More > JRiver Media Center 22 for Windows
New MC22 feature: Play album from memory?
RD James:
I don't think the feature to load a playlist into memory is in yet, currently it only seems to be loading a single track into memory.
Monitoring the program via Process Explorer shows that it is behaving as I would expect though.
When I play a very large multichannel AIFF file with the new "load files to memory at the start of playback" option, the whole thing is loaded into RAM immediately at the start of playback.
When seeking, there is a brief spike of CPU usage to about 12% (filling a small playback buffer) and then it settles back to ~6% CPU usage on average during playback. (actively decoding audio and applying DSP)
There is no disk access at all when seeking through the file.
Using the old "play files from memory instead of disk" option, only about half of the file is loaded into RAM at the start of playback, and since it decodes all of this audio immediately CPU usage hits about 25% for an extended period of time (filling a large playback buffer) then settles to about 3% during playback. (is not decoding audio, but still applies DSP or has some residual CPU usage?)
About halfway through the track, or when seeking past the buffered audio, I get another extended period of 25% CPU usage and disk access while the rest of the track is decoded into memory.
kr4:
--- Quote from: Blueline on July 16, 2016, 11:27:50 am ---What does this mean
Memory such as Ram
Memory such as SSD (JRiver move files to an SSD disk before playing Music)
Can you clarify this
--- End quote ---
I see that this is not "ready" yet but where does one see this option?
Never mind. It just appeared on the latest revision.
dtc:
Update : I had checked both Play from Memory and Load Files at Start of Playback. It appears that Play from Memory is the old method and Load at Start is the new version. With Load Files at Start of Playback only checked, I get much less CPU activity between tracks and the memory size is smaller, so I am pretty sure that is the new method. However, I still get CPU usage and memory change between tracks. It really seems like each track is being loaded into memory separately as the tracks change. For my test album (a 24/96 flac file) the 1st 4 tracks are 64 KB, 109KB, 62KB, 80 KB. Memory usage with nothing playing is 31 K. When the first file loads it jumps to 107K, an increase of 76KB, compared to the 64KB file size. A small difference is not surprising. For the second track, memory jumps to 150K, an increase of 43K, compared to a file size increase of 45K. For the third track memory drops down to 105K, a drop of 45K compared to a file size drop of 47K. For the forth track memory jumps up to 123K, an increase of 18K, compared to a file size change of 18KB. It really looks like each track is being loaded into memory at the start of each track. I looked at the transition with Process Explorer and there definitely seems to be disk activity at track change.
The good news is that Load Files at Start of Playback seems to load the compressed file quickly and there is only a small amount of CPU used for each track change. This looks very similar to the original play from memory (MC 18 and before). Unfortunately, it does not seem to be loading multiple tracks at once.
Am I missing something?
Perhaps Jim and/or Matt can give us an update of what this first version is doing and what else to expect.
Matt:
Right now it loads the track into memory in the first second it's playing. Actually it loads to memory before outputting any samples (but the previous track would still be playing).
Jim is keen on making it load tracks ahead so we load the full album, but we're still in the brain storming stages for that.
dtc:
--- Quote from: Matt on July 25, 2016, 10:58:27 am ---Right now it loads the track into memory in the first second it's playing. Actually it loads to memory before outputting any samples (but the previous track would still be playing).
Jim is keen on making it load tracks ahead so we load the full album, but we're still in the brain storming stages for that.
--- End quote ---
Thanks. So the loading of each track separately is the current implementation. So I am not going mad :) Seems like we are basically back to the original implementation.
For me, loading during silence seems like the best option. Maybe that can be an option if you are planning to load while still playing the previous track as the default t. I will check the transitions with large files on slow media and see how it works.
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