Auto-Import

Showing MC's Auto-Import configuration with a number of watched directories added.

Media Center has a full-featured Auto-Import system. With this system you can:

• Define a set of folders that contain media, each of which have separate options defined.
• Manually scan all of your pre-defined folders on demand.
• Make use of the powerful Carnac (file name parsing) and Automatic Metadata Lookup features of Media Center
• Automatically apply tags to the files imported using powerful Tag on Import rules.
• Watch the folders automatically in the background for new files, without bogging down disk or network access.

In most cases, using Auto-Import to automatically watch your media locations on disk is the preferred means of Importing new content. Media Center turns this feature on by default, and automatically sets itself to to watch the locations found when it completed the automatic First-Use Scan. If you did not allow it to run this automated scan, then you will need to configure Auto-Import yourself.

You can configure Media Center's Auto-Import functionality via either:

• In MC's Options dialog at Tools > Options > Libraries & Folders > Auto-Import.
• The Media Import wizard at Tools > Import.

Background Scanning

Media Center's Auto-Import system runs by default in the background, and will automatically pick up changes in any of your defined Auto-Import Directories (detailed below). If needed, this feature can be disabled here: Tools > Options > Libraries & Folders > Auto-Import

With the background scanning feature disabled, you can still manually initiate a scan of your defined Auto-Import Directories with the Import Media wizard: Tools > Import

Media Center's Background Auto-Import works by:

• Monitoring File System Events for changes and responding instantly to only those files that changed in a watched directory.
• Running a background full-scan of the defined watched directories, and checking for changes, once every two hours. This is run with a low thread priority to prevent it from impacting foreground tasks.

Unlike the folder watching systems provided by many other applications, Media Center's background Auto-Import system relies, in part, upon a system called File System Events that is provided by your Operating System to allow it to respond to any changes made in a watched directory. This allows Media Center to react instantaneously when any changes are committed to a watched directory (you don't have to wait for the next "pass" on a timer), and prevents performance bottlenecks associated with regularly scanning the directories for all changes. Instead, when a single file is added or modified in a watched directory, Media Center is notified immediately by the underlying OS, and can react to only that file.

This system requires support from the Operating System and filesystem. Currently, this feature requires:

• Windows version of Media Center
• Watched directories on a watchable filesystem (NTFS or network drive)
• If using a network volume, the server or NAS device must properly support File System Events.

Note: I'm unclear on the details on how Auto-Import works on OSX. I've asked for additional clarification and will update this article when it is provided.

This allows Media Center to instantly respond to changes in the file system without having to bog your disk (or, worse, network interface) down with constant checks for changes in your media storage locations, most of which will not have changed. Therefore, this allows Media Center to schedule its periodic full scans of your media locations far less often than would be needed otherwise. If your storage device does not support File System events, it will still pick up new files automatically once every two hours. You can schedule additional checks yourself using MC's Automation capabilities (see below for details).