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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 24 for Windows => Topic started by: iamimdoc on October 19, 2018, 12:54:02 pm

Title: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 19, 2018, 12:54:02 pm: Use older PC with JRiver. Performance score was about 2000 I believe
Use older Server on my network- a bit slow
Music plays without hiccoughs.

But, when flipping through JRemote (I use it exclusively to control JRiver), music may/probably will pause, slow down, etc for a few seconds

Question: would a SSD in the laptop likely help things?
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: jmone on October 19, 2018, 03:04:17 pm: An SSD is a great upgrade on any PC... but I'm not sure this will be fix your pauses/slow downs, it sounds like something else to me.

Can you explain that a bit more, is it,
- You have your music on the Networked Server? Is it also running MC Server / some DLNA type server or is the Music just on network share?
- On your PC with MC are you running any heavy Audio Processing in MC or other apps at the same time
- You are using JRemote to play audio on your PC?
- Is the Network Server and PC both on a wired Network?
- Is the JRemote running on Wifi?

If the above is correct, is it that the Music pauses/slows down on the PC during playback (do you mean stuttering)?

Posting a log when the issue occurs will also help.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 19, 2018, 05:21:23 pm: Thanks for response.

- You have your music on the Networked Server? Is it also running MC Server / some DLNA type server or is the Music just on network share?

Just a network share. Configuration is MACBOOK LAPTOP (2008 White) converted to Windows 7. All music on the UNRAID server, several versions back but not particularly speedy I am told. 100% reliable for 3 years so far, however. About 190k music files

- On your PC with MC are you running any heavy Audio Processing in MC or other apps at the same time I think not although I do play ripped SACD's. Not sure they are any worse, however. Nothing else runs on PC - used for music only. JRiver boots at start up on PC in Server mode

- You are using JRemote to play audio on your PC? I perceive JRemote is used to control the PC (I think that is what is being done). I rarely go to the PC

- Is the Network Server and PC both on a wired Network? yes - 1000M

- Is the JRemote running on Wifi? yes - on 2 year old ipad. Scrolling through albums (no music playing) may take 3-5" for all album art to display but album place holders show up quickly. At times Album art shows up quicker.

If the above is correct, is it that the Music pauses/slows down on the PC during playback (do you mean stuttering)? pauses for 2-4 " would be best descriptor
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 19, 2018, 06:37:19 pm: Have all of the thumbnails been built so that they are stored on the laptop?
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: jmone on October 19, 2018, 10:10:25 pm: If you have enough memory, Try - Tools--> Options--> Audio--> Settings--> Memory Playback --> Load Full File (not decoded) into Memory and see if that helps.
- If it does then it may be an issue with MC being able to read the file quickly enough over your NW (which seems odd on a wired network).
- If it does not help then bring up Task Manager and see if there are any CPU spikes when the pauses happen.

Another idea to see if it is network or NAS related, is copy some songs to the PC and play them from there and see if there are issues.

Also post a log file from when you have the issue.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 20, 2018, 12:29:27 pm: "Have all of the thumbnails been built so that they are stored on the laptop?|

In the Tools -> Options -> File Locations -> Cover Art -> Audio Mode -> In A Specified Folder" :

Artwork is on the C drive but only 255 files are there (of the 10k+ albums)

I would presume local files would be faster than over the network, although not sure what the ipad is utilizing

Is there a fix for this that would help?

Thanks
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 20, 2018, 12:39:44 pm: If you go to tools>advanced tools you can select to build missing thumbnails which are stored in a folder on the machine. If these are not already present then the pc has to build them before sending them out to jremote. This is just one possibility for a slow response.

EDIT: You could always switch the view in jremote into an album list and then the thumbnaills wouldn't be a problem.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 20, 2018, 03:37:47 pm: "If you go to tools>advanced tools you can select to build missing thumbnails which are stored in a folder on the machine"

I have Version 22. What option would do this please?

