I really could have written exactly that below!
1) Yes, it's frustrating when you can't type into a location field in firefox because MC's doing something. I have plenty of CPU 'free' but certain actions don't work. Mouse scrolling is a no-no, but clicking on scroll arrows, even within MC, works fine.
2) Leaving thumbs overnight doesn't actually build that many. MC says building is complete, but if I restart building, it does so, beginning with a smaller number left to complete than the previous build action. It slowly counts down to zero, but there are still hundreds unbuilt despite what it reports. It's been weeks since I actually saw a thumbnail generated before my eyes - something that was a frequent occurence before.
Yeah, the ffdshow/Haali icons show up in the tray, and I do clear them with a mouseover, too.
However, I'm pretty convinced that that does nothing, now.
4) Yes to the slow manual thumbnail assignment, especially from screenshot. That's why I've started to add thumbnails from the "add from file" option under cover art submenu. It's not instantaneous, but it's quick enough.
5) Every night I spend an hour before bed downloading DVD/BluRay/HD-DVD cover art to use as thumbnails, as that seems to be the only way to get MC snappy. In the end, my library is going to look great in Theatre View, but it's taking weeks.
The problem is that a library restore screws everything up again, so I just pray all stays fine with my library. Last week, after a crash, my playlists had disappeared. Restoring the library caused the thumbnail issue all over again.
And a number 6 for you to try (if you're a masochist):
Copy a thumbnail from one file and paste it to many others. Do the same for another thumbnail, and keep track of which files got which one. In my setup, over days/weeks the wrong pasted thumbnail gets assigned to files at random.
I'm willing to concede that these may somehow be problems with my setup. I'm glad that I'm not alone, however, but do feel your pain. It's a testament to MC that this bug/problem with our setup exists, yet we keep on using MC.
A few quick comments Fibrit:
1. It's strange how jrworker.exe maye use 25-45% of my cpu (with 4 threads) and my entire system gets affected by MC i.e. can't bring up the taskbar, explorer often locked down, etc.
2. Build thumbs never works for me, overnight, as for you. It really seems like the 4 threads get stuck and don't unload properly. People have always mentioned but later discounted the fact that the ffdshow icon remains stuck in the systray; I think there may be something to this because with limited testing it seems to help move the process forward if one "clears" the icons with a mouseover.
3. I want to take a screencast of this behavior because if some of the staff experienced what I have been going through hopefully it will give someone some ideas as to what's wrong....it makes MC painfully touchy.
4. Even though I've tagged files manually with custom images, there was a severe lag in their application to the files. I had actually had to re-tag quite a few files.
5. 85% of my thumbs are now custom images because I can't get MC to build thumbs within a reasonable time frame (24 hours) on a q6600. I'm leary of telling my friends here at work about MC for their HTPC use given this condition.
DC
