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Author Topic: Performance gains/drawbacks from running MC12 as server/client  (Read 1211 times)

flac.rules

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I have a pretty large library of music. And all is residing on a file-server. So basically I have two options.

1. Adding music-files from the mapped drives directly on my main machine
2. Setting up MC12 as a server on the fileserver and as a client on the main machine.

I was wondering what performance-advantages the second approach have compared to the first. While scorlling through my list, getting cover-art seemed to be a lot quicker with the server-client option, when just using mapped drive, scolling to large lists of music would cause the program to more or less freeze up for quite som time before recovering. Now this is gone. Going to the audio pane is still less than instant, and so is searching (searching seems to be done with the loacal CPU, while the fileserver-CPU seem o be handling the cover-art)

So I was wondering if anyone could give a bit more indept analysis of where I can get better perfrmance, and where I can get worse. And also the strain on the network. When running client-server the server seems to give a little "burst" of data evert 5 seconds or so when playing a file, is this the same as in scenario 1. Or will one of them in general buffer more or less and have more continious network andor hd-load? If i connect with a user with only read-acsess, will i be able to modify tags, becuase the server-mc12 has read-rights to the files, or are the rights on th client-side the deciding factor?
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Matt

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Re: Performance gains/drawbacks from running MC12 as server/client
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2008, 01:32:21 pm »

I have a pretty large library of music. And all is residing on a file-server. So basically I have two options.

1. Adding music-files from the mapped drives directly on my main machine
2. Setting up MC12 as a server on the fileserver and as a client on the main machine.

I was wondering what performance-advantages the second approach have compared to the first. While scorlling through my list, getting cover-art seemed to be a lot quicker with the server-client option, when just using mapped drive, scolling to large lists of music would cause the program to more or less freeze up for quite som time before recovering. Now this is gone. Going to the audio pane is still less than instant, and so is searching (searching seems to be done with the loacal CPU, while the fileserver-CPU seem o be handling the cover-art)

So I was wondering if anyone could give a bit more indept analysis of where I can get better perfrmance, and where I can get worse. And also the strain on the network. When running client-server the server seems to give a little "burst" of data evert 5 seconds or so when playing a file, is this the same as in scenario 1. Or will one of them in general buffer more or less and have more continious network andor hd-load? If i connect with a user with only read-acsess, will i be able to modify tags, becuase the server-mc12 has read-rights to the files, or are the rights on th client-side the deciding factor?

There isn't a one-size fits all answer.

The mapped drive solution allows editing by one client.  Library Server doesn't allow clients to edit.

The mapped drive solution only works on a LAN.  Library Server works across the Internet.

All file types can by played from a mapped drive.  Library Server has some limitations with certain video types.

Both solutions should provide the same speeds for searching, scrolling, etc. _once_ the library gets loaded to memory.  Loading and unloading from disk to memory may take different amounts of time.

I would probably recommend a mapped drive unless you need Internet support.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

flac.rules

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Re: Performance gains/drawbacks from running MC12 as server/client
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2008, 01:58:45 pm »

I guess it also has a stregth when it comes to using MC12 on several clients, as you quickly can get the (updated) library without going through the pretty time-consuming process of creating one and mapping up drives. (lets say you ahve a protable for instance).

But to get it straight, the database is in any case entirely loaded into memory? So Cpu-spped is the big limiting factor? For some reason I seem to have less problems running in a server-client setup. Running normally on Vista I frequently get the problem that the prgram is not responding, and must be shut down.

How about the mentioned network-traffic, will that also have similar characteristics?
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Matt

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Re: Performance gains/drawbacks from running MC12 as server/client
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2008, 02:04:16 pm »

But to get it straight, the database is in any case entirely loaded into memory? So Cpu-spped is the big limiting factor?

Pieces of the database get loaded to memory during use.  They get unloaded during inactivity, if you minimize, etc.

CPU speed is the main consideration once the necessary data is in memory.

Background tasks like thumbnailing, checking if a file exists, etc. add a little complexity to the answer.

Quote
For some reason I seem to have less problems running in a server-client setup. Running normally on Vista I frequently get the problem that the prgram is not responding, and must be shut down.

This shouldn't happen regardless.  Make sure you're running the latest version.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

flac.rules

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Re: Performance gains/drawbacks from running MC12 as server/client
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2008, 03:04:02 pm »

Thanks for the info. I'm using the lates version available on the site, I'll try to dig abit more into it.

Is there a way to make the program use RAM more agressive? That is keep data in ram longer?
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