Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[keisele81]

I am using MC21 for Mac on a new 2016 Macbook.  Most of my library is on a NAS.

I'm doing substantial tagging work on my library.  That's all I'm using MC21 for right now.  It is common to have a lag and the Mac spinning rainbow wheel for 5-10 seconds after a tagging change.  For example, new cover art.  Sometimes the new art appears in a second, other times I'll get the spinning wheel and then MC will slowly change the images over the next few minutes.  These are for tasks on single albums - 10-20 files each.

My Macbook has 8 gb RAM, and I'm keeping ~4gb free.  I hardwired (ethernet) my laptop to my network, and get upload and download speeds > 10 MB/s.  I removed my anti-virus.  I turned on activity monitor, and CPU usage is typically < 20%.  MC21, Safari and Finder are the only programs I have running, and I keep the number of open tabs in Safari low (excessive tabs use up memory).  The only thing I'm using my Macbook for is tagging.  My thumbnails are 99% built.

I never had any similar problems using MC21 on an old, slow PC connected wirelessly to the same home network.

The latest incident occurred when I tried to paste a 1000x1000 cover art to 13 files, which took several minutes to accomplish.  I exported the log immediately after MC21 became responsive again, it is attached.  I also attached some screen shots.  Note in the top right menu row that there are monitors showing both memory and network speed.  The files and location appear to be good, as I played some of them on my computer.  I made the mistake of selecting system information, and spent 30+ minutes waiting for that (with a spinning wheel and MC locked up the entire time), it is also attached.  

I would greatly appreciate any insights & assistance.  My fundamental question is if this level of lagging is normal for MC 21 Mac, or not.  I just purchased my trial version of MC a week or two ago.

Kent

Attached:
1.  MC21 log (the zip file was >700mb)
1a. Log.txt
1b. System info
2.  Screen shots: --- too big to post
2a.  Memory load & 19 Mbps download speed (during lockup;spinning wheel not captured)
2b.  CPU load and 11 Mbps upload speed (during lockup;spinning wheel not captured)
2c.  MC System Info (took 30+ minutes)

[JimH]

If you have MC set to change tags in the files (in addition to changing data in MC's database/library), then a NAS will be slower since each file is copied once from the NAS and again back to it.

A wireless connection will also be slower.

[blgentry]

No, those kinds of lags are not at all normal.  That being said, I do NOT use MC on a NAS.  I suspect you have something fundamentally wrong, like a permissions issue or something else that's timing out every time you try to write to a file.  Or a really, really bad connection to your NAS.

Can you edit files on the NAS with another tagging program?  As a test I mean.

BTW, none of your screen shots were attached.

Brian.

[keisele81]

Thanks for the quick responses.

Let me clarify the issue and be more precise.  I don't get the spinning wheel every time I make a tag change, the majority of the time the lag is a second or so with no spinning wheel, which is why I'd expect when writing tag changes to a NAS file.  But I get a spinning wheel, often up to 5-10 seconds, often enough to post the issue.  And then sometimes it will go much longer.  I get it more often when adding cover art, an album at a time.  I'll get the spinning wheel, freezing up MC for 5-10 sec, then the wheel disappears and I can continue tagging.  However, often it will take minutes for the cover art thumbnail to populate, which seems strange.  Other times the thumbnails are there almost instantly, even for larger art files.

I suspected the network, and so started hard-wiring my laptop to my network.  This made a noticeable improvement, but still left me with the delays described in this post (hangups and lags were much worse when wireless).  But the data flow measurements have shown great connectivity -- up to 50 mbps.  And again, I never had this problem doing the same work on the same library using a 5-year old budget PC laptop over wireless with the same network, same NAS, etc... So yes, I can edit files with another program -- MC21 PC.  I don't see anything that indicates a problem with either the network pipeline or the NAS read/write speeds.   Problem may be some sort of timing out.  A few times I had bad file locations and I did get a 60+ second spinning wheel followed by a tagging error message, which makes sense.  These delays are for good files in the correct location.  Only variable here seems to be MC21 PC vs MC21 Mac.

My Macbook only has 8GB RAM, and I noticed that as the number of Safari tabs open quite large (20-30) that this will tie up almost all the RAM and everything slows down.  But closing the excess tabs and "cleaning" the memory fixes that.

