01-21-2013, 04:03 AM
I'd like to add to this thread, with a similar idea based on a slightly different scenario. Part of this is based on another thread of mine that you may have already seen.
We now have two people in our church choir with Android tablets, which we use for our worship music. I was able to successfully "bootstrap" the new MobileSheets user's tablet with my entire music library, and going forward, I will be sending her new songs to add to her library (after I've added them to mine) It doesn't make sense to me to have to go through the whole backup/restore process to keep our two tablets in sync. The most obvious way to do this is for me to send her the image(s) or PDF files for a new song via email or Dropbox, and let her add those images or PDF to her library, either via the Android or companion app, and manually edit the metadata (artist, key, album, genre, etc.) I realize that it's possible to use the batch import function to add songs, and if the files are stored in an appropriately named folder path, it will automate the entry of some of the metadata, but the folder path mechanism seems cumbersome for adding one or two songs at a time.
As an alternate to bejomin's scripting approach, I had another idea: would it be possible to have a file present in the batch import folder that could specify the metadata values for the song? Something like "metadata.xml" (or JSON if you prefer that format), where you could specify as many metadata values as you wanted. Then if the batch import function found this file, it would assign those values.
Now, here is the really fun part: a function in the companion app that will EXPORT selected songs to a user specified folder, and would automatically create the metadata.xml file for each exported song. This would make it easier to share songs with other Mobilesheets users. Of course, it might also make sense to allow the recipient to override or ignore the metadata, if they so choose.
Let me know if you think this makes sense. Maybe you've already had a similar idea to this, as part of your roadmap.
We now have two people in our church choir with Android tablets, which we use for our worship music. I was able to successfully "bootstrap" the new MobileSheets user's tablet with my entire music library, and going forward, I will be sending her new songs to add to her library (after I've added them to mine) It doesn't make sense to me to have to go through the whole backup/restore process to keep our two tablets in sync. The most obvious way to do this is for me to send her the image(s) or PDF files for a new song via email or Dropbox, and let her add those images or PDF to her library, either via the Android or companion app, and manually edit the metadata (artist, key, album, genre, etc.) I realize that it's possible to use the batch import function to add songs, and if the files are stored in an appropriately named folder path, it will automate the entry of some of the metadata, but the folder path mechanism seems cumbersome for adding one or two songs at a time.
As an alternate to bejomin's scripting approach, I had another idea: would it be possible to have a file present in the batch import folder that could specify the metadata values for the song? Something like "metadata.xml" (or JSON if you prefer that format), where you could specify as many metadata values as you wanted. Then if the batch import function found this file, it would assign those values.
Now, here is the really fun part: a function in the companion app that will EXPORT selected songs to a user specified folder, and would automatically create the metadata.xml file for each exported song. This would make it easier to share songs with other Mobilesheets users. Of course, it might also make sense to allow the recipient to override or ignore the metadata, if they so choose.
Let me know if you think this makes sense. Maybe you've already had a similar idea to this, as part of your roadmap.