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[ChrisRainman]

I love to use MC12 but since my library reached a about 40.000 titles in total I run into serious performance problems. I would like to manage my photo library also with MC but I'm afraid that would decrease the performance again.

Is there a forum topic or wiki section that describes known performance issues?

Tagging a field often takes between 5-10 seconds. I think even one second is too much and I remember this used to be possible. I know, I can deactivate "update tags when file info changes" but I would like to keep this activated to be independen of my library.

My settings:
- Library files stored on external HDD (H:)
- Music files stored on 2 external HDDs (H:) / (K:)
- MC installed on C:
- For the external drives I activated the cache option
- I created about 10 user fields (about 3 of them are list fields)

My hardware:
Media Center Registered 12.0.294 -- C:\Programme\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2, v.2096 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2403 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 272 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2096 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2900 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2900 / Shell32.dll: 6.0.2900 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive G:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive R:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive V: HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8161B  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 G: BENQ     DVD DD EW162I      Addr: 2:0:0  Speed:40  MaxSpeed:40  BurnProof:Yes
  Drive R: HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8320B    Addr: 1:1:0  Speed:32  MaxSpeed:32  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
  Removed devices: SD 1 GB (J:)

Interface Plugins:
  Library Server (Active/Enabled)
  TiVo Server (Active)
  UPnP Server (Active)

[JimH]

You might want to add a little memory:

Intel Pentium 4 2403 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 272 MB

You're probably seeing some memory to disk swapping by Windows.

[Listener]

If you have an Anti-Virus program like Norton monitoring all file activity, it will drastically slow down all disk I/O.  Turn off just that active monitoring and the effect of the Anti-virus will be minimized.

> Intel Pentium 4 2403 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 272 MB

Whether you need more RAM depends on what else is running while you are editing tags in MC 12.  You might bring up the Task Manager (type Ctrl-Alt-Del) and look at overall performance with the performance tab.  If you see much paging file activity, you have too much going on for the amount of RAM you have.  Then look at CPU and memory consumption by individual processes with the Processes tab.

> Tagging a field often takes between 5-10 seconds. I think even one second is too much and I remember this used to be possible.

I find that changing a tag is faster for Flac than MP3.  I think that for Flac files the tag can usually be rewritten in place while MP3 files must be rewritten.

> I know, I can deactivate "update tags when file info changes" but I would like to keep this activated to be independent of my library.

You should not have to.  I have about 26,000 Flac files in my main library and no performance issues.  Updating tags in 200 files is almost instantaneous.

Bill

[hit_ny]

The slow down is happening because of the external drives & ID3v2 tagging of mp3s. It will be slow when the file is tagged the first time but should be faster for future updates as there is extra padding added for the tag.

I have 60k+ files on a P3(!) + 256MB of RAM with *no* tag updates, all on UDMA-4  (66MB/s) internal drives. Quite zippy

The only time MC gets sluggish is when there is < 5-10% space left on the NTFS partition the file is on.

With the specs you have, i don't think MC would have any probs dealing with 250K+ files.

[rjm]

I have 116,000 files and no concerns whatsoever with performance.

[ChrisRainman]

The slow down is happening because of the external drives & ID3v2 tagging of mp3s. It will be slow when the file is tagged the first time but should be faster for future updates as there is extra padding added for the tag.

I am aware that file tagging is quite slow the first time. All my figures are related to files I tagged previously. And the external drives are more or less essential to allow transports. So I hope this is not the reason and other users have made good experience with external drives.

You might want to add a little memory:You're probably seeing some memory to disk swapping by Windows.

I just checked the memory and removed some processes so that I have more than 500 MB available. Still no improvements!

The only time MC gets sluggish is when there is < 5-10% space left on the NTFS partition the file is on.

What remains an option for further investigation is the remaining space on my harddisks. There's free space between 5-10 %. So I will try out.
Changing to FLAC files I don't consider as an option because of missing compatibility to other hardware.

Is it possible that the additional user fields might cause these problems? Has anybody else made similar experiences?

[timlacey]

I am also having performance issues related to tagging (and re-tagging the same files).  My problem seems to be getting worse.  I just downloaded build 301 today.

I have found it takes up to 20-30 seconds per tag to save changes - and that can be something as simple as an artist name change on files I've already updated tags using MC.

My machine is a C2Duo machine running Vista with 2GB memory.  The files are over the network, stored on an Infrant ReadyNAS device.

