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[datdude]

Hi,

I've had video cover art issues for a while, ever since MC switched to forcing the cover art path to be next to the file. This has led to a variety of issues that I haven't seen many users post about, so I'm thinking that maybe there's a solution that just hasn't hit me yet that might be obvious.

Root of the problem:

• My ripped blu-rays are stored on external drives (Synology NAS and Seagate USBs)
• Video cover art is stored next to the files instead of on my internal SSD
• External drives can take 10-20 seconds before fully spinning up
• Drives don't spin up until MC needs access to them such as in Theater View

Result of the problem:

• Browsing in and out of views can hang
• Cover art often shows a low res cached version
• Info Panel shows the same cover when moving the cursor to other movies.

Once the drives spin up, all problems go away. I have partially solved this problem by, A) forcing the drives to spin up with a bat file when waking the computer, but that doesn't always work and they usually go to sleep again after a period of time and B)  exporting all my movies as a playlist, editing the playlist in a text editor and changing the cover art location to a folder on my SSD, then reimporting the playlist, and moving all the cover art to that folder. This works well, except that every time I rip a new Blu-Ray, that file's cover art is on the external drive and the problems start to occur again. I've thought about somehow scripting this latter solution, but it seems like there has to be a better solution.

Solutions?

• Has anyone else experienced this issue? How did you solve it?
• Are there settings in MC or Windows that could be part of the problem?
• Do I need to get better drives and/or a better server hardware solution?
• Should I have my NAS drives running 24/7 and get rid of the seagate USBs?

Thanks!

[datdude]

Bump

[MrC]

Late reply...

This is the nature of "device wait", where IO on a slow (or sleeping) device blocks feedback until the device responds.

You can disable the power saving features of your HDs (or use other methods to prevent sleep).

I've suggested "kicking" a drive upon resume from playback to force a read, as I typically pause music while I go do other things, come back and hit Play, and audio resumes... until the buffer runs dry.  Then MC blocks until the disk has spun up and playback continues.  Such a solution would not work for your thumbnails, since there's no buffer to drain while the disks are spinning up.

[AnalogRoaming]

I've noticed a similar problem recently, but with network drives. Honestly, I thought there was a thumbnail cache in the library so this wouldn't be a problem. If there isn't, there should be one.

[MrC]

Don't forget, MC also checks that the media files actually exist.

[6233638]

It seems like this could be solved by Media Center storing the cover art for video files in an external location, such as a folder on my SSD, rather than keeping them with the files and waiting to spin up all of my storage drives.

[glynor]

It seems like this could be solved by Media Center storing the cover art for video files in an external location, such as a folder on my SSD, rather than keeping them with the files and waiting to spin up all of my storage drives.

History:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68447.msg460709

I still think my suggestion here would make everyone happier:

I actually think that, if you have any choice at all, there should maybe be three options that apply to all cover art and sidecar files in MC:

1. With the media files (Sidecar files)
2. In a Metadata subfolder with the media files.
3. In a specific folder (Automatic)

All three should offer an additional separate option to create folder.jpg files (for Widows Explorer support).  And another one to also store images in file tags when possible.

I think #1 should be the default, because it is the most foolproof and cross-compatible.

Number three would work like it does now, sort of.  Except that:

1. It would default to a "Media Art" folder in your My Documents folder (rather than buried in the hidden AppData directory).  See the other thread for more.
2. MC would take control of the naming structure inside that folder, black box style.  JRiver just decides themselves what file and directory structure to use in the specified folder, and it is just designed so the user doesn't have to know they are even there or care, but so that they can all be stored in one spot away from the media files.

If they want to design it so there is no user-option at all, however, then I think the best option is certainly the sidecar method.  I agree with Rick, that there aren't many cases where that doesn't work just as well, and I don't see why not to just standardize on that.  I know you would rather not though, and you might not be alone.

[JustinChase]

That brings back memories.  There are some things I do not miss  

putting everything into a separate folder (which I really wanted back then) would seemingly resolve this issue also, so I'm still all for that being changed.

[datdude]

Just saw that there were replies in this thread. I don't have anything more to offer other than to say that I hope Glynor's solution gets looked at in the future.

[BEZMan]

I am a similar issue. My files are on a Sinology NAS, mapped as Windows network drives. It is all fine until I put the computer to sleep. After the computer wakes up, trying to play a music file just hangs. You can try double clicking on any file you want, the UI just says "0:00 / 4:30" for instance and stays there with no music indefinitely. I can browse my network drive fine using Windows explorer. The only solution is to quit MC and restart it.

My covert art are stored on the NAS as Folder.jpg files (and configured as such in MC).

Anyone would have the same issue and know a potential solution to that?

Thanks!