INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: benn600 on January 17, 2007, 12:50:57 am
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How long does it take everyone to sync from nothing to full or nearly full on their player? Now I should pose the big and fun question. I have a 6GB Sansa and am currently running a "from scratch" sync of close to 1000 songs which I have rated 3,4,5 stars. It is re-encoding with LAME to MP3 Normal quality without the Fast Mode box checked. It will take about 5 hours to sync. Unfortunately, in MTP mode, the actual copy progress is much slower and it can't even keep up with the encoding. What if I had a 80GB iPod and wanted to sync my entire 11,000 song library? 11 times as long? More than 2 solid days to sync? I don't think I'd want to start from scratch!
I am not a big portable music fan but it just seems like I always run into times where I want to change my sync quality and I gain this newfound appreciation for music so I suddenly want to jump back into portable music...and I always seem to resync...just as a way to restart everything and try to have the best experience possible (lol).
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Prior to the 'cache' changes, it took me two nights to sync a 60GB iPod from scratch.
After the 'cache' changes, MC is a little more efficient (even with an empty cache) - and it now only takes one full night to do.
I would still like to see 'versioning' implemented so I could keep a permanent MP3 version of each file on hand. That way a full sync would only take a couple of hours.
How long it takes (starting from scratch) under the current system really depends on your computer - re-encoding files is very CPU intensive.
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I have a Core2 1.86 GHz processor. Could I fit 11K songs on a 60GB iPod? What quality do you use? I found out that that middle quality setting in LAME is too much because I can't fit everything I have in the sync playlist. It ran short about a hundred songs.
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Hard to say, I have a lot of 'non-music' audio files (like podcasts) on my device. I use normal-fast for my CD's that are in APE format.
As to 'how big'. Just doing some rough calcs on my data you will need an 80GB iPod. I am coming to 75GB needed to hold 11k songs at my average file size.
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That brings up an interesting issue, though. Generally speaking, I think users are much better off using a solid state device because it demands that you do the work ahead of time on your computer to select your favorite tunes. I'm going to start a thread to get some conversation on the issue going.
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I have a Core2 1.86 GHz processor. Could I fit 11K songs on a 60GB iPod? What quality do you use? I found out that that middle quality setting in LAME is too much because I can't fit everything I have in the sync playlist. It ran short about a hundred songs.
-V 5 --vbr-new (a custom command line) is a good LAME VBR setting for portables. It produces an about 130 kbps average bitrate. (This depends on the source material. The actual bitrate can vary a lot).
I hope JRiver will implement the new LAME options I requested (and explained) in this thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=36445.0
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That's why I always unchecked the checkbox. I didn't want slightly lower quality--lol. Generally speaking, I let my Sansa sync over night (I typed sink, lol) and 3 (or whatever) hours vs. 6 doesn't really matter...it has all night. If it is better quality, heck ya! I want it!
How about J River rewords the checkbox and then add more in the drop down box with a parenthesis and average bitrate--that would be very helpful to me. Personally, I like to go a bit above 128 if I can fit it on my device. Now, it's a challenge to look up what the bit rates for those 3 built in settings are.
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That's why I always unchecked the checkbox.
Contrary to the on screen 'help' - the faster mode can actually produce BETTER files thanks to the later changes in the encoding.
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For me it takes 5 to 5.5 hours to do a full sync. This is for ~15,000 tracks which translates to ~65gb of data. The files are MP3 with no conversions occurring.
The target device is an 80gb iPod.
I think this is acceptable.
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LOL! Yea, if you don't have to convert! Wow. I prefer the time, though, because I know on my desktop, I get it as good as it can be.
That is impressive, though! So, generally speaking, converting takes about 10-15 times as long.
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What CPU utilization do you have when you sync? The reason I ask is I've found my syncs go much slower if I'm doing things that consume most of the CPU. When I do a normal sync, my CPU utilization is ~10-20%. If my CPU utilization gets high, ~80-95%, my syncs slow way down.
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Well, for those of us that store our stuff losless on the PC, but want MP3 for the portable - CPU sits at 50-100% as it converts all of the files :)
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Well, having a dual core machine seems to limit the encoders a bit. I find that if I'm not running two simultaneous conversions, it never peaks at 100%. I will try it and report back.