02.OSS.Experience

Overview:

OSS: MediaSort
Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediasort

SourceFourge description:

"MediaSort is a tool to automatically rename your media files (pictures, mp3, ...) with their metadata attributes. You can sort your pictures by date, camera ... or other EXIF attributes. MP3s by author, album .. or other ID3 tags. Java GUI based on Ant."

Prime Directive 1:

MediaSort allows the user to rename files based on the metadata--commonly called tags--that are stored within various digital files. MediaSort focuses on FS, MP3, and OGG metadata attributes. This tool is incredibly useful to people who have large libraries of files where the metadata is accurate, but the files lack a naming convention. This tool will allow the user to quickly organize his or her file library. Because the tool provides a useful functionality, Prime Directive 1 is satisfied.


Prime Directive 2:

The installation of MediaSort was very simple. Simply download the bin zip folder, unzip the folder, and click on the command script titled "run." Once the GUI opens up, simply point the applet to the source and target directories, select the metadata attributes you wish to include and the order in which you want them to appear in the file name, and click "Copy" or "Move." It is a very easy applet to install and use and thus, I would have to conclude that Prime Directive 2 was satisfied.


Prime Directive 3:

The code for MediaSort is not overly difficult to understand or interpret, however, there is very little documentation and commenting of the code. Although the code is not extremely difficult to understand, documentation and commenting are a must for open source projects to ensure as much as possible, that any external developer can come in and enhance the system. Due to the lack of documentation and commenting within the code itself, MediaSort does not satisfy Prime Directive 3.