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Author Topic: The road to recovery ... Help needed  (Read 1224 times)

AZ_JazzyJ

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The road to recovery ... Help needed
« on: May 11, 2003, 07:43:04 am »

"Hello, my name is Jeff and I have a problem."

I feel as though I need to utter that phrase since everyone tells me that is the first step in admitting you have a problem.  I have been using Media Center for nearly 2 months now and in that time I have learned some very disturbing things about myself.  When given a tool as powerful as Media Center, I will ignore all recommendations to "wade in" and see how the water is.  Instead, I am more of a "don't look at the depth markers and dive head first yelling 'Cannonball!'" kind of guy.  Within the first three or four days after installing the software, I had dredged through stereo cabinets, kids rooms, friends houses, cars, attics, and anywhere else I could think of to gather every CD I could find.  Then, in the middle of the night with only the glow of the CD Burner power light I began ripping everything on the planet slowly making my way through a stack of CDs that resembled the Sears Tower in height and mass.  This of course led to the purchase of a new hard drive "But honey, it IS a matter of life or death.  We HAVE to have every song we ever heard at our finger tips."  So after countless hours of doing the CD Shuffle, I finally have all my music in one place.  I thought, "Well that wasn't so bad" but then as I went into Media Center and learned about tags, album art, analyzing music, lyrics I realized I had only touched the surface.  I now find all of my waking hours consumed with finding out all details about each and every song.  I am collecting album art like a crazed Andy Warhol fan, and find myself going nuts if I cannot find an accurate release date or a specific version of lyrics.  Until I installed the Media Center software, I was a relatively normal guy who hung out at the ballpark watching baseball.  Now when I go, I find myself jotting down lyrics or music that is played before a batter reaches the plate because I need to make sure and create a baseball smartlist of all music I have heard at the ball game in order [random] that will fit on a MP3 CD that I have not heard since last season.  This is not good.

I have noticed one thing in Media Center and I am not sure whether it is my computer or if others are having the same problem.  There are times when I am searching the Internet for song information when Media Center stops updating the "content window" (I have no idea whether that is an accurate term, I usually refer to it as the big center window but that probably isn't the technical term for it.   I can traverse the tree of artist and album on the left side but the middle window that usually shows me the songs associated with that artist/album doesn't update.  It is like it freezes or something.  I have to quit Media Center and open the application again.  It then works for a while.  I haven't been able to figure out exactly what triggers this to stop but last night (well technically REALLY early this morning), I was going to rick.com to see what the top 40 was for this week to make sure I had a smartlist that contained all the songs, I found that when I looked at the page containing the top 40, Media Center would lose its way nearly every time.  I typically will go to rick.com, look at the countdown, open a new browser window and go to Amazon.com to find what the name of the album is from the artist, then go to Media Center to look to see if I have that song or if I should add it to my list of singles to buy.  Somewhere in that bouncing from browser to browser to media center is when the content window stops responding.  Can anyone tell me if they have had a similar experience or if this is just another topic I should add to my weekly therapy sessions with my shrink?

Thanks for the help and sorry for the length of this post.  Just some things I had to say.  Thanks again for a great product; it has been fun as well as obsessive.

Jeff
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Cmagic

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Re: The road to recovery ... Help needed
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2003, 09:01:33 am »

Hi Jeff ,

That's a very interesting post. Could have been me really if you replace baseball by soccer or rugby (you now living on the other bank of the ocean). I definetely understand this crazy feeeling of addiction when trying to organize a digital music collection with MC9. I am also completely MC addicted !

Now back to your problem. It is really strange indeed. I have never experienced anything like that. Maybe it's some kind of configuration or version problem between your OS, you web browser and MC. I know MC uses some stuff from Internet explorer. Maybe posting your system details (Help | System Info...) will help the folks at JRiver trace the problem.

I know this was not a very helpful reply but probably someone will complement what I tried to say about Internet Explorer and MC relationships.

cheers,

Christian
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Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance
than the color of his eyes.
Bob Marley (War)

AZ_JazzyJ

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Re: The road to recovery ... Help needed
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2003, 09:56:24 am »

Christian,

Thanks for the suggestion.  My system info is posted below:

Media Center Registered 9.0.172 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 1717 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 178 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920)
Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929)wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive E:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Drive F:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
 Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: Yes  Soundfile:   D:\My Documents\My Music\Sound Effects\EXCELNT.wav

Burning /  Drive E: AOPEN    CD-RW CRW2440      Addr: 1:0:0  Speed:24  MaxSpeed:24  Use MJ Engine:Yes
 Drive F: TOSHIBA  DVD-ROM SD-R1202   Addr: 1:1:0  Speed:16  MaxSpeed:16  Use MJ Engine:Yes
 Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: No
 Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

Hopefully this is just operator error on my part and I can flip a switch or something.  Other than this small problem, I am having a blast with MC9 and have come to realize that sleep is highly over-rated.

Jeff
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gkerber

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Re: The road to recovery ... Help needed
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2003, 06:04:37 pm »

I can't help you with your MC problem, but I really enjoyed reading your story.

Fill us in again after you find out you can get wireless remote controls to control MC from anywhere in your house and go through the fun of getting them working... now that should be an interesting story....
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