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[Veazer]

I just downloaded the 9.1.215 beta. While I do like the look of the new layout, I don't care for the performance hit of being required to use a skin. I've always gone skinless with previous versions because the playist/libray scrolling was much smoother and faster.

Would it be possible to keep the list itself unskinned? If not, can you work on optimizing the skinning routine a bit? The folks at stardock.com have done a great job at keeping WindowBlinds fast, so it seems like it must be possible to speed things up a bit.

Try loading an older versions of MJ and run it with skins and without. You should see a noticeable difference in performance unless you are on a fast machine.

[JimH]

Skins are here to stay and we don't have the ability to turn them off now.

[nila]

There have been a few threads about this - if you dont like the look of the skins - someone made a skin that looked like it had no skin

[Marko]

Veazer's issue is with performance, not appearance!

[Ingo]

the worst thing about skinning is not that it might be slower or look different, but that the program behaves different:

- system menu looks different, no keyboard shortcuts, no localisation (which would change shortcuts)
- when screen resolution changes (to smaller) MC sometimes doesn't get moved to visible area
- when screen resolution changes (to smaller) MC doesn't get resized. It can be larger than the screen area.
- tools like matrox powerdesk can't resize MC automatically on resolution change
- when MC hangs (for a while) you can't minimize it like you can do with regular windows on XP. this sometimes blocks large part of my desktop.
- when MC hangs you can't kill it from the 'X' button, you have to use taskmanager
- right click on 'titelbar' doesn't give access to system menu
- there's no titelbar to double click (can be 'fixed' with non-skin-skin)
- ......

the only thing on the plus side I can see is it looks better.

lots of small stuff, but this small stuff is what makes windows powerfull and usable. with linux every program's window behaves different and you have to learn each program's shortcuts.....

in _my_ eyes it was a bad decision to switch to skinned-only.
still, I know, this won't change, and even though I don't like it, I can live with it, as it is probably the one and only skinned program I use on a daily basis. and I can learn how to use a second program ('windows' beeing the first)
If there was a second program as powerfull as MC, but without mandatory skinning, I wouldn't use MC. I'm just bound by MC's power.

Ingo

[Veazer]

Skins are here to stay and we don't have the ability to turn them off now.

If we are going to be forced to use skins, then how about doing your best to improve performance? I paid for a program that worked great and now you're telling me that every release from now on will require me to use a feature that greatly reduces performance.

I have MC running on an old PII 266 machine but with nice audio hardware. I would be willing to bet that others have "recycled" their slower PCs into mp3/audio/media servers. I know many software packages these days are designed for cutting edge hardware but this simply isn't needed for a jukebox.

Until now, selecting "no-skins" meant that only the player (previously on the left) was skinned. I know it was skinned because I often hacked the player portion of other skins into the default (un-skinned) MC layout. It looked nice and performed great. Why don't you give users the option of keeping your nice looking new player on top but leaving the listing and window as  is? Watching a screen slowly repaint as you scroll or slide a divder is NOT worth it just because the headings now have a nice Mac Aqua look.

Sorry to be so bitter, but I hate the idea of no longer being able to update.

[JimH]

If we are going to be forced to use skins, then how about doing your best to improve performance?

We're not forcing you to use skins.  Older versions of MJ and MC work without skins.

I have MC running on an old PII 266 machine but with nice audio hardware.

That's getting to be a museum piece.  Time to update your hardware?  Replacing a mother board and CPU doesn't have to be too expensive.

I hope you will understand that we're just following where the general PC market is going and trying to anticipate it a little.  There is a cost to that for people who don't want to change their hardware.

[nameless]

the worst thing about skinning is not that it might be slower or look different, but that the program behaves different: [snip]

Because of the skin engine, MC9 also doesn't work with HandyThing, which is the one utility that lets me maintain my sanity.  The MC9 window is in a world all its own.

[nila]

Veazer - You can buy a motherboard and CPU combo these days for around $80 for like an 800Mhz and basic mobo, all u then need to do is move all the rest of your hardware onto it.

Expecting software to be designed for a 200Mhz means HUGELY limiting how far they can take it for everyone else.

If u did that upgrade I'm sure u'd find your system overall working a LOT better for everything. I think it'd be worth it

[Veazer]

We're not forcing you to use skins.  Older versions of MJ and MC work without skins.
That's getting to be a museum piece.  Time to update your hardware?  Replacing a mother board and CPU doesn't have to be too expensive.

I hope you will understand that we're just following where the general PC market is going and trying to anticipate it a little.  There is a cost to that for people who don't want to change their hardware.

