Topic: MC becomes unresponsive at every track change (Read 4905 times)

mesue · « **on:** November 08, 2008, 09:10:34 pm »

I have been having a problem where Media Center becomes unresponsive for several seconds at every song transition. At first I thought it was due to auto-import running, but I've disabled that and it still occurs. Then I thought it was network lag (library is local but music is on a server), but I upgraded my network to gigabit and it still occurs. The unresponsiveness can last anywhere from 15 second to over a minute. At times, it will last for up to 5 minutes. Any suggestions?

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** November 08, 2008, 09:34:30 pm »

Virus checker?

mesue · « **Reply #2 on:** November 08, 2008, 10:01:57 pm »

I excluded my library and music directories from my virus scanner about a week ago, so it's not that.

Just now, I was messing around and switched my output mode to Wave Out instead of DirectSound. I think that might have done the trick. Time will tell.

Is there any disadvantage to this setting?

mesue · « **Reply #3 on:** November 08, 2008, 10:59:45 pm »

Well, this is very weird! Switching to Wave Out seems to have solved the problem where I was getting a short lag on every track change. But every time I play a track from "David Bowie - Singles Collection" the track starts playing, and immediately my entire system locks up and all I can do is stare at the spinny green circle cursor for about a minute. I restarted both my server and my computer and tried it with nothing else running and it does the same thing.

mesue · « **Reply #4 on:** November 09, 2008, 12:30:07 am »

Wow... I don't understand this at all! When that particular album has cover art in the file, playing it causes the lock-up I described above. When I remove the cover art, the files all play fine. It doesn't matter what cover art I use... I tried it with artwork acquired from MC, from Google images, and I even scanned the cover in myself. As long as there is art work in the file, it locks up on playback. All my testing was done with only MC running, after a clean reboot (startup programs disabled).

Anyone ever encountered this before or have a clue how I can fix it?

JimH · « **Reply #5 on:** November 09, 2008, 07:11:06 am »

Quote from: mesue on November 08, 2008, 10:01:57 pm

I excluded my library and music directories from my virus scanner about a week ago, so it's not that.

We saw a problem a few years ago that was not solved by disabling a virus checker. It had to be uninstalled and the system rebooted. So you can't rule it out.

What format are the files? Where did they come from?

JimH · « **Reply #6 on:** November 09, 2008, 07:27:32 am »

Quote from: mesue on November 08, 2008, 10:59:45 pm

... every time I play a track from "David Bowie - Singles Collection" the track starts playing, and immediately my entire system locks up and all I can do is stare at the spinny green circle cursor for about a minute.

You haven't ripped any Sony disks lately have you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_CD_copy_prevention_scandal

mesue · « **Reply #7 on:** November 09, 2008, 08:59:22 am »

Hi Jim,

These are MP3 files ripped from a CD, which I ripped back around 1999, so it pre-dates all the Sony mess.

Did you see my latest message (#4) about the cover art? I actually re-ripped the disk before posting that. The files played with no problems all the way up to the point where I added the cover art using MC. The re-rip should rule out anything to do with the files themselves.

Since posting my last message, I learned that I can do the following and then the files will show cover art and still play in MC: Using mp3tag v2.42, I removed ID3v1 tags and added my cover art. So now the files only have ID3v2.3. Then I went to MC and updated library from tags. The covers show and the files play fine.

However, as soon as I do anything in MC that causes the tags to be re-written, MC adds the ID3v1 tags back in and the problem playing the files returns. If I remove ID3v1 using MC, the problem playing the files goes away, but the cover art also disappears. So then I have to do update library from tags and the cover art shows again.

Now, I have hundreds of albums tagged with cover art using MC, and this is the first time I have noticed this problem, so it could be affecting other files of mine, but it can't be a large percentage or I might have found it a lot sooner. Or it could be a quirk with just this one album, but that makes no sense to me.

Anyway, questions now are:

Why would removing ID3v1 in MC take out the cover art, if cover art can only be stored in ID3v2 tags?

How can I prevent MC from ever writing ID3v1 tags?

And I still have my earlier question--is there any disadvantage to Wave Out vs. DirectShow for output mode?

Thanks for your interest. If anyone else has any insight, please jump in.

JimH · « **Reply #8 on:** November 09, 2008, 09:18:05 am »

Are you using any new software to do tagging?

This was added to MC 13.0.68. We've seen a couple of similar problems recently.

