Browsing large music folders - really troublesome

[melaw]

Hi!

I recently found Poweramp because it's the only music player which has the features I need. Namely OTG support, folder navigation and a queue. I use a 128GB USB OTG stick for my music. I bought the full version right away.

Now the in-app browser is really not good, sorry to put it that way. It requires that every folder you look at is part of the library, and will not allow you to browse until every file was scanned.

Even if all the music is part of the library, there is no button to go up in the folder tree (cd..). Instead I have to "select folder" and select the whole storage again, which somehow triggers the FULL rescan of 100GB of music and I sit there for like half an hour.

Example: on my storage there is "music" and "new music". If I want to browse the first one, I select it, and it shows after scanning. Then I want to browse the other one, I select it, Poweramp forgets what was in the first folder. So when I go back it need to do aaaaaaaaall the rescanning for 20 minutes. Horrible.

Just compare it with Foobar2000. You can casually browse the storage folders and go up and down the folder tree without any delay. Sadly, Foobar is not a good player in general.

1. There needs to be a button 'cancel scan'
2. Poweramp needs to stop with the rescanning everytime I select another folder / folder combination
3. selecting the full sdcard as folder will bug out the display, it will not show the contents. I need to check all folders within the sdcard instead.
4. the folder browser must be separate from the library. Right now it's connected - folder selection for library and folders to browse is the same selection.

Can the devs please look into that?

 

 

[maxmp]

Hello! The Music Folders selection (popup with the folders tree with checkboxs) is intended to be used once when you’re setting up Poweramp on new device. Or when you’re attaching the new storage. Poweramp scans (this is the fastest scanner on market) folders and they are available in many forms: as plain Folders, as Folders Hierarchy with all the folder structure matching file system. These are available immediately and new files/deletion are incrementally rescanned automatically.

You generally don’t need to rescan anything, unless few specific cases like storage removal (also there are rare cases when due to some new options rescan is needed, but it’s not required or/and done automatically). Thanks!

[melaw]

Hi!

The point of OTG is storage removal of course, I want to plug in the stick and play the music from it.

Now the problem is, I cannot browse through the folder hierarchy (tree structure) if the storage (or the part I want to browse) has not been scanned in. Whenever I plug in the storage and go to "Folder Hierarchy" and select it, it displays "Does not look like something to me" and the loading circle spins for 30 minutes until everything has been scanned.

Everytime I unplug the storage and plug it in again, the library starts rescanning and I sit there waiting forever. With no progress bar. And I cannot even cancel it.

I have the following workaround: I disable automatical scanning and add the storage once. As long as the content of the storage does not change, and as long as I don't touch the folder selection, I can use the App just fine.

Now you say that rescanning is incremental - it is not for me. As soon as the rescan begins the library is empty immediately and I cannot browse or play anything while it's scanning. That would be really helpful actually!!

I hope I made my issue a little clearer? The App is really powerful in my eyes. And probably using large OTG storage is totally oldschool and no one else does. The folder navigation here is not really a folder navigation like explorer apps offer them. It's more of a visual method to define your library.

 

 

[maxmp]

I guess ideally you want to insert your storage and have all the trouble of adding music folders/scanning done automatically? 

(Technically it's simple, but there are few use case issues, like storage ejection and user generated content like ratings and playlists which include tracks from ejected storage).

[melaw]

No, you see, the scanning (adding to library) is the thing that I'd love to avoid actually, as it takes very very long.

Ideally I'd insert my storage, open Poweramp, browse my storage to the folder I want to listen to and then play it. Exactly like the "folder hierarchy" section but without the need to add everything I want to browse to the library. Right now, I cannot browse my storage until Poweramp has scanned through it all.

[andrewilley]

Poweramp does not work like that. It is a Library-based player and thus needs to scan all of your music (including embedded title/artist/album/genre tag data, cover art, etc) into its database in advance to allow the whole collection to be handled and displayed in a variety of ways, with different sorting and playback orders, repeat modes, etc. It is not designed or intended to handle regularly changing music sources, large networked or remote data sources, streaming audio, etc.

If you just want to play one individual single track, as long as it can be read in your Android device's file system then you can do so by launching that file into PA using a file explorer app. However PA won't associate it with anything else, and won't know what to do after it finishes (it will revert back to the All Songs music list from its database).

Andre