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[Music_Man]

Import of files already imported is lagging behind anything I've ever experienced.  The same is happening after modifying tags and they are being written to disk. 

After exiting from MC, 78-files took approx. 15-20 minutes to write to disk. I've been using MC off and on for over a decade and haven't experienced these sorts of delays. I upgraded to 27 from 26 a few days ago.  I wasn't experiencing the delays prior to 27.  Although I don't know if 27 is my problematic or...?

Are their instructions to revert back to 26?  If so, that may be a quick way to see if 27 is a problem on my system.

I ran a Crystal Disk Info on the HD and all is well.  Presently, I'm ONLY using MC to update movie tags.  I am playing nothing.

PC is a Windows 10 Pro with a 3.50 gigahertz Intel Core i7-3770K & 16gbs of RAM.

[RoderickGI]

Did you Tame Microsoft Defender for MC27?

You probably did for MC26. You need to do it for MC27 as well.

[Music_Man]

I never knew of, or experienced supposed Windows Defender issues until yesterday, when I researched the subject before posting.  It’s interesting that MC and Defender apparently played well together on my setup, without intervention, until now.

I did find the following link:  https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/File:MC19-Windows_Defender-File_Exclusions.png.  But its depictions appear out of date and not readily applicable to my Defender.  Where can I find more relevant and relatable Defender instructions?

However, simply for testing purposes, would it be accurate to assume turning-off Defender would fix whatever effects it may be having on turtle-like importing and saving?  If I find that it’s the culprit, it can be energized and then be tweaked to correct it being thus.  Sound prudent?

[JimH]

In a thread near the top of this board.

[RoderickGI]

Unfortunately turning off Windows Defender (now called Microsoft Defender) doesn't really turn off all functions.

Previous versions of Windows Defender might have automatically set up exclusions for MC26 and earlier. Security updates in Windows 10 have made Defender more belligerent.

The "Taming Windows Defender on Windows 10" thread explains what needs to be done.

[Music_Man]

Windows Defender so far, has seemed to be the cause of my slow down. 

In a thread near the top of this board.

The link I found the Defender information in, is here: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,114101.0.html

[Music_Man]

Years ago, when I used JRiver only for audio, slowness wasn't an issue. Maybe the slowness is inherent to video files?  But days ago, prior to installing 27, speed wasn't an issue and I didn't even know about Defender issues, let alone about the need to perform mitigation for it.

Per the above Defender thread, I've inserted the list of every folder and all of the dozens and dozens of files suggested.  But the importing of video files is taking about 1 per minute.  Before 27 and no attempt at "taming" Defender, video files were loaded so fast, I couldn't time them.  Perhaps they had been previously imported and the time taken to initialize them was circumvented. 

Nevertheless, as I'm importing folders and modifying tags and then clearing them to import another folder, the tagging I've done is taking forever to save after MC closes.  For example, I began with 900+ files last night when I retired for bed and this afternoon, 256 files remained to be saved.  This was probably abnormal slow, because my HD &/or PC went to sleep/into standby.  Nevertheless, should tag saving take hours for 900+ files? Just now, the saving of approximately 100 files, has taken approximately 15-20 minutes.  The pattern is that a group of approx 15 files are rapidly saved and then the PC hangs for several minutes, before the next grouping are saved.  Is this timing and behavior normal or not?
 
Second question: After I'm done tagging and Exit out of JRiver and the files are being saved, is it safe to shut-off the PC? Will my tags be saved or not?  Will the saving process re-begin when the PC is energized, or will my efforts be lost?

[JimH]

Are the files on a local drive?

[Music_Man]

Yes, the files are on one internal drive.  I ran CrystalDisk Info on it to verify its status and all is well.

[RoderickGI]

Second question: After I'm done tagging and Exit out of JRiver and the files are being saved, is it safe to shut-off the PC? Will my tags be saved or not?  Will the saving process re-begin when the PC is energized, or will my efforts be lost?

I do not even shut down MC until all saving of tags finish, and would not recommend it. But all tagging is fast for me, so that isn't an issue.

If MC has told Windows to make a bunch of file changes, then theoretically Windows will continue applying those changes after MC is closed. But any glitch would see lost data.

If Windows still hadn't finished and it was put into Sleep or Hibernated, it should continue saving changes once it was started again, but I would never consider doing that. Far too many things could go wrong. Too many to list.

If Windows was actually shut down, not put into Sleep or Hibernated, all changes that haven't completed will be lost.