Actually, I am forced to use skins unless I don't want ANY future product updates. There are other features and bugfixes that make updates worthwhile.

Yes, that PII machine is very old, i know (and actually it's overclocked to a whopping 300 MHz). But my point was that it worked great before and now it doesn't. When I'm not at home I use MC on my new laptop and it is noticeably slower on that as well.

The PII machines can be had for $50 at Boeing surplus, that's why I use them for music servers. I understand that many users won't notice or care that performance went down but it also seems silly to ask me to upgrade hardware so I can use skins.

Veazer - You can buy a motherboard and CPU combo these days for around $80 for like an 800Mhz and basic mobo, all u then need to do is move all the rest of your hardware onto it.

Expecting software to be designed for a 200Mhz means HUGELY limiting how far they can take it for everyone else.

If u did that upgrade I'm sure u'd find your system overall working a LOT better for everything. I think it'd be worth it

I don't expect software to be designed for that dinosaur, but I don't expect things to become less usable so quickly for an un-needed feature. It is clear from other posts that it is causing problems besides performance issues.

I wouldn't notice any other improvements because the machines are not used for anything else at all. Their sole purpose is to function as a music jukebox.

[Doof]

It's causing problems (performance or otherwise) because it's in beta.

Just as nobody is forcing you to upgrade, nobody is forcing you to use beta software.

The choice is yours. If you want to upgrade because of the addition of new features, then you'll have to deal with ALL of the new features and with them, the increased system requirements. Media Center is not unique in this regard.

[zevele10]

I gave a try to 9,1.
I hate this f... blue all other.

So back to 9  who ,for now ,takes your Windows settings and have some non- blue skins

[KingSparta]

300mhz?

I never seen one of them my dad had some stories of them he told when I was yonger.

[Veazer]

It's causing problems (performance or otherwise) because it's in beta.

Just as nobody is forcing you to upgrade, nobody is forcing you to use beta software.

The choice is yours. If you want to upgrade because of the addition of new features, then you'll have to deal with ALL of the new features and with them, the increased system requirements. Media Center is not unique in this regard.

I don't believe it's a matter of being beta or not, the skinning feature of MJ/MC has always been a little sluggish compared to other programs I tried. It is doesn't seem any worse or better in the beta than it was in previous versions.

My point is NOT that MC should run perfect on an old machine, my point is that you shouldn't reduce a program's UI performance for such a minor benefit. I tried MJ8 on a Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop (1.7 GHz / Geforce 2) with a 1600x1200 display and the program is dramatically slower when using skins on this PC as well. Given the choice, I would not use skins on this system either.

I'm not "anti-skinning" and would welcome the new feature if JRiver optimizes the code a bit. If you think skinning a window requires a big performance hit, try some windows skinning software like WindowBlinds as I mentioned before. WindowBlinds doesn't have as much of a performance hit and newer versions can potentially increase performance if you have a video card with lots of memory.

[digital:rogue]

I have MC running on an old PII 266 machine but with nice audio hardware. I would be willing to bet that others have "recycled" their slower PCs into mp3/audio/media servers. I know many software packages these days are designed for cutting edge hardware but this simply isn't needed for a jukebox.

Not trying to be a jerk to anyone, especially since I am rather new to this forum, nor am I trying to stir the pot here, but I must play Devil's Advocate in this one. From a developer's standpoint that is like walking into your local Ford dealership and complaining that your '76 Pinto doesn't run as fast as a new Mustang GT. Then telling them you want all the same features installed in your car...

A PII system will barely run any modern software, let alone any modern OS, that was made after 2001. When I was a systems analyst back in the day, we had to scrap all our PII's for the newer PIII's when we upgraded from Winbloze NT to Winbloze/Office 2k. A PII simply lacks the horsepower. I finally started to feel the crunch on my AMD Thunderbird-A 1.2Ghz a few months ago, so I had to bite the bullet and pick up a new P4 (well, cooking the CPU helped the decision ). But the point is, take their advice and use MJ8 without skins. It is a fine jukebox in itself. In fact, without any need of video and picture viewing features, MJ8 is a darn good piece of software. I have been using MJ since v7.x; despite the problems inherent with it, there isn't much that can stand on even ground with it. Showshifter and WMP9 give MC a run for it's money (esp. in the GUI dept.), but don't even come close to it's database features or overall list of features (try connecting to a NikePSA Play in Showshifter, or maintaining a friendly database in WMP9).

