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[Jonas]

(I first posted this in the main release thread but since I'm not sure you'll consider it a bug I decided to make it a separate thread instead...)

I started testing MC11 a couple of weeks ago and was surprised to see it was so much slower than MC10.  Since I'm not seeing many complaints about this I guess it may be something specific to my system, but I don't know what that would be.  I'm running it on a 3 GHz P4 with 2 GB of memory and a Radeon 9600 graphics card, so it shouldn't be too underpowered to run MC.

The main problem appears to be in screen redraws / navigation.  For example, where MC10 easily keeps up with my keyboard repeat rate when I move up and down in the media library, MC11 doesn't -- even when it doesn't actually have to scroll the information.  It just has to move the "active" line up and down, but it takes 17 seconds to move the cursor from the top visible file to the bottom visible file.  This seems to be affected somewhat by library size, but with only 250 files in the library it still takes 12 seconds (yes, I did create a completely new library and only imported 250 files into the library).  For comparison, the same operation in MC10 takes about two seconds, with the cursor line moving as quickly as it does in any other program.

I've tried this with several of the built-in themes with the same results.

Anything I can do to help fix / debug this?  With this kind of performance, I'm afraid I won't be able to upgrade to MC10 because the experience will simply be too painful -- and I do want to upgrade to get all of the nice new features!

Media Center 11.0.247 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2997 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 2096 MB, Free - 1257 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2900.2627 (xpsp_sp2_gdr.050309-1648) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2900.2620 (xpsp_sp2_gdr.050225-1820) / wnaspi32.dll: 4.71 (0001) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-2002 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.71 (0001)

Ripping /   Drive D:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive F:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive G:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive D: SONY     DVD RW DRU-500A    Addr: 2:0:0  Speed:20  MaxSpeed:24  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: No /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

[Jonas]

Oh, and a couple of other first impressions / questions:

• I'm used to pressing Ctrl-2 to go to "playing now".  Now this opens "mini-me".  What's the new shortcut for playing now?
  
• I was surprised to see that searching (ctrl-F) affects both views when you use split view.  Is this intentional?  It kind of defeats the one use I had for split views:  To have a complete "playing now" (or some other playlist I'm building) in the top view, while I search for files in the bottom view.
  

[JustinChase]

I used to have a similar problem with my library on a network share, but I don't have that anymore so can't test.

[Jonas]

My library is on a local hard disk, with no network shares involved, so that shouldn't be a problem here.

[StFeder]

For me it's slower, too. I didn't want to talk about, because I thought it might be my PC (1,8 GHz PIV, ~700 MB Ram) or my (slowly) increasing library. Espacially becuase of reading about "Several memory and speed enhancements" and "New database caching layer that makes a huge speed difference in many areas of MC" under every new MC 11 built I thougt so. But Maybe "huge speed difference" meens it's slower 

Typing anything in the search field takes much more time before getting any result than in MC 10 (it was near realtime in MC 10). Changing from one location to an other takes more time to update display.

I also never use(ed) network drives.

___________________________________________
Media Center Registered 11.0.247 -- F:\Audio- Videoverwaltung & Wiedergabe\Benötigt Installation\JRiver Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 1779 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 785 MB, Free - 487 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2900.2627 (xpsp_sp2_gdr.050309-1648) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2900.2620 (xpsp_sp2_gdr.050225-1820) / wnaspi32.dll: 4.71 (0002) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-2002 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.71 (0002)

Ripping /   Drive Y:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive Z:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive Y: SONY     CD-RW CRX1611      Addr: 1:0:0  Speed:16  MaxSpeed:16  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

[JimH]

12 seconds is ridiculous.  Something is definitely not right.

When you scroll, are you using the down arrow?  Why not use page down?

You might try it on another PC to verify that.

Are you using Girder or anything else like that?  Third party plug-ins?

We changed thumbnails and that will slow things down the first time you view because they have to be rebuilt.  After that, there should be no slow-down unless you've got MC set to erase thumbnails on exit.