Saving tags should be fast, particularly for files on the local, internal drive. You said Defender seems to have been the cause. Now that it is tamed, everything working fast enough?

[Music_Man]

I do not even shut down MC until all saving of tags finish, and would not recommend it.

When I exited MC and to Windows Desktop, I noticed a message that X-number of files were being saved.  Although it's probably fairly obvious, I've missed seeing the saving file message while in MC.  Where in MC might I see that files/tags are being saved?

Saving tags should be fast, particularly for files on the local, internal drive. You said Defender seems to have been the cause. Now that it is tamed, everything working fast enough?

All is working well on my HTPC.  The Desktop PC that I'm using for tagging mods., was where I was experiencing the slowness.  The issues have seemed to abate after my Defender "taming".  I may also have had some permission/write issues with some folders.  Bottom line: PC issues vs MC ones.  Nevertheless, the Defender "taming" mods (link above) was helpful! 

 

[RoderickGI]

Where in MC might I see that files/tags are being saved?

Usually in the bottom Status Bar of Standard View. Though sometimes that can be a bit slow to display, and may not display if you change Views. But usually that's where the message is.



Are you using your HTPC and Desktop in Client/Server mode?
If so, which PC is the MC Server running on?


The questions may not matter if you are happy with the speed now.

[mark_h]

My right-click audio file imports are incredibly slow (sometimes taking minutes).  My video imports are lightning fast.  There was a change a couple of MC's ago, I think, related to relational fields, which was when I started noticing this.  I use lots of relational fields with audio, so I suspect that might be part of the problem.  Or it might simply be the size of my library.  Or both.  Or neither.  Either way, when I watch the logs during import I can see MC doing *lots* of time expensive database processes per incoming file, all of which contribute to extended delay on import.

I don't see any issues with writing tags, which is not to say you don't.

[Music_Man]

As a long time user of MC, it's good to see the great support....Cheers, -Mike

 

[Music_Man]

On my desktop computer, the saving of tags remains taking forever.  After make the tag modifications, I see nothing when MC is open that suggests that files are being saved.  Yet, when I exit MC, a "Saving Tag Changes" box is seen on my desktop (see attached picture). 

This saving process is to an internal 14tb hard drive.  And it literally is taking hours to make ~1,000 changes.  I could connect an USB external HD to the PC and actually copy ALL of the files quicker, than it's taking to just save the tag changes. 

I got frustrated with the time it was taking earlier today and just said if the changes fail so be it and restarted JRiver. 

Upon doing so, the attached error message was seen.  It stated that:
"Media Center is running, but there may be a problem."  "Possible causes:
"The Program is also running under a different user account."
"Media Center and Media Server are both in Windows Startup...."
"The program is not responding due to unknown reasons."

There are no other users than myself.
I checked Startup and neither program was running.

I then restarted the PC and completely uninstalled MC26 and then MC27 and re-installed 27.  And then opened 27 and made more changes. The problem remained the same.  Thoughts?

Oh, and in an above post, the question of whether I was using the desktop/HTPC in client server mode?  The answer is no.

   

[RoderickGI]

The popup message you saw, "Media Center is running, but there may be a problem.", is because there were still JRWorker processes running in the background saving tags. If you open Task Manager (fast access via Ctrl+Shift+Escape) you will see them in there.

The same thing with the "Saving Tag Changes" message. MC is still working in the background, saving your tags, via its JRWorker processes.

Sometimes JRWorker processes just get "stuck" as well. In which case you can use Task Manager to kill the processes. If you do that while MC is saving tags, then you will lose the changes.

There have been a few reports about speed recently. Opening files, reading and writing tags. Maybe there is some issue. Reading video tags, or trying to, seems to be one of the contributors.

Many people have asked for more visibility of tags being saved. The Action Window is an obvious place to show such information.

[RoderickGI]

As you are making tag changes using your Desktop PC, but also have a HTPC with a Library, and you aren't using MC Client/Server, could you describe the process\workflow you use to do your tag changes?

Local independent Library on Desktop where you have imported all the same files as your HTPC, using drive mapping to the HTPC locations, plus Updated Library from tags back on the HTPC?
Library Backup from HTPC Restored to Desktop, same drive mappings as HTPC, make changes to tags. Updated Library from tags back on the HTPC, or take Library Backup from Desktop and Restore to HTPC?
Using MC Explorer to find files on HTPC via drive mappings, making tag changes directly. Updated Library from tags back on the HTPC.