MC 9.1 is a step in the right direction for the growth of J River in the market. I just hope they don't lose sight of the prize before moving on to the next release.

I know many software packages these days are designed for cutting edge hardware but this simply isn't needed for a jukebox.

MC is hardly in need of 'cutting edge hardware'. Any hardware system through last-generation specs will handle MC more than adequately. Heck, I'd bet anything back to low-end PIII's will likely handle it with good audio/video cards to take the strain off the CPU.

Just my two cents.

[nila]

The PII machines can be had for $50 at Boeing surplus, that's why I use them for music servers. I understand that many users won't notice or care that performance went down but it also seems silly to ask me to upgrade hardware so I can use skins.

For an extra $20-30 you can get an Athlon 1000 or something and use that as your music server and it would then have the potential to later develop into your holliday photo, video, etc server to make it an entertainment center rather than just a music server.

And they're not requiring you to upgrade to use skins, they're requiring you to upgrade to use the latest version of their software with a lot more features.

I don't expect software to be designed for that dinosaur, but I don't expect things to become less usable so quickly for an un-needed feature. It is clear from other posts that it is causing problems besides performance issues.

If you dont expect software to be designed for that dinosaur then how can you complain that this new software isn't designed to keep it in mind and is running slower on it?

I'm normally sympathetic but with a system that old, expecting ANY software developer to even think about that when designing their software is just not concievable.

[rocketsauce]

And they're not requiring you to upgrade to use skins, they're requiring you to upgrade to use the latest version of their software with a lot more features.

It was my understanding that a lot of these new features are  dependent on the fact that MC is drawing the GUI instead of letting Windows handle that task. So, in effect, you are being required to upgrade in order to use skins.

Rob

[Doof]

I'm not "anti-skinning" and would welcome the new feature if JRiver optimizes the code a bit. If you think skinning a window requires a big performance hit, try some windows skinning software like WindowBlinds as I mentioned before. WindowBlinds doesn't have as much of a performance hit and newer versions can potentially increase performance if you have a video card with lots of memory.

That's where the beta part comes in. This is the first version of MC where JRiver is drawing the entire app instead of relying on Windows API. It's all their code now, so they know it inside and out. I haven't seen any indication in the beta threads that optimization has even begun yet.

Try waiting until it's out of beta before judging it.

[Doof]

It was my understanding that a lot of these new features are  dependent on the fact that MC is drawing the GUI instead of letting Windows handle that task. So, in effect, you are being required to upgrade in order to use skins.

Rob

You could use skins in MJ8 and MC9. You're not being required to upgrade to use skins.

You're just being required to upgrade to use the new features. Some of those features require the use of their skinning technology. Or so I've read. Matt stated at one point (I think it was Matt - maybe it was Jim) that a lot of what they wanted to do was dependent on them shedding their reliance on the Windows API.

While that does introduce challenges (like those that Ingo listed), I don't think they're impossible for them to overcome. Some of the items on that list are purely cosmetic, and others can easily be fixed by the programmer. Others may be impossible. It's hard to say.

[LisaRCT]

I also use a recycled PC for a music jukebox (AMD-K6-2, 550Mhz, 512MB PC133).
While it will run MC9.0 and/or MC9.1, for performance reasons I run MJ8 on it instead.
Meanwhile, I run MC9 on my 2GB machine where I do my music collection maintenance and tagging, etc, watch videos, TV, etc. as well as play music when it is not busy doing other things.

I recently bought a barebones kit on eBay for $50 (case, power supply, motherboard, AMD XP 1800+) so hardware upgrades can come cheaply.

HOWEVER, he is not complaining solely about the performance on the Pll system, he also said MC9 runs noticibly slower with skins EVEN ON FASTER MACHINES.
So, I think the core of the issue he raises is NOT simply about older machines, but rather about MC9's performance on ANY machine with skinning.

Merely suggesting a hardware upgrade (while not a bad idea) does not really address the issue he raises.

[Jaguu]

This is the first version of MC where JRiver is drawing the entire app instead of relying on Windows API.

Becoming independent of the Windows API might be a first step to an operating system independent version of MC9, so it could run on a Mac, on Linux or any kind of OS of your choice and that might be the way to go.

You could built your own cheap box and run MC on it, as you do not really need those fully equipped power pc's to run a Media Center. One day you may buy a small box in your retail store with an incorporated Media Center!

Talking to a Sony sales person, he said that Sony will ship new notebooks this fall with Linux instead of XP including plenty of multimedia software. So this might be the big guy posing a threat to J River.

