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[Daudio]

Hi,

I have an existing iTunes Media folder (on a Mac) that I Imported into MC (22.54). My intent is to share the library for the time being, and I found some old posts describing how to do this, which seemed very reasonable.
I set up MC to watch 'Ext_HD /iTunes/iTunes Media/Music' and to write CD rips to 'Ext_HD/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes'.

The initial import was... frustrating. When I initially triggered the Import MC just acted like nothing happened, then it started getting sluggish, and went busy, and crashed, and crashed, and crashed....

(Why can't MC indicate to the user that it is busy with a big background task ??, You know, just to be nice)

At some point, after doing some research, I managed to turn off Auto-Import, and it seemed to have copied all the metadata into MC. But later I had to make a number of meta data changes, which I did in iTunes, and then planned to Sync the changes into MC. Well as soon as I tried to Sync, MC went busy and started crashing again.

Ok, I had read up a bit on this and saw the suggestion to go find the MC crash log, to find the 'bad files' that were supposedly causing the crashes. No thanks to Apple, whom hides the 'user/Library/' folder where the logs hang out. Anyway once I got the last MC crash log displayed, I scanned and searched the whole darn thing (actually a couple of them), and found... nothing... no strings resembling a file name, path, track name... just nothing (

So I am left with no clues as to the cause or solution to these grotesque crashes and a very bad taste in my mouth for MC and its reliability with my music data.

Can anyone help me fix these problems ?

[bob]

Hi,

I have an existing iTunes Media folder (on a Mac) that I Imported into MC (22.54). My intent is to share the library for the time being, and I found some old posts describing how to do this, which seemed very reasonable.
I set up MC to watch 'Ext_HD /iTunes/iTunes Media/Music' and to write CD rips to 'Ext_HD/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes'.

The initial import was... frustrating. When I initially triggered the Import MC just acted like nothing happened, then it started getting sluggish, and went busy, and crashed, and crashed, and crashed....

(Why can't MC indicate to the user that it is busy with a big background task ??, You know, just to be nice)

At some point, after doing some research, I managed to turn off Auto-Import, and it seemed to have copied all the metadata into MC. But later I had to make a number of meta data changes, which I did in iTunes, and then planned to Sync the changes into MC. Well as soon as I tried to Sync, MC went busy and started crashing again.

Ok, I had read up a bit on this and saw the suggestion to go find the MC crash log, to find the 'bad files' that were supposedly causing the crashes. No thanks to Apple, whom hides the 'user/Library/' folder where the logs hang out. Anyway once I got the last MC crash log displayed, I scanned and searched the whole darn thing (actually a couple of them), and found... nothing... no strings resembling a file name, path, track name... just nothing (

So I am left with no clues as to the cause or solution to these grotesque crashes and a very bad taste in my mouth for MC and its reliability with my music data.

Can anyone help me fix these problems ?

The logging you want is in MC, go to
Help->Logging
It creates a log file in your home directory->Application Support->J River->Media Center 22

[Daudio]

Bob,

Ok, Checked there and read the current and previous logs. Whew ! there's a lot in there. I saw a reference to a specific .aif file at the end of the 'Previous log' in relation to AnalyzeAudio (but nothing that looks like an error post), and come to find out it is from the only album in the default MC media file folder, while a duplicate also exists out on the external drive MC which MC imported.  I deleted the duplicate local files, but don't have time to test right now, and I really doubt that would cause as severe an error as multiple crashes (unless MC is a snowflake )


BTW  I've noticed at times that the MC Dock icon will pop up on the right side of the dock and kind of pulsate, or come-and-go  ?? I think this happens randomly when MC is doing an import, sync, analysis, thumbnails, or ??
Is there an explanation for this behavior ?

Thanks,
Dave
 

[bob]

Bob,

Ok, Checked there and read the current and previous logs. Whew ! there's a lot in there. I saw a reference to a specific .aif file at the end of the 'Previous log' in relation to AnalyzeAudio (but nothing that looks like an error post), and come to find out it is from the only album in the default MC media file folder, while a duplicate also exists out on the external drive MC which MC imported.  I deleted the duplicate local files, but don't have time to test right now, and I really doubt that would cause as severe an error as multiple crashes (unless MC is a snowflake )


BTW  I've noticed at times that the MC Dock icon will pop up on the right side of the dock and kind of pulsate, or come-and-go  ?? I think this happens randomly when MC is doing an import, sync, analysis, thumbnails, or ??
Is there an explanation for this behavior ?

Thanks,
Dave

A duplicate shouldn't cause a crash.
What are the specifics of the file? Size, etc?

You are correct about the dock icon. MC spawns workers that process things like video imports and video thumbnailing.
I don't think it's used with audio only files.

[Awesome Donkey]

MC spawns workers that process things like video imports and video thumbnailing.
I don't think it's used with audio only files.

I see a worker pop up for a moment in the dock and leave, running audio only mode (and only FLAC files). I just assume this is auto-import kicking in.