I have about 20K mostly MP3 files in my library.

Tim

[JimH]

Virus checker?

[KingSparta]

I wonder if you take and re-import all your files into a New Library, and then test to see how fast it is after that.

Listening to: 'Way It Is, the' by 'Bruce Hornsby'

[benn600]

It goes without saying that you should try a reformat because that can help improve performance system wide.

[timlacey]

Well, I cleared the library and imported just one folder with about 20 MP3s.  I then modified the artist name for an album.  Updating the 9 tags took about 1 second per tag.

Prior to posting my other message, I had turned off PC-Cillin and tried it and it didn't help.

I am now rebuilding my library and I will see what the speed is like.

I'll post my new performance once the library is udpated.  I'll also try music on a local drive, since all my poor speed has been for the music stored on my NAS.

[craft]

null

[ChrisRainman]

I wonder if you take and re-import all your files into a New Library, and then test to see how fast it is after that.

The re-import into a new library was a success! I cloned the old library (because I like my view schemes), deleted all library entries plus the library files (field (xxx).jmd).

I imported the files step by step and tested the performance. Below about 10.000 files file tagging happened instantly. Nevertheless, with now 42.000 files, tagging a field takes about 1 second - which is compared to what I had before - simply great!  There's no difference between tagging one file or many.

With the integrated logging function in MC, is it possible to track such a field change period?

[timlacey]

Well, I have rebuilt the library on one of my machines (I have 3 running Media Center now), the library is local and I noticed a few odd things.

First, I noticed that it slowed down extremely - to about 2-5 minutes per file - in sections of my library.  I cancelled the import process and found a folder of files that all play, import, and appear correct, but yet slow the machine down incredibly.

These files also will not show tag information in Windows (unlike all my other files).  I have saved library to tags, thinking it might overwrite the problem, but it didn't.

Could I e-mail one of these MP3 files to someone to determine why MC is choking on them.  Like I said, they do eventually work, but only after tremendous delays.

My suspicion is that if I can identify the source of trouble with this file, I can hunt down all the files like it and replace them with new rips.

I tried using the REMOVE TAGS function.  I thought I could strip and re-tag the file.  It's still a no-go.

Tim

Tim

[timlacey]

Oh, and I have no problem copying the files, as I copied them from my network drive to my local machine to rule out the NAS or file integrity.

So this MP3 that gives me trouble is on a local drive.  Another odd thing - it says 174kBIT CBR, but when I play it, it shows up as 128k.

I just viewed format int he tag window (to see the actual tags) and it took about 5 minutes to bring it up for one file!  And this is the file for which I recently removed tags, and retagged from library. 

Tim

[JimH]

Oh, and I have no problem copying the files, as I copied them from my network drive to my local machine to rule out the NAS or file integrity.

So this MP3 that gives me trouble is on a local drive.  Another odd thing - it says 174kBIT CBR, but when I play it, it shows up as 128k.

I just viewed format int he tag window (to see the actual tags) and it took about 5 minutes to bring it up for one file!  And this is the file for which I recently removed tags, and retagged from library. 

Tim

An over eager virus checker could explain this.  Try uninstalling it and rebooting.

[timlacey]

My other machine (new Vista with no anti-virus stuff yet) has the same issues with the files.

Happily, I have re-ripped the one CD and now my library is zippier again.  (about 1 second per tag write to the NAS).

Also, it really seemed to help for me to switch auto-import to fix broken links (but not protect network files).  Perhaps there was something it couldn't find that it was struggling to access.  I should have looked at the details to see which files were removed.  This might explain why rebuilding a library from scratch helped my problem and solved the other guy's problem?

[timlacey]

Well, I purchased my license this morning and have been using MC on 3 machines, reimporting the library.  It seems to be working much better now having removed the "protect network files" option for auto-import.  I also removed "run auto-import in background" which may have been hanging up on those problem files.

I am now satisfied with MC's performance.  It's a great program!

I still suggest that you let me send you this MP3 file that brings MC to a halt.  Perhaps you'd discover something that would help others with performance problems.

Tim

[JimH]

Please send it to matt at jriver with a link to this thread.  Thanks.

[KingSparta]

I imported the files step by step and tested the performance. Below about 10.000 files file tagging happened instantly. Nevertheless, with now 42.000 files, tagging a field takes about 1 second - which is compared to what I had before - simply great! 

I guess that helped.