They might have to dance with the MS$, Mac and Sony guys simultaneously! They play it bigger than a simple utility development company.

So don't complain too much about being slow on PII and upgrade as Nila suggested! Then you will also have all the nice 3D visualizations as well!

[Marko]

<snip>HOWEVER, he is not complaining solely about the performance on the Pll system, he also said MC9 runs noticibly slower with skins EVEN ON FASTER MACHINES.
So, I think the core of the issue he raises is NOT simply about older machines, but rather about MC9's performance on ANY machine with skinning.

That's where the beta part comes in. This is the first version of MC where JRiver is drawing the entire app instead of relying on Windows API. It's all their code now, so they know it inside and out. I haven't seen any indication in the beta threads that optimization has even begun yet.

Try waiting until it's out of beta before judging it.

[Doof]

Thank you, Marko. I'd gotten tired of repeating myself.

[sraymond]

Doof said:

Try waiting until it's out of beta before judging it.

Maybe a part of Vaezer's original post was overlooked.  He said:

Would it be possible to keep the list itself unskinned? If not, can you work on optimizing the skinning routine a bit?

I don't see why he (or she?) should have to wait until MC is out of beta to report a problem and offer a suggestion.  If this were the guiding rule, there'd be a lot less traffic on this board and a lot more problems to resolve once MC is out of beta.

Scott-

P.S.  I have absolutely no opinion on the matter of skinning...

[KingSparta]

Maybe a part of Vaezer's original post was overlooked.  He said:

it was not overlooked and answered by : JimH

on the first reply

[sraymond]

King,

I was referring to the quote that suggested waiting until MC was out of beta before judging it.

Jim did reply (and rather quickly, to his credit):

Skins are here to stay and we don't have the ability to turn them off now.

But this didn't answer the question about optimizing the performance.

As Lisa pointed out, the issue is one of performance (regardless of hardware) and I'd think that is certainly appropriate in the MC9 forum even if MC is still in beta.

Scott-

[Doof]

Well, if we want to get nitpicky... how about not quoting me out of context?

The text I was responding to was quoted right in my post.

Veazer seemed to imply that MC's skinning was slow because the code wasn't optimized and that they should do that. He even cited WindowBlinds (a piece of software I have always found to not only be extremely buggy but to drag my whole system down to a crawl) as an example of how skinning could be done right.

Hence my reply. There's nothing wrong with saying that it's slow and that it needs to be optimized. I just posted about this myself in the release thread for .218. All I'm saying is don't get all upset because MC 9.1 is a skinned-only app until you at least get to see how it runs when it's finished.

[sraymond]

Hey Doof...  all I'm trying to say is that the original post was a valid point...  and all those that jump on it in the vain of "hey...  wait until MC is finished to complain" are being unfair.  If we all waited until MC was finished to complain (or suggest or comment) we wouldn't be where we are today.

I quote you (and hopefully not out of context):

All I'm saying is don't get all upset because MC 9.1 is a skinned-only app until you at least get to see how it runs when it's finished.

I agree no one should get upset...  but voicing complaints, suggestions, or comments should happen now, not after MC is finished.  People should be encouraged to communicate their perspectives and comments!

But let's not take this discussion too seriously...  I feel like I'm being ganged up on.  Good thing I have broad shoulders :-)

Scott-

[Doof]

Sorry... I forgot the   on that post. I really wasn't mad or anything.

This debate is getting kind of ludicrous, though. I think we all are saying the same basic thing, but it's just getting lost in the translation somewhere.

Basically, we all want MC to be as fast as possible.
We all want it to be as feature rich as possible.
We all want it to be as attractive as possible (just that there's different ideas of what's attractive ).

So my point?

Well... I kind of forgot somewhere along the way.

I'm going to go do something else now.

[Veazer]

...HOWEVER, he is not complaining solely about the performance on the Pll system, he also said MC9 runs noticibly slower with skins EVEN ON FASTER MACHINES.
So, I think the core of the issue he raises is NOT simply about older machines, but rather about MC9's performance on ANY machine with skinning...

This is the core point I have been trying to make, while the focus seems to have been shifted to the fact that one of the machines I use is still a PII.

I think MC is a fantastic piece of software and I love what it is evolving into. I simply think there is room for improvement when it comes to skinning performance. And understandably any time there is a performance issue it will be most noticeable on older machines. I worked as a software tester briefly and we tested on a variety of machines. Had we only tested the software on fast machines a lot of problems would not have been noticed.