[blgentry]

With a large library, or even just a library that you've had for a while, it's not uncommon to have a bad file or two or.... hundreds.    My ITunes library, back when I had one, was a complete mess due to a drive crash, a failing ipod internal drive, and a lack of backups on my part.  I've since fixed all of that by dumping the ITunes library and starting from scratch.  I now have actual real backups too.  I'm not suggesting this for you at all; just telling my story.

You might turn off auto import, and turn off audio analysis.  Then manually import one or more large parent directories.  Generally speaking you'll get a status box in the lower left of MC that shows what files it's working on.  You might get lucky and see if/when it stops and what file it's on.  Of course logging tends to catch that stuff nearly every time.  The short cut with figuring this out from the logs is to go to the end of the Previous Log.txt and read the last few lines.  You'll generally find the bad file listed there.  Not every time, but many times.

Once you move the offending files out of the directories that MC is importing, you can try again and hopefully get past it.  If not, repeat this until you eliminate all of the bad files.

The JRiver staff normally asks for copies of the bad files so that they can improve their support for broken files and not crash the program when MC tries to import them.

Hopefully the information here will help you get past this hurdle and on to the next task. 

Good luck.

Brian.

[Daudio]

I think I have been running with Auto-Import On for some time now. Turned it on,had a crash, looked at log, deleted dupl. album in default lib. folder, left it on.
Since then I've been busy with other MC subjects, and noticed I had two crashes later, but both occurred when, as best I can tell, nothing was going on in MC except playing some Redbook files. Then another crash a few minutes ago, doing nothing but fooling around with the display options (little down arrow next to title text) of the lower half of a custom View ?

I am running MC 22.54, on OS X 10.10.5, on a 2014 8GB, I5, Mac Mini.

Cheers,
Dave


P.S. the auto-spell check is making a hash of my typing, and causing a lot of annoying rework (

Can it be disabled ? Not sure if it is OS X or Interact ??  Just asking

[JimH]

Please try an update:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,110029.0.html

[blgentry]

Duplicates don't cause crashes.  Bad files cause crashes.  Find the bad file(s) by looking at the end of the Previous Log file.  Then move those files out of MC's import and/or auto import directories.

Brian.

[Daudio]

Brian,

I have yet to see any indication of bad files. By the time I found the procedure, then the right log files, the initial (400GB) import (with MANY crashes) was long done. I did a number of MC CD rips (into iTunes Media/Auto Add..), then closed MC and did some tagging in iTunes after it auto-added the rips. Then closed iTunes, opened MC, to sync the changes. Which rested in a few more crashes. Then I turned off Auto Import to do more ripping, and some tag maintenance, undisturbed. A bit later I turned it on again, got the crash that led to the duplicate album (it was a duplicate between local default dir., and a watched external HD). After I deleted the local album copy I haven't seen any files implicated in the logs, only what looks like normal processing that just ends.

Since this MC library is now loaded, updated, and seemingly stable, is there something like a scan of all the files to find any that may disagree with MC ?

And I will update as soon as I figure out how 

Dave

[blgentry]

I hope your crashing is done, but I suspect it's not because these types of things usually don't "just fix themselves".  But here's hoping anyway.

I suspect that Analyze Audio might be going on in the background.  Maybe.  Do Help > System Info .  Then look under Processing and see how much of your library has been analyzed.  Look under Background Tools Running and see if Audio Analysis is still going on.

If nothing is running in the background, you might try doing analyze audio on the remaining files that haven't been analyzed yet.  I suspect that's going to trigger a crash.  But I could certainly be wrong.  You can either select all files and run  Library Tools > Analyze Audio, or you can use the built in smartlist Audio-Needs Audio Analysis .  It's the same thing either way, because if you select all, Analyze Audio will skip files that have already been analyzed.

Audio Analysis takes a long time.  Something like 2 or 3 seconds per song.  If you have 10,000 songs that's 25000 seconds or about 7 hours.  I'm guessing at the size of your library.  You might have 5 times that amount if you have a lot of lossy compressed files.

Anyway, Audio Analysis is a procedure that a lot of people run in batches, generally over night.  Let it run all night, then stop it in the morning and use your system.  Start it again when you aren't using the system and let it roll.

Oh and if you wanted to get really crazy, you could analyze all files and uncheck the box that says "skip files that have already been analyzed".  That would make it do analysis on every single file.

Good luck.

Brian.

[Daudio]

Brain,

Thx for the heads up on the 'Tools/System Info...'  I've attached mine... looks OK to me.

As to 'Analyze Audio', I think I am going to skip it entirely because I doubt if it be will be used by the customer, and he can run it if so inclined    Initially it was just something else to try, and I learned some things from the ruckus it caused.

I'm going to cross my fingers for the time being, and hope that time, and maybe a little more metadata fixing, will make a difference in stability.  I wonder if not having a DAC, or proper output device, other then 'Internal Speakers'  (on a Mini !), could be an issue ??

One more post here, and I'm signing off this Mac system, next is delivery, and the cust. can setup his own forum account 

B, you've been very persistent, forgiving, and helpful. Big thanks, and have a great week,
Dave

[blgentry]

I'm glad to have helped.

Take care,

Brian.