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Just a few Questions before I purchase?

Started by Benjord, April 26, 2020, 03:57:39 AM

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Benjord

I'm really interested in this video jukebox software, but I'm curious about a couple things.  If anybody out there would be kind enough to confirm one way or the other, I sure would appreciate it!

1) Would an external Hard Drive of 10TB worth of video files work properly with E-Touch? Or would an external hard drive of that size cause performance issues?

2) Is it possible to "accrue" data and video files from one hard drive to another? I don't mean completely overwrite the data from one hard drive to the other, but rather add (accrue) the data from one hard drive to another?  For example, licensed customer A works for 10 hours, adding videos, labeling them, sorting into proper genres etc..... then licensed customer B wants to take all that work from customer A and add it (accure) onto his own hard drive, effectively increasing the library of customer B without overwriting his previously existing work.  Is this possible with E-Touch? I hope my question makes sense.

3) Does E-Touch work with FLAC video files in addition to MP4 and/or AVI files?

4) Is it possible to add custom search categories, or are we restricted to certain specific search categories?  For example, I'd like to be able to search by "Live Concert", "TV Studio Performance", Genre, Year Released, etc (in addition to the usual Title and Artist).

Those are the specific questions I have.  It looks like the dual screen output is there, touch screen (obviously), and other nice features.   

Thanks so much!  I'm anxious to learn the answers to above questions!

Dan (in Milwaukee, WI)


Mark Norville

Hi Dan,

Welcome to the forum, I shall try and answer your questions for you from my knowledge, and then Barry will give you the proper answers. Always take what I say with a pinch of salt as sometimes I can be wrong.

1) As long as the files are tagged correctly and you have imported everything correctly, ran everything as admin, installed into c:\jukebox or similar rather than c:\program files. A slow build up is better than trying to import one million files at once, otherwise the program will carry on but it looks like it has crashed so you just have to wait until it finishes the importing.

2) If you mean you brought a hard drive of music videos on ebay, and then you want to add them to your jukebox, it would be just importing the files.

3) Flac music videos, I have never heard of that before. The program plays flac music files, but I am not sure about music videos.

4) The program is split into karaoke, music, video if this is what you mean, so you search on those folders. You can have custom genres but that involves tagging all your files and creating NFO files for them.

Hope this helps

Regards

Mark
I am now retired from the jukebox scene. I still visit from time to time and will help if I can, but apart from that. I am no longer a slave to downloading and tagging.

Benjord

Mi Mark,

Thank you for the greeting and info! 

I would definitely do a "slow build" as you call it, importing each video onto the hard 10TB drive with the proper paths and directories that E-Touch needs.  My main concern was if E-touch had any type of Hard Drive size restrictions?  Or are there drastic performance (search time) issues if E-Touch is accessing a large 10TB drive?

My thought about "accruing" files is difficult to articulate.  Basically I'm wondering if there is any way to easily copy a large batch of files from one E-Touch PC onto another E-Touch PC (assuming all paths and directories are exactly the same on both) without just overwriting everything?  I'm sure I could just import each video one at a time "manually" but that would take a long time. Let's say the PC you're copying from has 1,000 videos all properly tagged and organized exactly how you organize files on your own PC.  Is there some way of just adding all those files in one shot rather than importing one at a time?

Dan

Mark Norville

Hi Dan,

You are talking about a portable version where you can copy and paste the directories and the settings will be the same?

I do not think that etouch is portable, we have a number of commercial operators, and I am not sure how they do it, so my experience would be totally different compared to them.

However, technically if you just copy the files directly across they mainly use text files anyway, then it should possibly be good to go.

You mention a 10 tb hard drive, which of course is going to be mechanical, so after a while you will notice drops in speed due to hard drive wear and tear.

I know that Barry the creator has a quarter of a million tracks or more and he uses it fine and dandy.

However, every software has a bottle neck at some point, it does not matter how good the program is written, you will always find that you find a limit at some point to any software. To give an example I have a 16,000 plus movie library and I am noticing slow down's using Plex, but Emby is fine, Kodi still takes a while and is cumber sum.

I do not say this because I am paid to say things, but when I first met Etouch, I hated it. I honestly hated it, I wanted to love it, but the setup was akward, it was not an easy learning curve. I purchased other software in the mean time, but I keep coming back to this. I had the money to say, sod it I will buy it and if it is crap then I did not have to worry about the money because it was free to me anyway, I was buying it from compensation after someone drove into me.

I had been trying this since version 7 and I brought it on version 9, in the end it was the best thing ever, yes it has a steep learning curve, but if you stick with it and pull your hair out a few times, it is worth it. The skin tool is the best out there, ok so that is not perfect, but you can near enough create what ever jukebox you want in the end.

You cannot do this on other jukebox software, you can alter the graphics but the layout is the same.

You can see the skin section but not the later versions, here are a couple of skins that I created and you can see each one is different

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1PzW_u71mk (4:3 display)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deMZgFBDKF0 (vertical display)

I am not a skinner or a graphic artist, in fact I suck, but these are what is capable with the skin tool. If you have better knowledge or deeper pockets, then you can have designs far better than I can.

Berrywell, Coffee & who ever else I have forgotten has also done other skins which are fantastic and different.

Hope this waffle helps

Regards

Mark
I am now retired from the jukebox scene. I still visit from time to time and will help if I can, but apart from that. I am no longer a slave to downloading and tagging.

Benjord

Thanks again Mark.  I'm going to buy an official copy and start working with it. 

Mark Norville

When you do make another post saying that you have purchased.

That way Barry will see it more clearer and then update your forum status so that you can download.

Hopefully that will be reasonably quick, but at the moment with the virus, not sure what is happening at Barry's end, but he is still floating around.

Regards

Mark
I am now retired from the jukebox scene. I still visit from time to time and will help if I can, but apart from that. I am no longer a slave to downloading and tagging.

Barcrest

I am still here, and yes you can copy the files from another drive as you mentioned to increase your collection.

However since adding the youtube video download support i have not had the need to do this in a long while.
Keep on Rocking in the Free World \m/ ;D\m/



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