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More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: boliver on May 27, 2008, 08:02:37 pm

Title: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: boliver on May 27, 2008, 08:02:37 pm

When you Analyse Audio for a large number of files (especially evident when you are doing automatic Analyse Audio for the Auto-Import function), it doesn't seem to use all of the resources on the computer.  I have a multiple core CPU and it looks as though it is analysing just one file at a time.

Can you utilize multiple cores for multiple files please?

Title: Re: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: Matt on May 27, 2008, 09:06:13 pm

Wish granted.

If you get the newest build from the top of this board, you can analyze multiple files at once.

Cheers.

Title: Re: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: boliver on May 27, 2008, 09:14:36 pm

I have 12.0.504 already actually.

I just did a Analyse Audio on 100 files and the CPU rating never got over about 25% on my 4 core CPU.

Are you saying this is just because of hard drive reading/writing bottleneck?  (This is a new system and I have absolutely state of the art HD's but no RAID etc.)

Title: Re: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: Matt on May 27, 2008, 09:51:28 pm

Make sure you're analyzing multiple files at once. (the combobox at the lower left of the analyze dialog)

With a quad-core, it may be hard to keep all the cores saturated.  Other bottle-necks like disk I/O, memory reads, thread synchronization, etc. will factor in.

However, I'm on a fast dual-core here and analysis uses around 95% of the CPU when running two files at once.

Title: Re: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: boliver on May 27, 2008, 10:04:02 pm

OK. I tested this.  If I manually select a bunch of files to be analysed, all of the cores are used.

Where I saw the problem is in the "Run Auto Import Now" command (since I have the Analyse Audio option selected for the Auto Import).  The behavior seems different in this situation.  New files being imported didn't have nearly as high a CPU usage: they seemed to be analysed one at a time.  Perhaps the programmers didn't move the new code to this function as well?

Title: Re: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: Matt on May 27, 2008, 10:16:36 pm

Quote from: boliver on May 27, 2008, 10:04:02 pm

OK. I tested this.  If I manually select a bunch of files to be analysed, all of the cores are used.

Where I saw the problem is in the "Run Auto Import Now" command (since I have the Analyse Audio option selected for the Auto Import).  The behavior seems different in this situation.  New files being imported didn't have nearly as high a CPU usage: they seemed to be analysed one at a time.  Perhaps the programmers didn't move the new code to this function as well?

Auto-import won't hit your system as hard.  This is by design.

Auto-import throttles down the work it does, the amount of which varies depending on if it's a user-run auto-import or a background auto-import.  (background auto-import is even more conservative with system resources)

Title: Re: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: boliver on May 27, 2008, 10:22:26 pm

OK.  I actually turned off the "background" auto-import so that I only invoke it manually now.

But it would be nice to have some way to have it finish faster when you invoke it manually...  :-)

Title: Re: Feature Request: Use multiple cores for Analyse Audio
Post by: hit_ny on May 28, 2008, 10:22:41 am

Why ?

Just do a mass import followed by a mass analyse.

I think the system as it is as perfect as it can ever be :)