Some other workflow?
I'm pretty sure you have explained before, but it's best to clarify for each thread.

[Music_Man]

As you are making tag changes using your Desktop PC, but also have a HTPC with a Library, and you aren't using MC Client/Server, could you describe the process\workflow you use to do your tag changes?

Local independent Library on Desktop where you have imported all the same files as your HTPC, using drive mapping to the HTPC locations, plus Updated Library from tags back on the HTPC?
Library Backup from HTPC Restored to Desktop, same drive mappings as HTPC, make changes to tags. Updated Library from tags back on the HTPC, or take Library Backup from Desktop and Restore to HTPC?
Using MC Explorer to find files on HTPC via drive mappings, making tag changes directly. Updated Library from tags back on the HTPC.

Not recently or presently am I using MC as a Player.  When I get my Video file tags where I want them, then I will use it. 

Both the Windows Desktop and the HTPC are being independently operated.  There is no connection between the two.  There is a QNAP NAS in our LAN, but it is not being utilized at all with MC.  It is only a file repository for our several devices.  But all file movements to from the NAS are strictly manual one-offs.  There is no syncing or anything else that is presently automated with the LAN and any of our devices!

The Desktop and the HTPC have what I will term "temporary" Library's.  That is, I have created 1-library on an Internal HD of each PC. The Desktop's library resides on the HD where the video files reside. 

The library on each PC is for File Importing and then Clearing.  I'm modifying Video file tags, folder by folder -- i.e. the files are tagged and saved, then the library is cleared for the next grouping/folder to be imported.

The HTPC has a 10tb HD with Video files.  The Desktop has a 14tb. HD with a batch of Video files that are unrelated to the HTPC's files.  Eventually, I will compile them together.  But that will be done after my tag work is complete.   

[RoderickGI]

In that case, tags should be saving quickly. As taming Defender seems to have helped, maybe that was the main issue.

Not many (any?) tags are saved to video files themselves. They are saved to a sidecar file if sidecar files are turned on. I assume that they are, since you are doing a lot of tagging and getting those correct is the main purpose of your current activity. I've never checked, but I also assume that when you clear the Library the sidecar files stay in place, and you move them with the video files to retain the tags/MC field values.

If you have sidecar files turned off, MC may try to save them to the file, which can be a problem. In fact, even trying to read tags from a video file can be an issue, as Comox and I have been discussing recently. So that issue could be significantly contributing to the speed problems you were seeing.

If you still see an issue with the speed, get a clean log of a tagging operation and see if it has any "Timeout" messages in it.

[Music_Man]

I did a 27 uninstall and re-installed 26.  File importing is back to normal -- a couple minutes for ~3K files, not a 1/2 hour or more when using 27.  So, 26 is off to a good start.

[Music_Man]

If you have sidecar files turned off, MC may try to save them to the file, which can be a problem. In fact, even trying to read tags from a video file can be an issue, as Comox and I have been discussing recently. So that issue could be significantly contributing to the speed problems you were seeing.

Sidecar is defaulted as:
"Save in sidecar if internal tagging is not supported"
"Write to external sidecar files for media types:  data;video"

But because importing speed is back to normal now that 26 is running, saving should also be.  But I will see...

[RoderickGI]

I wonder what changed in MC27 to cause the issue, given that there is no issue in MC26?

It could still be the Defender needs more taming for MC27, while it still has all the taming for MC26 in place. You might be able to see in Task Manager if Defender is doing a lot of work while MC27 is trying to save tags.

It would be best if the problem was fixed in MC27, so you can keep getting updates.


I use those sidecar settings as well, and think they are best.

[Music_Man]

With video files, moving back to 26 has restored both file loading and saving speeds to what I had been experiencing before installing 27.  For example, with 2-3k files: MC 27 was taking hours or fractions thereof; whereas MC 26 handles those same files in 1-2 minutes and saves the tagging I'm doing while MC is running.  MC 27 was taking hours or a fraction thereof to import the same files or to save the tagging I did to files after I exited out of MC27. 

I haven't tried audio files, so I don't know whether my issue is strictly related to video files, or would also occur with audio files.

[RoderickGI]

Well, as it works fine now on your HTPC, but is slow on your Desktop, there must be some difference between the two PCs.

Note however that there has been a long discussion about the speed of reading and saving tags for video files. There could be a correlation.

If you can, catch a log of the problem saving tags on video files on your Desktop using MC27, and I'll have a look. Make the log as small as practical please, which still catching the issue. Perhaps try tagging only 10 or 100 files and see if that generates the slow response.

