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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 28 for Mac => Topic started by: David593 on November 01, 2021, 03:52:42 pm

Title: External drive sleeping and so video freezing if lower bitrate file played
Post by: David593 on November 01, 2021, 03:52:42 pm

Hi there hope someone can help.

JR28, 2021 new 16” MacBook Pro M1pro, Monterey OS.

With some lower bitrate videos the call by jriver to the drive seems sometimes less than the point the drive (LaCie 7tb) sleeps and thus playback freezes for quite a few seconds and some programme skipped. This hasn’t happened before (previously jr26 MacBook Pro 2013). This is new behaviour and not encountered with the same files playing through VLC as just tested. No changes to external drive or library. Higher bitrate videos call data frequently enough to prevent this hence I think it is the jr frequency of calls to the drive, but not happened before with the same bitrate files.

No crash report as it is not crashing.

Title: Re: External drive sleeping and so video freezing if lower bitrate file played
Post by: bob on November 01, 2021, 04:10:30 pm

Unfortunately the M1 has greatly reduced the control you (and we) have over power settings.
Intel Mac's had a "prevent disk sleeping" option.

You might want to check this post.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-mac-mini-external-usb-c-drive-sleep.2292014/

Title: Re: External drive sleeping and so video freezing if lower bitrate file played
Post by: David593 on November 01, 2021, 05:18:12 pm

Thanks Bob. I’ll try amphetamine and let you know how it goes (and any side-effects)

Title: Re: External drive sleeping and so video freezing if lower bitrate file played
Post by: David593 on November 02, 2021, 04:13:20 pm

Interesting. Reporting back on Amphetamine behaviour.

Amphetamine works with the new macs and new OS. However with some quirks. If the programme is running, whether active or not, disconnecting external drives causes the computer to stop displaying a picture via hdmi to the tv, where my normal set up doesn’t sleep the MacBook with the lid closed. Reconnecting the drive causes the screen to come back. Quitting the application stops this aberrant behaviour. Also if active the drive icon changes to a folder icon and switches back oddly and periodically. When active it did keep the drive on and therefore prevented the sleeping issues discussed with lossy files.

I would be interested however to know how VLC manages to play lower bitrate files without the disc access issues now experienced in JRiver? As they are playing the same file under the same OS constraints they must have a way around this?