[Jonas]

I've tested it on a laptop, a 1200 MHz P3 with 512 MB of memory.  It runs at approximately the same speed there, which is a bit surprising since the machine is slower, but on the other hand it has a smaller screen (1400x1040 vs 1600x1200) and a much smaller library.

I just tried using fewer fields (on the P4-3000).  With only three fields (artist, name, duration) I can go through a screenful of songs in 6.5 seconds, while the standard setup requires 12 seconds and my own setup requires 16.5 seconds, so it's clearly related to the amount of data which is displayed.

CPU usage is at 100% when I do this, so it's not just slow to react; it's really doing something which is taking a lot of time.

When you scroll, are you using the down arrow? Why not use page down?

I'm not even scrolling.  I'm moving through the files that are already visible on the screen!  And of course I don't always want to move an entire screenful at a time, but that seemed like the easiest thing to measure.  Even if I just want to move 10 files down in the list, it feels like molasses and I tend to start reaching for the mouse instead.

No Girder.  I didn't think I was using any third party plugins but now I see that MC11 picked up the ones I had installed in MC10.  I'll uninstall them one by one and report the results.

I already updated my entire library, and thumbnails were created for all files so that shouldn't be the issue here.  Also, this happens even if I move through the same page of files / songs over and over again; it doesn't get better over time.

[Jonas]

Well, removing the plugins didn't fix anything... but I think I've found the problem.

I wondered whether you might be redrawing too much, but it's a bit hard to see whether a row is continuously being replaced with exactly the same thing...  So I imported some new files and made sure "date imported" was present on screen, showing the number of minutes and seconds since each file was imported.  This field obviously gets a new value each second, so if it's redrawn I can clearly see it on the screen.

Sure enough, every time I move the cursor even a single step up or down, every single "date imported" field visible on the screen is redrawn and updated.  I assume this field isn't treated specially in any way, so what happens is that at least the entire detail list is being redrawn for every single cursor movement, when in fact only two lines should be repainted: The one that used to be highlighted and the one highlighted right now.

Similarly, if I press F2 to edit a field, the entire screen is redrawn again every time I move to the next field (tab or cursor up/down).  And if I actually scroll up/down, using the keyboard or the mouse, the entire screen is redrawn instead of just blitting part of the screen to a new location and filling in the new line(s).

I get the same results using PixOS, Aruba and Thunderstorm.

[JimH]

We'll take a look at that, but for now just edit the view scheme and drop that field.

[Jonas]

Sorry, I guess I'm not expressing myself clearly.

Showing or hiding the "date imported" field does not affect the speed of moving the highlight/cursor.  MC is just as slow if I remove the field.

The "date imported" field is only relevant in the sense that it allows me to see that MC really does repaint the entire list every time I move the cursor -- I used it as a debugging aid. 

Without that field, MC repaints the entire list but I can't really see it because it repaints exactly what was there before:  All other fields remain constant.  With the field, MC repaints the entire list and I can see it because the value of "date imported" has been updated (from "1.32 ago" to "1.34 ago", for example).

[Jonas]

Well, I doubt the date actually being updated in the background.  The "time since" is just calculated every time you repaint it, which doesn't take a noticeable amount of time -- but it did allow me to see that MC11 repaints the entire list of songs every time I simply move the highlight cursor one step up or down, and that takes a huge amount of time. 

[Matt]

We changed the behavior of the up / down buttons a few builds back -- I'm sure this is the side-effect.

The issue is that Windows XP does list scroll animation.  It'd be no problem except that it doesn't work at all with owner draw, custom data lists like we use.  And Microsoft doesn't give a way to turn off the smooth scroll, so we need to revert to bizarre workarounds.

We'll try to tune this in the next build.

[coolblue]

why isn't this affecting more people? for me scrolling is fine - if i lean on the up/down or page up/page down keys and release the display is only about 2 ticks behind the typeamatic rate. my system is no better (nor worse) than Jonas's, and the 247 build seems somewhat snappier in its response to most draws and redraws.

i hope you get this worked out!

