HOW TO AVOID CHECKOUT LIMITS IN SONICSTAGE!!!!!

[Steve...]

I'm not to sure whether many ppl realise this, but there was a post in this forum a little while back by 'coathanger' explaining how you can avoid the 3 checkout limits in sonicstage. Perhaps what confused everyone was the use of VBscripts, but belive it or not, you CAN actually avoid the checkout limit... I'll re-explain the method below since the original post was a little vauge.... (sorry coathanger! :wink: )

:arrow: Firstly, you will need to create a temporary directory to store the backups of your OMG Checkout info. (in this example i am using 'c:tempomgbackup' but you can use any folder you wish)

:arrow: Copy/Import your music into sonicstage using the normal method (i prefer using ATRAC3 for a speedy download to MD)

:arrow: Now SonicStage stores all the checkin/checkout info in the "C:Program FilesCommon FilesSony SharedOpenMGprocfile" folder. Once you have the checkout counters set where you want them, all you need to do is copy the entire contents of this folder to the temporary directory. This will effectivley "backup" your checkout limits.

To automate this process, you can use the following VBscript. (for those of u who don't know, a VBscript is essentially a batch file for your operating system - it has the file extention *.vbs).

So, open notepad and save the following code as the file OMGBackup.vbs

Function BackupOMG() 

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 

objFSO.CopyFolder "C:Program FilesCommon FilesSony SharedOpenMGprocfile" , "c:tempomgbackup" , 1 

Set objFSO = nothing 

End Function 



box = MsgBox("Backup SonicStage Checkout Limits?", vbyesno) 



If box = 6 Then 

BackupOMG() 

End If 

:arrow: Then Checkout your files to MD in sonic stage using the normal method :arrow: Once you have reached the 3 checkout limit, you can simply "restore" the checkout limits. Close SonicStafe and then copy the contents of the your temporary folder (ie. C:tempomgbackup) back to the "procfile" folder. Again, you can use VBscript to automate this.... Save the following code as the file OMGRestore.vbs

 

Function RestoreOMG() 

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 

objFSO.CopyFolder "c:tempomgbackup" , "C:Program FilesCommon FilesSony SharedOpenMGprocfile" , 1 

Set objFSO = nothing 

End Function 



box = MsgBox("Restore SonicStage Checkout Limits?", vbyesno) 



If box = 6 Then 

RestoreOMG() 

End If 

:arrow: Reopen SonicStage, and lo and behold, your checkout limits will be restored to their previous settings!

:arrow: Smile, because no longer will you have to worry about checkout limits!

:arrow: And to make things even easier, just create shortcuts to the *.vbs files on your start menu!!!

YES, AND PLEASE VISIT THE ORIGINAL POST - I DON'T WANNA TAKE CREDIT FOR SIMPLY RE-TYPING SOMEONE ELSE'S WORK! http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t=3318

Hope this helps!

[pdug]

Is this old hat? Because I have been looking for something like this for ages. Thanks to you for bringing this to my attention and to the bloke who wrote the scripts, I was never aware that the check out info was held in that directory. I have spent many hours scouring over the SonicStage access database MtData thinking that the check out info was held there :roll:

I was content with using RealPlayer and the plugin to transfer my MP3s to my MDplayer until I found a little trick to speed up transfer in sonic stage, using this trick its around twice as fast as using RealPlayer. As it Transfers files and converts remaining files together. So thanks again, this is now my prefered method to send MP3s to my MD player.

[Guest Anonymous]

Well I may of been alittle hasty in my reply, I noticed by using this trick - running the restore script it visually restores a checked out song back to 3. When when you try checking the song out for the forth time, even though it appears that you have check outs remaining it throws an error. Check the pic below: :cry:

Any ideas?

[coathanger]

Looks like its back to the old drawing board.

[Steve...]

yeah... i have exactly the same problem.... so sony isn't as dumb as i thought...

(there has to be a better way, there just has to....!)

[pdug]

Your certainly onto something here as you have tricked SS into thinking that a song still has check outs remaining. But there is something more to it than that, maybe another folder or the actual database it's self. There are three tables in the SS database have a look and see if you can figure out whats going on.

The three methods I have used to avoid check in/out are:

1. The nero/simpleburner trick

2. RealPlayer Plugin

3. Deletion of SS database and atrac files... re-import your files, bang get your 3 check outs back.