I had to shrink the screen shots for the posting to accept them.  Here they are.  It took over 30 minutes of MC21 locked up before the system info appeared.  This should be captured in the attached log file.

Kent

[blgentry]

So yes, I can edit files with another program -- MC21 PC.  I don't see anything that indicates a problem with either the network pipeline or the NAS read/write speeds.   Problem may be some sort of timing out.

Testing with another computer is fine for validating the NAS itself and perhaps part of the network.  But it doesn't answer the question of how other tagging programs perform on the same computer (Mac).  However, you've said that these problems are intermittent and not consistent.  Those are really the hardest ones to isolate. 

I've looked through your log files and I'm not skilled enough to tell what's going on.

It took over 30 minutes of MC21 locked up before the system info appeared.  This should be captured in the attached log file.

Are you saying that you did Help > System info , and it took 30 minutes to respond?  If so, that's very unusual.  I've never had that take more than maybe 3 seconds and that's a long time.

Something fundamental seems wrong.  I'm just not sure where to start looking, as I don't know enough about performance of MC.  I'm just another MC user like you.  Maybe someone with more knowledge with have better ideas.

Brian.

[Grundgütigster]

I can't specifically help here, but it sounds as if your Mac might have some problems. When I have problems with my Mac I try to "clean" the Mac's working memory by shutting it down completely and then start it again after a couple of seconds (no restart from the menu!). Many problems were solved with this. Sometimes it's a try to install a new user on the Mac and see if the problem comes up again (rules out some possibilities). You also could delete the MC program and do a fresh install. And/or delete MC's *.plist files in the Preference section of your library (you should do this when you delete the program). Also: Apple's network handling is sad. I sometimes have better Finder performance with my NAS using the "cifs" command instead of "afp". But I don't know how MediaCenter connects to the NAS, as I put everything in an old MacMini - to avoid network problems.

When I work with files from my NAS, like tagging, it's not unusual that it takes a couple of seconds to complete the task. To me it's normal, but I only have wireless access to my NAS and am aware of Apple's network handling.

If you are looking for an alternative tag editor, try kid3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid3. You could try this to see, if the same problems come up.

Good luck!
Grundgütiger

[keisele81]

One thing that is consistent is taking 22+ minutes (yes minutes, not seconds) to get MC system info via Help > System info.

I pulled out the old Dell laptop, 2GB ram, 2.0 gHz duo processor, 32bit.  Same network, same library..... it took ~30 seconds to get the System info, while building thumbnails.

Back to the Mac.  Shutdown, then powered up, with only MC running -- no other apps except Finder.  Help > System Info......... spinning wheel .......... ............... ......... .............. ......... 23 minutes.

So I removed MC, there were no *.plist files, reinstalled MC.  Help > System Info ............ spinning wheel .............. ........... ........... ............. ........ 22 minutes.

Again, my Mac is a brand new Macbook, standard configuration.

Everything seems to me to point to a bug in MC21 Mac.


Attached a screenshot of:
1.  Dell PC
2.  Mac after 23 minutes searching for system info
3.  MC log
4.  Mac after reinstall & then 22 minutes searching for system info
5.  MC log after reinstall.

[Grundgütigster]

That's odd. 

I only have MC 20 and another set-up, so I can't really be of any MC 21 help. If have an older MC version you might try this.

There is a "com.jriver.MediaCenter21.plist" file in the Preferences folder on the computer (I just installed MC 21 to test  that).

Here's how to find it:
- Quit MediaCenter;
- Change to the Finder;
- From the upper screen menu chosoe "Go to" (my translation, it's the third menu from the right);
- Press the "alt" key on your keyboard and keep it pressed. You will see that the little menu window gets another entry: "Library";
- Choose the Library entry which will open the content from the Library folder in a new window;
- Go to the "Preferences" folder and open it;
- Look for the "com.jriver.MediaCenter21.plist" file (organise everything by name) and delete it;
- Open MediaCenter again.

If you are unhappy with fumbling around with those entries, create a new user and start MC 21 there. This would be the same.

Good luck!
Grundgütiger

[blgentry]

How are you connected to your NAS?  You said the computer is hard wired presumably via ethernet.  I'm assuming the NAS is too?

