User:DJ VorTechS/PhatHack Media Manager/Manual/Transferring Media

PhatHack Media Manager - Transferring Media
Transferring Media, as previously discussed, is the process of moving media from one folder/device to another.

This can occur in one of two ways:


 * Ripping a CD to a folder/device
 * Transferring files to a folder/device

CD Ripping
PhatHack Media Manager has two methods of CD Ripping, split into a standard process and a process called PhatRIP.

The standard process takes a CD and extracts the contents of each track once. Whilst being the quickest method, on particularly older CD's that may have surface damage, this process may be prone to data corruption.

PhatRIP however is a mechanism of reading a track a number of times, and comparing the each reading byte-for-byte to find the most accurate data across all of the reads. This can be an extremely lengthy process, even for just a few reading cycles per track, but is obviously more likely to provide a clean and accurate representation of the CD data.

The PhatRIP concept is not new, and you can use separate utilities that provide similar functionality - namely AccurateRIP or Exact Audio Copy.

The process for standard CD Ripping, and PhatRIPping are the same and the process is controlled through application configuration. For more details, see the Options and Configuration section. Specifically the section entitled Options and their meanings.

The speed of both ripping functions, is largely determined by the available machine memory and also the CD Ripping buffer size (also available under the Options and Configuration section). You should set the buffer size dependant on the function of the application of the machine you are using.

For example, a machine running PhatHack Media Manager as a standalone management system should use a different configuration value for the buffer size than a machine used as an in-car PC. A larger buffer may be more preferrable for the former, whilst a value of around 512KB would be recommended for a CarPC (due to the asynchronous nature of the application in this environment).

Simlarly if PhatRIP is being used, you should be exceptionally careful of the size of the buffer allocated, as of course the amount of memory used per CD read is 'X times this value based on the number of 'Cycles' configured in the Options and Configuration section.

To perform a CD RIP, or PhatRip, you would need to do the following:
 * Insert a CD into the appropriate drive
 * Select the CD device in the 'Media Sources' tree as illustrated to the right
 * Wait for any CDDB lookup to be performed
 * Click on the 'RIP CD' button to start the process or select from the available devices list
 * Click on the device to transfer to (where the 'RIP CD' button is enabled, denoting more than one device is available to transfer to)

After selecting the CD in the media sources tree, the application runs through a tag acquiring process again using options as configured in the Options screen.

If CD text is enabled, the application will attempt to read any tags stored on the CD and if present will use those to identify your media.

If CD text reading is disabled, or not available and CDDB lookups are configured the application will connect to the internet to either acquire the tag information from GraceNote (http://www.gracenote.com) or FreeDB (http://www.freedb.org), or both dependant on the configuration settings. If configured to look up from both sites, the CDDB Provider order is used to determine which site to perform the lookup on first and should no matching entry be found, the alternative will be used.

If no tag information is loaded, the CD will be identified as '' and each track as '' (where x is the position of the identified track). At this point it is entirely possible to modify the tags to be used for the track using the 'Edit Playlist' function. See the section Editing Playlists for more details.

Once the 'RIP CD' icon has been clicked, or the device to transfer to has been clicked from the dropdown menu where more than once device is available to transfer to, the RIPping procedure will begin and a progress dialog displayed to show the current progress.



Once the CD ripping is complete, and the target device is not a local folder (the target is a portable media device, or DMS cartridge) if the application has been configured to also RIP the CD contents to the media library, a second CD RIP will be performed, exactly the same as the first to the 'Imported Media Library' folder.

When performing the CD RIP, any 'Do NOT transcode to this device' configuration settings for the target device will ALWAYS be ignored and instead the 'Encoder Settings' for the target device will always be used to store the media on the target device.

In the case above, it is entirely possible for the target device to utilise one set of Encoder Settings (say it were a portable device, where 96kbps MP3 format is defined as the encoder settings) and the 'Imported Media' folder to use a completely different set of encoder settings (perhaps 320kbps WMA). This is why a SECOND CD Rip is ALWAYS performed for the transfer to the media library as a secondary target device as configured in the application options.

