Not gonna happen. We will constantly improve the database, and make it faster, but we are staunchly against mirroring the file system.
Sorry.
-Thom
Gotta agree with Thom on this, with one wish list item that may already be in the works or part of 810. It would be really nice if there was a way in the web admin/media sync page to set type/media sub-type/file format on "all" files in a directory similar to the way setting all attributes currently works. Not necessarily a dynamic thing such that any file put into a specific directory would automatically have attributes set, but for example browsing to a directory and setting every media file to type movie, or setting them all to TV show/title xyz/season 2.
On the surface it may seem like organization by directory makes sense, but in my experience as a casual user Thom is 100% correct. Filesystem transparent media organization is the best way to go.
To me this is one of lmce's biggest problems - it assumes that all computers, network, files, etc are owned by lmce and there are no other external applications required by the users. If that's the case then lmce is perfect (other than the occasional quirkiness behavior). Otherwise it has many shortcomings (my suggestion being one). I agree that if lmce is all you want then the categorization is fine. Personally I don't like storing 16TB of various types of 'video' (tv, movies, music videos, home videos, comical shorts, etc) in one directory and then having to go in and categorize it manually. I would rather organize everything by directory (as has long been a standard in computing). This also works well when having to upgrade or if something ever happened to the core which requires redoing all the work required to classify everything.
Live browsing could be implemented completely separate from cataloging. I was speechless when I first installed lmce and found that this wasn't possible since every other alternative out there that I've tried has live browsing as the default. To me that's a lacking feature. I guess to everyone else that's what sets lmce apart from everyone else.
I wouldn't classify myself as a "casual user" since my media collection is probably 1000 fold that of other "casual users" here. Setting it up as lmce requires would take far too much of my time. I currently get around this by listing files by filename as this is close to live browsing but unfortuantely it still falls short. I understand that everyone is different but I thought I would elaborate on why I think this feature might be enjoyed by others. Please do not take any of this as a flame, just constructive feedback from someone who is appreciative of all the work that has been put into the project and the assistance I've received in the forums.