I felt I should comment now while it is still in beta form. Isn't this one of the reasons for beta software, to point out potential problems and address them before official releases?

Doof, you said it best:

Basically, we all want MC to be as fast as possible.
We all want it to be as feature rich as possible.
We all want it to be as attractive as possible (just that there's different ideas of what's attractive ).

[V-Man]

He even cited WindowBlinds (a piece of software I have always found to not only be extremely buggy but to drag my whole system down to a crawl) as an example of how skinning could be done right.

WindowBlinds 4 is actually lightning-fast and better than XP's built-in skinning engine. It is however only designed for XP.

Personally, I would prefer to not have MEGA-ME skinning and stick to standard. I could then skin it with WindowBlinds too.

Obviously things are not going to change though, that's just my personal opinion.

[Veazer]

I should have said that I was referring to WindowBlinds 4. Some earlier versions were buggy and not as fast.

[digital:rogue]

DING DING!!!

End of round 1! Everyone back to their corners!

hehe, wow, this thread makes my head spin  

[Veazer]

I'd like to think that ultimately we're all on the same side. But if not.... NO EAR BITING!!! It hampers one's ability to appreciate music.

[digital:rogue]

Well Veazer, we are on the same side; however, I like to think of us as a bunch of spoiled kids, for we have grown accustomed to getting what we want, when we want it from the dev team @ J River. As soon as they put the smack down and give an emphatic "No", we start to wonder "wtf"...hehe.

Let's face it: NO company gives as much reign to user input as these guys do, and they do put up with a LOT from us. I've been on both sides of the equation as a user and as a Systems Analyst developing system configurations, software, and network policies for Big Brother, and believe me, these guys bend over backward for us. We do test their limits, and eachothers at time (hence, this thread), but overall we are one big collective of enthusiasts trying to reach a common goal. I've been perusing these forums for a couple of years now and only recently started posting, and I have noticed that, although much of what we put up here is fragmented and seems to go unnoticed by anyone but moderators and ourselves, overall we get what we want -- when feasible --. The dev team is trying to take MC to the next level to stay both competitive and usable with this new release. To do so means saying goodbye to old standards in some ways, such as legacy hardware and software. It is not any inherent evil intentions on their part, but someone simply has to take the reigns and charge forward. This will piss off some people, but ultimately please everybody. Then we all band together and take them on when they try to do so. It is an unfortunate side effect of programming in the windoze environment that applications are getting to require so much horsepower and programming overhead. Don't blame J River, blame Microsoft for making such an inane, bug-ridden API. There are SO many things that Microsoft documents for developers that simply DO NOT WORK the way they are documented. I used to spend more time programming workarounds than I did actual, documented code. Things may have changed a bit in recent times, but from what I have gathered not too much has.

This thread is full of good intentions gone misinterpreted as mentioned earlier. We all want the same thing, but seem to want to protect eachother from, well, eachother.  The good side of this is the inherent system of checks and balances that occurs between the userbase and the developers. Just as I mentioned it is good that they take the reigns and charge forward, it is just as good that we at times tell them to pull back and slow down. We just need to chill out and understand eachother.

Geez....I just wrote a book, didn't I? LMAO...I do that sometimes... just smack me and tell me to shut up  

Cheers everyone.

-Rob-

[nila]

*smacks him* - SHUT UP!!  

[V-Man]

Geez....I just wrote a book, didn't I? LMAO...I do that sometimes... just smack me and tell me to shut up  

Cheers everyone.

-Rob-

Rob,

Take THIS!...

S M A C K !

Now SHUT UP!

[Jonas]

Well, there are definitely things that could be optimized in the way the current UI is painted.

For example, if I click "playing now" in the tree, playing now is shown (no big surprise there).  Then I transfer focus from the tree to the playing now pane by clicking the same song which is already highlighted -- and the entire playing now pane is redrawn from top to bottom.

Then I might want to select some items in the media library using the keyboard, so I move to a song and then I use shift-cursor-down to extend the selection.  Every time I press shift-cursor-down the entire selection is repainted, even though the only thing that changed was that one single row should have its background color changed.

This means that extending a selection takes 100% cpu time and is still slower than it ought to be -- on a 3.0 GHz P4 with 2 GB of PC400 memory, with a Radeon 9700 graphics card.  And when lines are repainted they flicker, which doesn't look very nice.

Even just moving the mouse pointer above a song is enough to have that row repainted, at least if I hover for 1/10 second or so.

(Please take this as constructive criticism -- here are a few things that could be improved in an otherwise excellent program!)