The song loader does more than search for recognised file extensions.

When OutFox finds a song folder, it also has to decide which parser should handle it. That becomes more complicated when several formats share extensions, tags or structures that have changed over time.

One of the more expensive examples involved Pump content.

OutFox supports Pump-specific formats and behaviour, including older content stored in SSC files. Because of that history, the loader could treat some ordinary SSC files as possible Pump charts and send them through additional checks before eventually returning to the normal SSC path.

The #VERSION:0.81 marker was one of the signals involved, but that marker alone is not enough to prove that a chart contains Pump data.

Across a large library, those false matches added up.

We have now made that detection more precise. Files using the dedicated PIU format still go directly to the Pump parser. SSC files can also be identified as Pump content when they contain clearer evidence, such as Pump step types or explicit format markers.

Normal SSC files no longer need to pass through the more expensive Pump checks based on one broad signal alone.

On our 3,722-song test library, this reduced one loading run from 677.246704 seconds to 511.741608 seconds.

That is still far slower than we want, but the result confirmed that format detection was responsible for a meaningful part of the loading time.

The wider loader work is now applying the same approach elsewhere. Parsers should be checked when the files provide a reasonable reason to check them, rather than asking every possible parser to inspect every folder.

Compatibility remains the priority.

We are not narrowing support or abandoning unusual content. Older Pump charts and other formats still need to be recognised correctly. The aim is to reach the correct parser with less repeated work along the way.

This change has removed one large source of unnecessary parsing, and it gives us a clearer direction for the remaining loader work.