What is this?
Got one or more of these?
Well unfortunately the Melbourne-based company behind the product, Project Labs, folded a while ago, so support has been lacking. In particularly, the software driving it isn't exactly the best.
Luckily, an overseas company, Centurion-CD, has taken over the product and have released a new tool, MediaTracker, to replace the old software, DDS.
So this utility is for those who want to convert from the old DDS utility, to the new MediaTracker software.
Why did you write it?
Well I wasn't going to reindex all my CDs in the units all over again. The new program, MediaTracker, isn't perfect, but it's a bit better.
Why use MediaTracker?
There are some things missing from it that were so obvious in DDS, things like immediately knowing which disc was in or out by looking at the list, and immediately knowing how many slots were empty. MediaTracker also doesn’t evenly distribute CDs in the unit – in DDS, CDs are evenly distributed on both sides of the carousel, presumably to even out the load on the motor in the unit.
MediaTracker however, does offer the ability to search through the contents of each CD in the unit, once they’re scanned in. The catch is that when converting from DDS, as the discs were never scanned before, this data won’t exist. You’ll have to index each CD manually if you want this.
And MediaTracker does get rid of that annoying slight complete system freeze that DDS introduces on startup and shutdown, as it cycles each CD unit back to a default position. It also asks fewer questions than DDS does when a disc is inserted (which I’ve always found annoying). It does however have an annoying habit of ejecting the empty slot on startup to ensure it is actually empty though.
NOTE: Once you convert to MediaTracker, and have started removing and inserting CDs into a CenturyCD unit, you will not be able to return to DDS as the data will have changed.
Do give it a whirl before converting, as once you convert and have started inserting and removing CDs, you can't go back.
Where's the obligatory screenshot?
Here it is, but really, it's nothing to look at. This isn't exactly one you'd look at for any more than 15 minutes anyway.
Alright, where do I download it?
To use it, you need a few pre-requisites.
Once you have all that, you can download the converter here - DDS to MediaTracker Converter. Instructions are included in the download, but it's pretty straight-forward. Standard disclaimer of responsibility, but it only writes to the MediaTracker database file, so backup that file before and you can reverse any damage caused 
If you're interested in the source code, let me know using the contact links below.
Version history
- v1.0.0.0 (05/09/2007): initial release.
- v1.1.0.0 (13/09/2007): rewrote database code to make it faster, now supports transfer of audio CD track titles as well if entered, correctly transfers 'checked out' CDs, supports the 'unscanned volumes' feature of MediaTracker 2.1.0.0, tested on Windows 2000 SP4 and updated readme.