New VB - Happy, but will MP3 mirror ever finish?

[pastim]

I'm still curious to see how long it takes lame to encode a test track on your VBA, to see how it compares to my old and new VBAs. See my previous post for an experiment you can run.

Previously I didn't notice your proposed test in that post. Apologies, I must have missed it.

A 4 minute track took:

real 0m38.879s
user 0m38.626s
sys 0m0.197s

At that rate, over 19000 tracks (most of which are longer than 4 minutes - many are much longer - but lets say 4 minutes for now) might take, say 13,000 minutes. That's 9 days. A heck of a time, and something I wasn't prepared for.

However, what I was observing from the log was more likes 2 minutes each, not 40 seconds. I haven't tried multi-threading yet.

I've just used foobar to transcode > 3,000 tracks in 7 hours, running from my PC reading and writing the VBA tracks over my LAN. Now I've got to copy the mp3s to their directories and delete from the flac dirs. Luckily I have a tool that can do just that (in 2 steps).

[Ron Olsen]

I edited the post to add the test after you read it.

So the reality is: there's nothing wrong with your VBA. It performed better on the lame test (39 seconds) than did my old VBA (45 seconds). I recall my nephew, with a VBA like my old one, having the mp3 mirror running for around 5 days before it completed.

I'm a big fan of using the fastest computer on your network for CPU-intensive tasks, like encoding audio to mp3, or encoding video to a compressed format. I use my Mac Pro for video encoding, not my VBAs. So continue to use your PC for mp3 encoding, and video encoding if you ever get to that.

You should be able to move the mp3 files to their correct directories using the Linux mv command, which will be very fast, since the source and destination directories are on the same filesystem (/storage). This will be much faster than copying the files and then deleting them from the source directories. But perhaps an automated tool to do the copy and delete across the network will be fast enough for you.

Personally, I prefer to do file management directly on my VBA using Midnight Commander: http://info.vortexbox.org/tiki-index...ight_Commander rather than using Samba from another computer on my network. From a PC, you can login to your VBA with CryptoTerm, and run MC in the CryptoTerm session. MC also works well with Shellinabox: http://info.vortexbox.org/tiki-index...ge=shellinabox. MC is highly recommended if performance and efficiency are important to you.

[pastim]

Moving the mp3s that way would be slow. I couldn't get foobar to put them in the mp3 directories so they are in the same directories as their respective flacs. To move them manually would be take a long time given my folder structure. Luckily I have a directory synchroniser (ajcdir) which will do it with one command from my PC.

I have now purloined my spouse's PC to do the transcoding. She has a newer faster, newer, PC than I, with 4 cores, which for this task makes a big difference. Should be done by tomorrow lunchtime.

It seems Shellinabox can't use the clipboard to cut & paste from other browser windows or documents, which is a pain. PuTTY can, in its slightly peculiar cut & paste fashion. mc in PuTTY is a bit of a grim sight (feels like going back 30 years to my PDP days), but I'll try it more when I need to access non-shared directories. Samba shares over my Gigabit network work as if it was local data, and I'm so used to the Windows GUI that I leave mc for when I really need it. Thanks anyway.

[Ron Olsen]

CryptoTerm is much nicer than PuTTY. Junk PuTTY and use CryptoTerm.

I can copy and paste with Shellinabox using the drop-down menus in Firefox on my Mac Pro. I keep a Shellinabox tab open in Firefox right next to the VortexBox forum tab. Very convenient.

MC is a powerful tool for a non-GUI, headless Linux system like VortexBox, but you have to be comfortable with Linux and the command line to make best use of it. I use it all the time.

I'm glad you have a fast network so you can use Windows tools for VB media file management.

Good idea to commandeer your wife's computer for transcoding.

[pastim]

I can copy and paste with Shellinabox using the drop-down menus in Firefox on my Mac Pro. I keep a Shellinabox tab open in Firefox right next to the VortexBox forum tab. Very convenient.

I'm using Chrome. If I copy from any other Chrome Window, the 'Paste' command in Shellinabox in disabled. It can only copy from the same window to itself. That means I can't copy from a forum or HowTo guide. I'll try CryptoTerm. Over the years I've got out of command line habits - I need to get back into it a bit more.

[Ron Olsen]

I'm using Chrome. If I copy from any other Chrome Window, the 'Paste' command in Shellinabox in disabled. It can only copy from the same window to itself. That means I can't copy from a forum or HowTo guide. I'll try CryptoTerm. Over the years I've got out of command line habits - I need to get back into it a bit more.

Must be the OS that you're using. In Chrome on my Mac Pro, the Paste function in Shellinabox is greyed out, but I can use Edit > Paste to paste into Shellinabox. The Edit menu is in the OS X menu bar at the top of the screen.

I can also use Edit > Paste from the Wrench menu in Chrome to paste into a Shellinabox tab; you should be able to do this on the Windows version of Chrome as well.