[Music_Man]

With video files, moving back to 26 has restored both file loading and saving speeds to what I had been experiencing before installing 27.  For example, with 2-3k files: MC 27 was taking hours or fractions thereof; whereas MC 26 handles those same files in 1-2 minutes and saves the tagging I'm doing while MC is running.  MC 27 was taking hours or a fraction thereof to import the same files or to save the tagging I did to files after I exited out of MC27.

I haven't tried audio files, so I don't know whether my issue is strictly related to video files, or would also occur with audio files.

Well, as it works fine now on your HTPC, but is slow on your Desktop, there must be some difference between the two PCs.

Note however that there has been a long discussion about the speed of reading and saving tags for video files. There could be a correlation.

If you can, catch a log of the problem saving tags on video files on your Desktop using MC27, and I'll have a look. Make the log as small as practical please, which still catching the issue. Perhaps try tagging only 10 or 100 files and see if that generates the slow response.

The desktop is what I was referring to as now working fine, NOT the HTPC.  I haven't returned to the HTPC.

1) I completely uninstalled MC 26 and tried MC27.  Slowness was still the case.
2) I uninstalled MC27 and re-installed MC26
3) Speed: Importing and tag saving is fine -- i.e. it is back to how it previously was before installing MC27.

Now that everything is working fine.  I plan to stick with MC26 to finish the large tagging effort.  I just wanted to report my personal findings.  Something regarding: MC27/video files/& my PC is not working as I've experienced over the years.

[rolf_eigenheer]

I have also noticed that the import runs extremely slowly and stops in between.
I then recorded the read accesses while a folder from \\AS6\ bilder\ was being imported. See attachement. After 12:14:02 there is a pause of 30 seconds until the next file is read.

Without the 'ReadFile' filter (second appendix), a lot of strange activities will show up within these 30 seconds:

At 12:14:31 an attempt is made to access a PNG that is not available in the DB. Not even in the unfiltered document view.

Then hundreds of 'QueryBasicInformationFile' are made on a completely different share (\\as6\movies1\) of the NAS. The point of these queries is incomprehensible. This movies have been imported long ago. All thumbnails are also created. And third, 'Update Tags when File Info Changes' is also turned off. So there should be no reason for MC to query any other files instead of the files to be imported.

[RoderickGI]

Have a read of this post https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,127593.0.html and the whole thread.

The conclusion was that when the TagDump was open in the Tag Window, and a user selected various files moving around in the View, MC had trouble reading, or trying to read, tags in a video file. The JRWorker process timed out after 30 seconds. That issue was fixed by stopping MC from reading file tags for video files when the TagDump area was shown.

The same 30 second timeout issue happens when using the MC Explorer function to view a directory containing video files.

I suspect there is a problem with the underlying code that tries to read tags from a video file, and it is a problem more generally.


As you were importing video files and saw a 30 second delay in the processing, I think you could be seeing the same problem. There may also be a hint in your log, as the file that caused the problem "20191129-115644-09.MP4" has a result of "END OF FILE" rather than SUCCESS. Maybe MC unexpectedly hits the end of the file and that causes an issue. Did other successfully imported files get the same result?

Perhaps log another import process in MC and see if the timeout on video files occurs during import. The post I linked to above explains how I examined the logs with a timeout in them.

As the problem doesn't occur for Music_Man on MC26, perhaps a problem has been introduced in MC27.

[rolf_eigenheer]

The conclusion was that when the TagDump was open in the Tag Window, and a user selected various files moving around in the View, MC had trouble reading, or trying to read, tags in a video file. The JRWorker process timed out after 30 seconds. That issue was fixed by stopping MC from reading file tags for video files when the TagDump area was shown.

When I noticed this 30 sec delay I remembered the thread you mentioned.
But the 'Tag Window' was closed.

I agree with you. There seems to be something wrong in the deep of MCs indexing process. It sometimes fails to read files it should import. On the other hand, it reads files it should not! Why does it scan "\\AS6\movies1" during import of "\\AS6\Bilder\..." ?


In the above example MC also reads a PNG which is not in the database. I see a risk when processes are acessing files they shouldn't. Further investigations on that shows that this happens to many other files.
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,127668.0.html

[RoderickGI]

I saw the timeouts in situations other than when displaying the TagDump. If you can, check for timeout messages in a MC log.

I commented in your other thread regarding the unexpected file scanning.