Changing Media Library Location

[CaeLim_WMPG]

I work at a radio station, we have a NAS server for archiving purposes which, until recently, has been offline. It has been my job to bring it back online and sync it with the rest of our systems. I am at the point of connecting propfrexx to the network storage. Currently propfrexx has 2 media libraries (a new recordings, and a copy of the archives on the propfrexx machine), these libraries are then accessed by scripts to play our automated shows. Since we have different folders for different days of the week, and scripts are made per time slot we have dozens and dozens of scripts. We also have a secondary propfrexx machine, since we're a live station and don't want to be stuck trying to fix a broken automation system without a backup.

This brings me to the problem, I want to swap the current archive (the local one on the propfrexx machine) for our actual archive (on the NAS server). I thought this would be as simple as editing the media libraries in the manager and changing the location, when I go to edit one of the folder libraries it shows an option to change the location with a little drop down, but this is greyed out and disabled for some reason. Since this is a mission critical system I would like to avoid manually editing upwards of a dozen or so files, and would like to avoid having to manually update all of our dozens of scripts x2 for the two computers we have running propfrexx.

[radio42]

First it depends, if you are using folder or playlist based media libraries. I assume you are using folder based media libraries.
Folder based media libraries point to the exact location/path. Of course the info is still displayed, but can not be edited.
It also depends on your scripts. Ie. if you are using archive files and play old/recorded shows out of those scripts. These entries might also reference a fixed location/path.

ProppFrexx has several options for scenarios like you are experiencing. For example:
The Enterprise Edition has an Alternative Location mapping feature. Where you can map any path to an alternative path in case a file is not accessible at its origin location.
In addition ProppFrexx comes with a central Media Library Server, which can host and manage media libraries at a central location.
As ProppFrexx is entirely based of the file system, you might use a fast high-availability network storage system, which provides a fixed drive for your central location.

As you can see, there are many options to evaluate. But high availability and mission critical uninterrupted operations requires some testing and planning of the system.
I am happy to assist you, but it sounds, like the Alternative Location Mapping (see the general settings in your Enterprise Edition) combined with a central HA-NAS might be the best option.
However, the solution is not to simply edit a location of a media library.

[CaeLim_WMPG]

We are using folder based media libraries, the scripts we have (which were set up far before my time) are just using a match filter to first check the new recordings for a file with the right timestamp in its name, then check the archives if it doesn't find a new recording. We then have template scripts for every day of the week which you are supposed to duplicate, rename, and change the match filter to the relevant timestamp. I doubt this is the best way to do this (or at least I hope not), however it is part of our pretty substantial tech debt.

The Alternative Mapping Location sounds like a really good solution if I set up our current archive as a backup to the new recordings folder; However this would, I think, still require editing all our scripts to match only the new recordings, which would then pull from the archives if a new recording isn't available. This would probably be harder to CENSORED up then changing all the scripts to point to a new media library, but makes me think our current scripting system is probably not the best setup since its fairly difficult to make simple changes to and pretty bloated. I would be potentially interested in updating this system to something a little easier to work with.

We're a public radio station so we have very frequent schedule changes, so a better scripting setup that adapts to that a little better would be nice to make schedule changes less daunting.

Thank you so much for your help by the way!

[radio42]

Note, that within all scripts the media libraries are NOT referenced by its path/location, but by its name - i.e. a change of the location would not effect any script:

If I understand you correctly you just need/want to change the location of an existing media library. E.g. from "C:\Music" to e.g. "F:\Music". Today you would (simply) need to remove the current media lib entry and create a new entry with the same 'Name' - and no script would have to be changed.
I might take a look, if I can add a new feature to the next version, so that you can directly change the location of an existing media library.

[CaeLim_WMPG]

Alright that sounds perfect. I wasn't sure how the libraries were being referenced (e.g. if they were using a UUID or something). I'll go ahead and do your idea with the names. Thank you so much for your help and have a wonderful day!

[radio42]

If you just need to reconfigure it once, the media libs are defined in a simple xml file called „ProppFrexx OnAir.medialibraries“ in the AppDataUser folder. So you might also be able to change/edit the path in that file.