]

that'll give your media player a new play list to use, generated on the fly when its scheduled to do so.

will not work as we'll be swapping out files sometimes multiple times in a day and having to rebuild an M3U files every time we change something would make this into a real chore. Not to mention it's not normally me who would be doing this so I would have to train non-computer savvy people on how to build a playlist.

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Does anyone know of a media player which will build it's list off a folder AND automatically remove files it detects no longer exist?

Zune monitors its folder and will automatically add new media to the 'collection' (media library) when it detects changes. However, I wouldn't like to be the person having to use Zune as a media player. I have to use it with my Windows Phone unfortunatly :(

http://www.zune.net/en-gb/products/software/download/default.htm

You don't need a Zune MP3 player or even a Windows Phone to use it, but it'll be ideal for what you want.

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I'm not sure of the issue that sagum has with Zune as a media player as I've used it for years and much prefer it over most other players.

It will more than accomplish what you need as it does monitor folders & removes content from viewing inside the player if they are no longer present in the monitored folders.

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I'm not sure of the issue that sagum has with Zune as a media player as I've used it for years and much prefer it over most other players.

It will more than accomplish what you need as it does monitor folders & removes content from viewing inside the player if they are no longer present in the monitored folders.

My main issue with it is the way it fades the titles of the media out after around 10 characters. You have to over your mouse over it to see what it actually is.

It tries to be too different and it feels lumpy when you're trying to sync music or videos to the Windows Phone, without having a real view of what is actually on both without switching back and forth between pages with buttons across the top and then buttons on the bottom, it just feels very disjointed in the way applications should flow. If you're used to it, then you'll remember the locations of what buttons do what and how many pages you need to go back on to get back to the task you were trying to do.

But yeah, it's certainly got some good features that I do enjoy and will do what the OP wants, but as for the learning curve or usability its a real pain to get used to, often feel like im fighting the software to get it to do things rather then using it as a tool.

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My main issue with it is the way it fades the titles of the media out after around 10 characters. You have to over your mouse over it to see what it actually is.

It tries to be too different and it feels lumpy when you're trying to sync music or videos to the Windows Phone, without having a real view of what is actually on both without switching back and forth between pages with buttons across the top and then buttons on the bottom, it just feels very disjointed in the way applications should flow. If you're used to it, then you'll remember the locations of what buttons do what and how many pages you need to go back on to get back to the task you were trying to do.

But yeah, it's certainly got some good features that I do enjoy and will do what the OP wants, but as for the learning curve or usability its a real pain to get used to, often feel like im fighting the software to get it to do things rather then using it as a tool.

You can easily tell if a specific track is on the phone without jumping back and forth. If the track is already synced to the device it will show the Zune icon next to it. The rest (and no this isn't a bash) sounds more like preference issues to be honest. I find the discovery up top, and controls on the bottom design to be efficient in keeping the functions apart from each other.

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Zune monitors its folder and will automatically add new media to the 'collection' (media library) when it detects changes. However, I wouldn't like to be the person having to use Zune as a media player. I have to use it with my Windows Phone unfortunatly :(

http://www.zune.net/...oad/default.htm

You don't need a Zune MP3 player or even a Windows Phone to use it, but it'll be ideal for what you want.

Its perfect! Thank you sir
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