The Recursive ISV

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Originally I intended to spend today tweaking special effects.  As it turns out I decided I’d add a set of functionality that was on my “To Do List” for after release.  Normally I’d not do this, but in this instance I think it was actually essential.

Basically MixAction “heals” it’s Project files.  That means essentially, now all the meta data is internal, a kind of “database”.  Works extremely well, in fact I’ve not been able to break the “self healing”.

However - one thing could not “heal” itself and that’s media files (Audio). 

The software makes a copy of any Audio selected for inclusion in a project  and even then works with those files non destructively.  It includes the ability to archive a complete Project, including database and media, for transport (move to another machine, say a laptop for performance)  and backup purposes and is capable of restoring the same.

Where things can come unstuck is if (and in this business probably “when”) a user or other person deletes Audio files inside the actual Project \Media directory outside of doing the delete inside MixAction (which of course takes care of things properly).

Simply put things would screw up royally.

So today was spent writing some nice code to search, in a thread, at startup for missing media files only if those files are missing. If nothing is missing the Project loads as per normal.

Works like a treat.  :-)  If a file is not present it is searched for on the system, across multiple drives, and if found restored to the Project. If not found the user is warned.  Not a lot one can do for files that no longer exist anywhere of course, but then they should be backing up their Projects using the built in archive tool anyway. 

What ended up happening is that I rewrote the code I was using for copying files from one location to another - its’ faster.  So of course the routines within the program for adding media in the first place likewise work faster as well now - depending on the size of the media file.  Much faster in fact.

That pretty much tied up the available hours I had today as I had to attend to some other issues outside of this software.  But none the less worthwhile.

Tomorrow’s my day off so Sunday I’m hoping to do what I intended to do today, polishing up the special effects code.

Later…

Scott Kane

Quote of the Day:
If you haven’t got charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
–Bob Hope

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