Being a heavy user of MS (never going back to the old paper mess) I'm planning to scan my bookshelf full of sheet music to MobileSheets. However, according to my calculations, I will be running out of storage space on my tablet(s).
What would be the best practice in managing a really big database? I'm envisioning maybe having the full metadata (database) stored on the tablet, but the "media" files (pdfs) lying online in a cloud storage. They would then be automatically downloaded "on-demand" only. Often used collections or set lists could optionally be preloaded offline. Does MS already support something like this?
Not only no internet, but slow internet. I think I would use my PC with a big memory card or drive. Fewer things to go wrong, quicker access and multiple backup options [eg. 2 locations].
Dell Latitude 13.5" 2-in-1 Ubuntu/Win 11
Samsung Note Pro SM-P900 12.2 Android 5.0.2
Samsung S7+, Android 12
Sure, I would never take the risk of relying on internet access on a gig. So the solution I'm looking for would have to allow for offline access to critical parts of the library. But if I scan my full bookshelf to MSP, maybe 99% of the library will be non-critical. It will just be my digital archive, safely stored in the cloud.
Here's how I manage a pretty similar situation (see screenshot):
In MSP I manage the files myself
d:\HerbertsGoogleDrive\_MobileSheets\ is my MSP storage location
d:\HerbertsGoogleDrive\ is synchronized by 'Google Drive for Desktop'
Almost all sheets that I use on stage are 'one file per song' chordpro files or PDFs exported from ChordPro, MuseScore, ABC or Finale. They are in the subfolders of _MobileSheets\Songs\
A number of essential songbooks that I want to carry around all the time for sessions, practicing and rehearsals are in _MobileSheets\Fkbk0\
These two folders are maintained in my main mobilesheets.db and synchronized to the tablets that I use on stage.
On my notebook (where storage space is only limited by the 15 GB of the free GoogleDrive) I have many more files and several separate MSP databases to keep track of the whole collection, hljpa.db for the Hal Leonard Jazz Playalong series, MSPTest.db for test purposes and a really big one for everything.
A great feature of MSP: if all paths are relative, the MSP databases are compatible and can be copied easily between Android and Win10 devices.
I have about 5 GB of sheet music on my tablets. I have just learned the advantage of transferring music via USB drives and SyncLibrary (device) rather than the Companion app.
In my case, all tablets can do SyncLibrary as either client or server, but be careful not to sync from an empty tablet!
In my case, two out of three tablets can do BatchImport from a USB drive, but one of them cannot; it can do Import/SystemFileBrowser from a USB drive, but that is painful for more than a few files as you must select them individually (Multi-select is a long press on each one). Discussions in the forum show that other users have similar limitations, related to specific models of tablets and/or versions of AndroidOS. If your tablet cannot do Batch Import from a USB drive, a workaround is probably to put the music onto an SD card and do BatchImport from that.
I segment my music by Genre, one for each group with which I play, plus some general ones like ChamberMusic, Showtunes&Pop, and Classical (the last two are implicitly piano solos). On my Mac each Genre is a folder, and after copying to USB drive I do 12 BatchImport-s from each folder to its Genre.