[Mastiff]

On my server computer, an old AMD XP2600, most things are pretty slow, but not scrolling or moving down, it almost keeps track with my keyboard. This is with the 11.0.178 version and .247 (I upgraded to test it). It takes between one and two seconds to move down a full page.

This is with the library locally but all files on mapped network drives.

[sdcoochie8]

Well I have just started playing with MC and I have a pretty fast computer and I do notice that it is quite slow. I notice it most in Library View. It takes a long time to redraw the page after a new album cover is put in. You also don't see the cover until you go back to artist view and the back to the album view or go off the edited screen. When you paste a cover or get it from a file you should see within seconds the new picture put in not wait until you go back etc...

Also when getting picture from the internet it doesn't show the picture it got until you go back and forth (again like I described for pasting etc..). The box that is trying to access the internet album cover remains one colour and you never see the cover until you actually go back to check if it got it or not. I understand that there may not be one to get but when it does get one it should show it in the little blue box and give you an option to use that one or to check for others when there are multiple hits etc... I hope you can understand what I am saying. This would be similar to the Musicmatch tagging engine, which I think is pretty good (about the only thing about MM).

I tried this with a number of skins. You can also hear the hard drive working up a storm while this is going on.

[modelmaker]

I found many functions/operations to be much slower than previous versions, in addition I see the the cpu pegging out at 100% quite often for many funtions (ie: analyzing) that never did so in previous versions. V11 will often lock up for 15-60 secs while performing some function which previous versions never did.

I have to say, after trying v11 out for a week, as much as I realy liked the Library Browser, I found importing files and some of the other functions had become cumbersome and slow in general, so instead of upgrading to v11, (from 9.180 - which I have been very happy with), I moved to v10 instead. The lack of compatabillity with the ATI remote and multi-media keyboards didn't help.
 

[eso]

I have also noticed that MC11 has become significantly slower than previous versions but so far I had attributed it to the beta state.

To me it appears as if the drop in speed is not only related to redraw issues but it seems that MC looks at each file when displaying a list where previous versions got the information from their database.

I have MC11 installed on two machines: on my desktop PC and on my server. The files are on a disk of the server and my PC uses them through a network share. If I switch from the "Playing Now" view to "Media Library", my desktop PC needs about 12 seconds to display the library view. On my server (a slower machine) it takes less than 2 seconds. MC is obviously getting some additional information from the files which slows it down considerably. Previous versions didn't have this problem.

If I use the cursor down key to go from the first displayed entry in the library view to the last visible one (i.e., without scrolling - that are 26 rows), it takes about 6s on the PC and 9s on the server. So scrolling seems to depend on the machine's speed.

[coolblue]

The lack of compatabillity with the ATI remote and multi-media keyboards didn't help.
 

FWIW, MC 11 works fine with my Microsoft Wireless Natural MM Keyboard.

[gpvillamil]

I did notice that full screen redraws seem quite slow with MC11.

Basically when the MC11 window is restored to full size from minimize (to the taskbar), it seemed to take a long time. The window frames and scroll bars were drawn quickly, but it took quite a while to populate the various lists. In the interim the windows desktop showed through in the content area.

[modelmaker]

From Coolblue:
FWIW, MC 11 works fine with my Microsoft Wireless Natural MM Keyboard

Multi-media keys (except play/pause) on my older wired HP keyboard have never worked with any version of MC and have always worked with WMP.

And the ATI RW definitely does not work out of the box.

[tcman41]

Seems to be running fine for me, I am using mc11 build 244. I am up to about 700 albums now and my main views are album thumbnails. The speed seems fine to me, although the playing now page / visual does seem like it is taking a long time to come up.

machine specs:

p4 3.0ghz 800mhz cpu
1gb dual ddr pc-3200 memory
ati 9800 pro 256mb graphics card
all data on machines 160gb hard drive

Terry