3. Changed: MP3 ID3v2 reader can handle (buggy) unsynchronized tags that store a frame's decoded size in the frame header instead of the encoded size.

mesue · « **Reply #9 on:** November 09, 2008, 09:36:05 am »

I have generally done all my tagging with MC since I switched to it sometime in 2005. Once in a while I will use mp3tag to investigate a tagging issue, and I have used it to strip out APE tags that were added from MP3Gain in days of yore, but I don't use it for any mass tagging. I also recently started using TagRunner to add lyrics, but I only allow it to write the lyric tags and nothing else. I don't think that could have been a factor with this problem because these songs had lyrics embedded way before I started using TagRunner.

I found the setting to prevent ID3v1 tags from ever being written... whew, it's buried pretty deep in there. (Things like this are why a settings import/export would be really useful. I will never remember to reset that if I have to reinstall in the future.)

I think I am going to start the slow process of removing all ID3v1 tags from my files.

Hopefully the change in MC13 will help avoid these issue in the future. I'm not ready to make the switch yet.

JimH · « **Reply #10 on:** November 09, 2008, 09:39:09 am »

If anything new is writing tags, that is a possible source of the problem.

Disk corruption is another possibility.

mesue · « **Reply #11 on:** November 09, 2008, 09:50:07 am »

But, in troubleshooting this David Bowie problem, I used a freshly ripped disc that had been touched with no other tagger but MC.

mesue · « **Reply #12 on:** November 22, 2008, 09:44:10 pm »

I am having a problem again where MC hangs for about 30 seconds at every track change. It's not the extended hang that locked up my whole computer like was happening with the David Bowie CD, but it's the shorter hang like I was experiencing before where it just hangs MC. I tried changing back to Direct Sound and back to Wave Out, but it made no difference. Any ideas?

More info: Just wanted to clarify... there is no interruption in the music. It's just that MC stops responding for about 30-60 seconds and clicking anything in the MC window shows the spinning "busy" cursor. The track info and progress bar/timer also does not update.

mesue · « **Reply #13 on:** November 22, 2008, 10:57:04 pm »

Update: I had a hunch and I closed Firefox. As long as Firefox was not running, MC did not hang on track changes. As soon as I opened Firefox back up, MC would hang at track changes. It was shorter this time, but I think it gets longer when Firefox has been running a long time.

Any other Firefox users experience this? I am running Firefox 3.0.4. I will experiment with disabling some extensions.

Update #2: Firefox turned out to be a red herring. Turns out my playlist had changed from playing an album to playing a mix of tracks and that's why I wasn't seeing the issue after closing firefox.

Once again, I have tracked it down to a cover art problem. I think it has to do with adding cover art via "Paste from Clipboard (Image or URL)." When I remove the coverart using mp3tag and then add it back again with mp3tag and update Library from tags in MC, I do not have the issue. I will do some more experimenting tomorrow.

mesue · « **Reply #14 on:** November 23, 2008, 12:54:26 pm »

Well it seems that when I come across one of these problem albums, it does the hang no matter what method I use to add cover art as long as cover art is added in MC. I have been able to replicate the problem using paste from clipboard (image), paste from clipboard (URL), and get from Internet. As soon as I remove and re-add the cover art with MP3tag, then I am able to play the files without MC hanging. I guess I will not be adding cover art via MC anymore. :-(

The strange thing is that not every album is affected. I haven't been able to pinpoint anything in common with the albums that do exhibit this behavior. It happens with small covers, larger covers, low bitrate, high bitrate, new files, old files, ripped files, downloaded files. I don't get it.

Matt · « **Reply #15 on:** November 24, 2008, 04:44:32 pm »

If you believe it is file specific, please email a sample file to matt at jriver dot com.

When a file has internal art, we load the image from the tag at playback start time. Unless the image is huge or the drive is slow, this should be very fast.

mesue · « **Reply #16 on:** November 24, 2008, 08:31:33 pm »

Thanks, Matt. Sample sent.

Matt · « **Reply #17 on:** November 25, 2008, 08:49:17 am »

Thanks for the sample.

I can see that it takes longer to decode the image out of the file named "problem", although it works properly.

If you're interested, Media Center 13 introduces a new and improved MP3 tag reader and writer. It works equally fast with both files.

mesue · « **Reply #18 on:** November 25, 2008, 02:20:49 pm »

Thanks for checking into it. I have no desire to go to a beta version right now, so I guess I'll just continue fixing these as I come across them with mp3tag.

mesue · « **Reply #19 on:** November 25, 2008, 02:29:15 pm »

By the way, this occurs on Media Jukebox 12 also, which my husband uses.

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