Maintenance of Sources
Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2021 4:54 pm
What are "Sources" ? Neutron calls the locations ( in a general sense, including network ) where the music files are located sources.
What are they used for ? Neutron scans these locations for tracks and stores information about these tracks in its internal library, so that the user can define albums, tracklists, playlists etc and navigate according to categories like artist, album, genre etc.
Can we do without ? You can play a single file from your operating system's file explorer apps
but you cannot play a directory or anything else without including it in a source and Scanning it.
Where can the sources be shown and edited ? Via "Settings > Media Library > Sources" or via drilling up from the track list or via the top panel ( configure button in "Settings > User Interface > Panel: Top" ).
What are the elements of this source list display for ?
The checkbox to the right of each entry, which is labelled "Refresh", tells Neutron that it should keep an eye on the underlying directory and its files. When something changes Neutron is supposed to automatically refresh its contents. It might take some time though until this happens. You can manually disable this automatic refresh. Should an error occur while a refresh is taking place, e.g. if the app is shut down, Neutron will disable the affected entry as a precaution.
When Neutron is refreshing a source, e.g. because you re-activated its refresh-button, this is shown.
A long press on the middle of an entry will show you further options.
Especially the "Scan" is important: Neutron then will rescan the complete source.
If you want to exclude a source but not delete it you can tap on the left of its entry.
It's files will stay in the library but won't be shown, and the source won't be refreshed. Another tap will activate it again.
Sometimes, when a file or an image or tags have changed, and the refresh won't notice automatically, and a manual refresh won't notice too, and a rescan of the source seems to expensive, it's a good idea to rename the affected subdirectory (if need be rename it back afterwards), that will be noticed.
Please note: sources mustn't overlap. If you create a source that contains files already included by another source, Neutron will show errors.
To recover from this I suggest to delete all affected sources and create new, not overlapping ones.
Generally speaking it would seem to be advisable to keep the source-configuration as simple as possible.
Should huge network-mounted directories take too long to scan or should the scanning process abort you might want to split them into smaller ones. Unfortunately so far nobody wrote a comprehensive topic about network-related issues, so you'll have to improvise.
And generally it would be a good idea to enable Neutron to run in the background :
What are they used for ? Neutron scans these locations for tracks and stores information about these tracks in its internal library, so that the user can define albums, tracklists, playlists etc and navigate according to categories like artist, album, genre etc.
Can we do without ? You can play a single file from your operating system's file explorer apps
- play-0.jpg (22.69 KiB) Viewed 3499 times
Where can the sources be shown and edited ? Via "Settings > Media Library > Sources" or via drilling up from the track list or via the top panel ( configure button in "Settings > User Interface > Panel: Top" ).
- source-1.jpg (34.53 KiB) Viewed 3552 times
The checkbox to the right of each entry, which is labelled "Refresh", tells Neutron that it should keep an eye on the underlying directory and its files. When something changes Neutron is supposed to automatically refresh its contents. It might take some time though until this happens. You can manually disable this automatic refresh. Should an error occur while a refresh is taking place, e.g. if the app is shut down, Neutron will disable the affected entry as a precaution.
- source-2.jpg (14.14 KiB) Viewed 3551 times
- source-3.jpg (13.85 KiB) Viewed 3550 times
- source-4.jpg (31.2 KiB) Viewed 3548 times
- source-5.jpg (20.47 KiB) Viewed 3547 times
- source-6.jpg (12.8 KiB) Viewed 3546 times
- source-7.jpg (13.29 KiB) Viewed 3544 times
- source-8.jpg (13.69 KiB) Viewed 3544 times
- source-9.jpg (14.33 KiB) Viewed 3544 times
Please note: sources mustn't overlap. If you create a source that contains files already included by another source, Neutron will show errors.
- source-10.jpg (34.37 KiB) Viewed 3526 times
- source-11.jpg (27.45 KiB) Viewed 3524 times
Should huge network-mounted directories take too long to scan or should the scanning process abort you might want to split them into smaller ones. Unfortunately so far nobody wrote a comprehensive topic about network-related issues, so you'll have to improvise.
And generally it would be a good idea to enable Neutron to run in the background :
brimley wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 6:39 pmOk, just in case this helps anyone....
My SMB share scan actually finished and the file numbers found look about right. Woo hoo!
I changed the app option to keep running in the background and gave app Android permission to run in the background. It seems to have worked.