Print

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

[F Ribeiro]

Hi,

I have more than 50.000 audio files in my Synology NAS.
I have a Dell e5250 i5 5300u (16 gb RAM, Samsung SSD 860 EVO) running MC 25 on Windows 10.
I have an iPad 3 running JRemote as a remote control for Media Center 25.

For a faster album art refresh as I scroll down the albums (or artists) view on my iPad, should I consider:
  1 - a faster iPad
  2 - a faster CPU
  3 - a faster GPU

Power options on Windows 10 set to Balanced (recommended)

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[JimH]

You could test a local library (not on the NAS) to see what that does.

You could test in MC on the server (not on the iPad).

Doing that should tell you something.

It could also be bandwidth related (network).

[F Ribeiro]

You could test a local library (not on the NAS) to see what that does.

You could test in MC on the server (not on the iPad).

Doing that should tell you something.

It could also be bandwidth related (network).

All my music files are in the NAS but my Cover Art are in a specified folder library, in my dedicated Dell with a fast SSD.
Because I have a lot of HD music files (PCM 96, 88.2, 176.4, 192 and DSD 64, 128), they have to be in my 12 TB NAS.
I have a Gigabit LAN (rooter, switch, NAS and Dell dedicated PC running JRiver 25).
JRiver path for cover art is:

  C:\Users\ferna\Documents\JRiver\Media Center 25\Cover Art\  (C: is a Samsung 960EVO SSD)

Nevertheless, with album cover set to large in my iPad (3 albums each line), the images have a slow refresh while I scroll up and down.
If I set the cover art to a smaller dimension (5 albums each line), refresh rate is faster (almost instantaneously).
Because I like to see Album Art with a good detail in my iPad, I like to set it to large (with the two fingers enlarge movement).
That's why I ask for the better option if I want to have a fast refresh on iPad.

  1 - a faster iPad
  2 - a faster CPU
  3 - a faster GPU

 I hope I made myself understood, because my English is not that good.
   
 Many thanks,

Fernando Ribeiro

[MGD_King]

 I hope I made myself understood, because my English is not that good.
   
 Many thanks,

Fernando Ribeiro

What kind of wireless access point do you have for your iPad? I agree with JimH, sounds like a network bottleneck more than MC or your Dell.

[RoderickGI]

On your Dell, in Standard View, display Albums five across and scroll.
Then display three across and scroll.

Was there a noticeable difference in refresh rate?
Try a few different thumbnail display sizes to be sure no size slows the refresh rate.

MC builds thumbnails from the original Cover Art in three sizes I believe, and stores then in its Thumbnail Databases. If the display size matches one of the sizes, MC doesn't have to do any image scaling. If display size doesn't match one of the sizes it does have to do some scaling, which would be done on the server I think, although I'm not sure. It could be done on your iPad.

I would think though that if the test above showed no difference in refresh rate, then the Dell is quite capable of scaling the thumbnail image without delays. So I would look to the WiFi connection speed for the iPad, or getting a faster iPad.

If there is a noticeable difference in the refresh rate in the test, then the Dell isn't able to scale the thumbnails fast enough. I think this is unlikely though. A developer would have to say whether scaling was done on the CPU or the GPU, although you could watch the CPU and GPU loading when doing a lot of scrolling with various display sizes on the Dell to work out which is being used.


I am assuming that your actual MC Library (not the media files, but the Library) is also on the SSD, which it would be if you are using the default Library. That would be in "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 25\Library".

Note that the thumbnail database is also stored on your SSD at "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 25\Thumbnails". It is possible that the thumbnail database has picked up some corruption, and hence isn't indexed properly so it is slower. Shouldn't happen, but sometimes seems to. If nothing else works you could try deleting the contents of the above thumbnail directory and rebuilding thumbnails, but that is going to take a while for 50,000 files.


I don't have JRemote, but in "MO 4Media" on my Android phone scrolling with three thumbnails across is very fast, although the thumbnail image can take a moment to display so I can easily get ahead of the refresh. This is with MO 4Media connected to the HTPC MC Server as per my forum signature. JRemote may work differently to MO 4Media though, so this isn't a definitive comparison. You could download the MO 4Media for iOS free trail version and test how fast that scrolls, as a comparison.