More importantly, how are you mounting the NAS share?  CIFS, AFP, NFS, or ?

I'll again ask if you can use another tagging program to verify that you can read and write tags to the files on the NAS.  KID3 is free.  It's ugly and not super easy to use, but it's fine for a test. 

I notice some icons I'm not familiar with in your status bar at the top.  What are they, some kind of performance monitor tool?

Brian.

[keisele81]

Grundgütiger, thanks for the detailed instructions.  I went the "shortcut" route last time and just did a search of "*.plist" and got nothing, because, as I now know, the "*" does not function as a wildcard in OS X like it did in DOS and does in Windows.  This time I found and deleted the file.  Have not really noticed much of a difference, but then I won't get much tagging done until the weekend.

bigentry, apparently my server is SMB2, from a terminal query (found in the Sinology forum), I got:
Music                         
                              SERVER_NAME                   NAS._smb._tcp.local
                              USER_ID                       501
                              SMB_NEGOTIATE                 AUTO_NEGOTIATE
                              SMB_VERSION                   SMB_2.002
                              SMB_SHARE_TYPE                DISK
                              SIGNING_SUPPORTED             TRUE
                              EXTENDED_SECURITY_SUPPORTED   TRUE
                              LARGE_FILE_SUPPORTED          TRUE
                              CLIENT_REQUIRES_SIGNING       TRUE
                              DFS_SUPPORTED                 TRUE

I initially set up the NAS with a PC, and now am entirely Mac - if that makes a difference.  I have yet to learn this level of detail about NAS's; a quick scan of Sinology forums offered differing opinions.   

I did try tagging with dbPoweramp, a program I need to eventually learn anyway, and was able to ad new cover art to the files.  Also, I'm backing up my iMac desktop to the NAS with no problems.

Maybe it is a CPU speed issue.  I just checked, and the Macbook is only 1.2GHz (in order to be finless, with a boost to 2.75) -- a base speed 40% slower than the 2.0GHz for the Dell.  It just occurred to me that I should install MC21 on my speedy iMac this weekend and see how that performs.

But the System info retrieval time remains puzzling.

The icons in the status bar are, from the left, "Bandwidth+" which can measure accumulated uploads, downloads, or speed.  Next is "Memory Clean" which displays available memory and can free up some used memory.  Then battery, date.  Then the 3 dots is "Bartender 2" which hides all the status bar icons that you don't want to see in a second hidden states bar that you see when you click on the dots.  I highly recommend all three.

Thanks to both of you for the help and ideas.

Kent

[Grundgütigster]

 ?

I don't think it has something to do with the speed of your Mac, but I also think it's not a MediaCenter issue.

I'm a long time Mac user (20+ years) and haven't had many problems with it so far. Sometimes Macs got hick-ups too which could be solved with my "standard" procedures. Also you can start your Mac holding different keys to clean and clear some entries (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255). Especially a reset of the NVRAM could help to clean confused entries (follow the link on the web site). Starting the Mac in the Safe Mode starts it without any start-up items, etc. so you can rule out conflicts with other background activities.

Apple always had and still has issues with network protocols, especially with Microsoft's Samba protocol, which - I think - is used by MediaCenter (that would explain having no problems with your PC). The Samba version you use is 2.x. You can force the Mac to use the older protocol by using the cifs-command instead of the smb command, but I don't know how to tell MediaCenter to use the old Samba version.

Now something else crosses my mind: Did you tell your NAS that you have a Mac? As Macs use different network protocols, you have to turn on these features on your NAS. I only can tell from the Synology NASes I have: Open the control center and go to the File Services menu. There switch on the "Mac File Service" option.

But again, also try another tagging program. Plus: Create a new user and open Media Center from there. You need to connect it with your library but then can test it and see if the problems come up there too.

If we can't be of more help and you can rule out that Media Center is the problem, you might ask for help in a dedicated Mac forum. They propably ask for a more detailled protocol. etrecheck (https://etrecheck.com/) creates unpersonalised protocols that might help to find out what's going on on your Mac.

Again: Good luck
Grundgütiger

[Awesome Donkey]

Yeah, I don't think it's a MC issue either. I've tried to reproduce this and System Info loads up nearly instantly and I've never had issues with lag or freezing with MC on Mac.