Rule #1 - Be Patient - Rule #2 - Don't ask when, if you don't contribute - Rule #3 - You have coding skills - LinuxMCE's small brother is available: http://www.agocontrol.com
I'm not sure what you mean by "auto-sense" what's in the media folder. LinuxMCE does know what kind of media it is. Actually, it may take a little while for the UpdateMedia script to flag everything in the database, but I know it does do this... Sometimes even when I'd rather it not...