Performing a media transfer
Transferring media, is a similar process to performing a CD Rip and is the processing of transferring media from one folder/device to another. The basic premise of the function, is to select the media to transfer from a source device and then specify the target device.

The exact process is as follows:


 * Select the source device by clicking on the appropriate device from the 'Media sources' tree
 * From the 'Media Categories' list, select or check the relevant Playlist/Album/Artist/Genre etc
 * From the 'Available Media' list check the individual items to be transferred to the target device
 * Repeat the above for all items to be transferred to the target device
 * Click on the 'Transfer Files' button to start the process (where only one device is available to transfer to) or to list the available devices and select the target device from the available list



It is important to note in the above instructions that there is deemed to be a significant difference between 'Selecting' items in the 'Media Categories' list, and 'Checking' them.

'Checking' an item is the process of activating the box alongside the item so that it appears with a small tick mark inside it. 'Checking' an item in the 'Media Categories' list will automatically check all of the 'Available Media' items associated with that item, marking them as requiring transfer to the target device. (Illustrated to the left)

'Selecting' an item in the 'Media Categories' list is the process of highlighting it and will result in the displaying of the 'Available Media' items associated with the item being selected. When 'Selecting' an item in this manner, you must 'check' the media items to be transferred individually. The process of individually checking items in this manner, will also place a check against the relevant item in the 'Media Categories' list. (Illustrated to the right)

How configuration options affect media transfer
As with CD Ripping, how the media is transferred to the target device is dependant on the configuration options of that device. The configuration of the target device can largely affect the speed of transferring to that device.

One of the first observations of PhatHack Media Manager users when transferring media tends to be 'The whole process is very very slow'. As mentioned previously, the configuration settings for PhatHack Media Manager on it's default installation is not at all optimized and it's the lack of configuration that causes this particular issue.

In many cases the user NEVER wants the 'Transfer Files' process to transcode their media, and yet the default setting for any device (with the exception of a DMS device) for the option 'Do NOT transcode to this device' is unchecked. Ensuring this option is checked, will ensure that PhatHack Media Manager only ever performs a file copy when using the 'Transfer Files' function. With the option unchecked, each and every media file marked for transfer is re-encoded using the target encoder settings.

If the target device requires files to be normalized, then the use of the option 'Normalize on Transcode' would be a useful one. However, this option is ONLY available when the 'Do NOT transcode to this device' option is UNCHECKED. This option will also require a longer time period for the transfer of each track, as it requires the transcoding process to modify the data by applying relevant gains, before being passed to the relevant encoder.

Where the 'Do NOT transcode to this device' option has been set correctly based on user requirements, the most common problem related to speed issues thereafter is always one of the default value for the 'File Copy Buffer' setting being far too small to be useful. Modifying this to the recommended value of 3MB always gives massive improvements to the performance of the application when transferring media.

Multi-stage Devices (Save & Eject)
A multi-stage device is a device that requires at least two stages of device manipulation before a media transfer is completed successfully.

DMS cartridges are the only device at present considered to be a multi-stage device.

In the case of such devices, PhatHack Media Manager splits the 'CD RIP' or 'Transfer Files' into two stages. The media transfer stage and the transfer completion stage. It could be argued that Portable Media devices fall into this category, but as yet the application does not make this distinction, although it may in future builds.

Splitting the media transfer processes into two such stages allows the user to transfer lots of files without having to perform the transfer completion stage, cutting out any unnecessary waiting time.

The two stages can be broken down into the following discrete tasks that the application performs for each:

Media Transfer


 * Encoding, or copying of files from CD or source device
 * Manipulation of destination database

Transfer completion


 * Creation of TTS files
 * Creation of M3U / PBX files (PBX files are DMS specific)
 * Creation of proprietry database files

To perform the 'Transfer completion' stage, simply right click on the DESTINATION device and select the option 'Save' or 'Save and Eject'.

Use of the 'Save and Eject' will cause the relevant USB device to be detached from your Windows Operating System once the 'transfer completion' stage is complete.

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