My choices under Tools > Advanced Tools
Analyze Audio
Convert Format
Ringtone
Audio Calibration
Media Server
Media Editor
Disc Labeler

None of which seem appropriate
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 20, 2018, 03:48:53 pm: Aaah many moons ago 'twas - any how try

options > tree & view > thumbnails > build missing thumbnails

Be warned though that this takes a lot of time if there are lots of files.
You don't fancy just having a text list? It is less pretty but much more usable.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 20, 2018, 04:50:55 pm: OK, thanks
I have a test implementation of JRiver on another machine

I am currently "build missing thumbnails". PC at about 3-5% usage

Under
AppData > JRiver > Media Center 22 > Thumbnails > {74FF9799-4CFB-42F6-9391-FBF8C658DA5A}

I have a folder Normal (v3). Is data going here, should this dir being getting more data, etc" ie, where are the NEW thumbnails going?

Update:

"Nevermind":
Roseane Roseana Danna

Files being created in TEMP DIR

Again, thanks for help
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 20, 2018, 05:17:14 pm: Just be aware that the thumbnail store needs to be on the computer that JRemote is accessing to control playback.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 21, 2018, 04:16:51 pm: Yes, that is what I am doing.

Having said that, processing started very spiffy but after 20 hours I am building thumbnails at 69538 of 160038 at a rate of about 1 per second.

Is this slow down and current rate expected?

Again thanks
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 21, 2018, 04:20:10 pm: Some people have reported that happening. If you stop the thumbnail building and then restart it then it should pick up again from where it left off but at a higher speed.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: Awesome Donkey on October 21, 2018, 04:47:12 pm: Yep, it's something I've seen the last few years when I do clean OS installs and have to rebuild the thumbnails of my 100,000+ FLAC music library (all artwork is embedded, no folder.jpg files). I've noticed it slows down with the thumbnail generation after processing between 10,000 to 20,000 files. But if I stop the process and immediately restart/resume it, it goes fast again until it processes another 10,000 to 20,000 files. I just keep repeating the stop/resuming process until the library rebuild is done. If I left it without stopping/resuming, the process would take longer than it should.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 21, 2018, 05:15:57 pm: Someone on the dev team really should look at why this happens - having to stop start to get things working correctly is very inelegant. (Doing well in the poll AD - well deserved)
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 23, 2018, 06:38:54 am: Thumbnails converted.
Certainly helped a lot.
Some lag , but much, much less.

Thanks

Would this mean that a SSD should bring even more benefit?
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: carlismysecondname on October 23, 2018, 08:01:51 am: @iamimdoc

Quote
I am building thumbnails at 69538 of 160038 at a rate of about 1 per second.

Yep, I've had this happen when rebuilding the thumbnails. At around 20k+, 40k or 60k+ the rebuild process will start slowing down like molasses. I stop the process. Redo it again. Stop the process. Redo it again. etc. It's clearly not from a lack of RAM as I have 16GB my sytem never even exceeds 40% usage. My music is on a NAS device, though -- but even then, I know that I'm also not saturating my gigabit bandwidth. On the other hand, sometimes it'll speed back up on its own.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: Hendrik on October 23, 2018, 09:01:12 am: We'll try an experimental change in the next build to see if we can recover some speed after processing files for a while. Let us know if anything changes.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 23, 2018, 01:38:11 pm: Quote from: iamimdoc on October 23, 2018, 06:38:54 am
Would this mean that a SSD should bring even more benefit?
They are faster at reading and writing so it should improve the speed of transfer as long as your wifi network is fast enough to cope.
Glad that you have seen some improvements.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: iamimdoc on October 26, 2018, 06:35:45 am: Are there accessible tools you might suggest to determine whether my "wifi network is fast enough to cope "?

Thanks
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 26, 2018, 09:50:22 am: If you have a movie file on your server - just play it in the jremote on the ipad if it plays smoothly you will certainly have all the speed you need to throw thumbnails around the network. If you have a modern dual band router speed shouldn't be an issue.
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: Awesome Donkey on October 26, 2018, 09:53:05 am: It'd also help to know some information about your network, e.g. what router(s) do you run?

Otherwise, this might help too: https://www.linksys.com/us/r/resource-center/basics/test-wifi-home-network-speed/
Title: Re: Is this likely or not likely to help? (ie, where is the bottleneck)
Post by: swiv3d on October 27, 2018, 04:57:36 pm: I have been playing with jremote pulling album thumbnails from my main computer with a standard hard drive and my little Brix with a SSHD and really there is no difference in my network which has a dual band router.