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[gpvillamil]

I have a couple of view schemes set up that rely on Smartlists, such as Marko's Recently Imported system.

Whenever I switch to one of these schemes, MC9 goes to 100% processor utilization for about 30-40 seconds. For about 20 seconds afterwards, response to mouse clicks, right-clicks, etc. is very very slow. The system responds correctly to "mouse hovering" - highlights change color. However, clicking does nothing. Keyboard commands do nothing - or generate a beep. During this non-responsive time, processor utilization is down to about 10%-20%. After 20-30 seconds of leaving it alone, things go back to normal. There is no significant activity on the hard disk.

Similar delays occur when editing smartlists.

My library contains about 24,000 files, all MP3 for about 218GB of storage.

Should things really be this slow with a 2.6ghz Celeron with 1GB of RAM?

Media Center 9.1.316 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2592 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 981 MB, Free - 696 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1276 / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1233 (xpsp2.030604-1804) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive D:   Copy mode:Normal   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: No /  Play sound after ripping: No  

Burning /  Drive D: PLEXTOR  DVDR   PX-708A     Addr: 1:0:0  Speed:40  MaxSpeed:0  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

[gpvillamil]

More info. I'm using the Sysinternals Process Explorer to monitor what's going on.

Basically, any operation related to a view scheme that involves Smartlists takes processor utilization by MC to about 80% for between 20-50 seconds. There is no message about "Loading Panes" or "Gathering Files" initially. However, these messages do pop up for about 5 seconds before things settle down. During this period I can switch to other windows programs while MC works.

Then you get the non-responsive phase, for about 10-30 seconds where mouse highlights work, but clicking or keystrokes aren't recognized. MC processor utilization is down to about 20% during this time. Incidentally, during this time I can't switch to another task, via Alt-Tab or clicking on the taskbar.

As soon as it's done, MC processor utilization settles down to about 6% to 10%, when music is playing and visualizations are running.

Music playback is never interrupted - however, MC doesn't respond to any controls when things are locked up, so I can't pause or stop.

I'm not having any other problems on this system otherwise, even programs with heavy processor utilization don't cause any problems.

[gpvillamil]

Could it be a corrupt library file? Or is the execution of nested smartlists slowing things down?

What I find annoying is that selecting within panes becomes so slow. For example, using the "Party" view scheme I described earlier, this is what happens:

1) Selecting the view scheme is slow - about 30 seconds while the "Loading panes" message is displayed - CPU at 100%
2) Select a genre in the first pane (this is actually a smartlist which aggregates multiple genres and excludes recently played songs) - this can be instant, or it can take 30 seconds. No message is displayed. CPU at 80%
3) Select a BPM in the second pane - sometimes instant, sometimes slow. CPU at 100%
4) Extend the BPM range by shift-clicking in the second pane - always slow, no message, CPU at 100%
5) Attempt to right-click in order to play the selection - no response, no message. This lasts for 30 - 60 seconds. During this time MC doesn't respond to any input, though it responds to mouse hovering. CPU is at 100%.  When CPU utilization goes back to normal, MC responds to all inputs normally.

[Matt]

MC 9.1 won't be optimized any more.

MC 10 is already faster.  There may be other things we can do.  If you send a backup to matt @ jriver.com we may be able to play around with it sometime in the next couple of weeks and speed things up.

Thanks!

[gpvillamil]

Thanks for the response!

Well, I un-nested my playlists in the view scheme. All of them started with a rule that pointed to another playlist, that included all the Last Played, media type etc. criteria. So I just copied these criteria into each of the Smartlists. This led to a pretty significant increase in speed, but I still get some responsiveness issues, especially when extending a selection in one of the panes.

I'd love to move to MC10, but I'm put off by the lack of a recursive folder view in My Computer. (The ability to look at the contents of a folder and its subfolders at once). I need this for my workflow - I do audio analysis and tagging in a separate folder before filing and importing.

Should I send you a backup of my library?

Thanks again for the help.

[gpvillamil]

Well, I switched off the list tooltips, and performance just skyrocketed. View refreshes are now instant and there is no delay after performing view operations. The non-responsive phase I mentioned earlier - mouse clicks not detected, uneven cursor movement, is improved but not absent.