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[Brian2112]

Hello!

I purchased Media Center 11.1 recently (first time user), and I need a little help. I am a “professional” musician who has been in search of a good media player that suits my needs for quite a while now. Up until now, I have been using Sonic Foundry Siren (now discontinued), and wanted a similar player/encoder etc. My priorities where to be able to “explore” my computer and quickly play vast amounts of audio files, and to have a nice sound with a nice E.Q. My search ended with Media Center 11.1x.

I do not have time to make “play lists” because I am usually working with mix downs of audio from professional audio applications (usually .wav or.MP3 files at various bit rates and sampling frequencies). When I am successfully able to play a file, it sounds great, the eq is great, and the visualizations are actually quite nice as well.

The problem I am having is that almost every time I click on a hard drive (and I have quite a few), the hourglass icon appears as it is building the view, computes for a while, and eventually ends in a BSOD. I am wondering if a large number of MP3 files in a single directory could cause this crash.

Also when trying to encode an MP3 file, I get nothing but noise as a result.
My suspicion is that either Media Center does not like some of my hardware, or it conflicts with the vast amount of professional audio apps installed on my computer. As I have seen no other reports of the BSOD problem, I can only assume that the problem is on my end somewhere. I have been updating since the build version x.178 and have even tried re-installing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated so that I can make use of this wonderful product.
Thank you so much,
Brian

[JimH]

A crash of the OS like you describe is usually a hardware issue.

Try this thread for ideas.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=24031.0

The number of files is not a factor.  Are you trying to start playback from Windows Explorer?  What happens if you import the files first and play from MC?

Is the drive external?  Or a network drive?  Please describe.

Can you copy your system info from MC Help and paste it here?

[Brian2112]

Hi Jim! And thanks for such a quick reply!

Media Center Registered 11.1.183 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\

Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 3195 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 2095 MB, Free - 1613 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.2800 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.0.2800 / Shell32.dll: 6.0.2800 / wnaspi32.dll: 4.60 (1021) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1999 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: N/A

Ripping /   Drive F:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive G:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Drive H:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive F: PLEXTOR  CD-R   PREMIUM     Addr: 3:1:0  Speed:52  MaxSpeed:52  BurnProof:Yes
  Drive G: SONY     DVD RW DRU-700A    Addr: 0:0:0  Speed:9  MaxSpeed:9  BurnProof:Yes
  Drive H: LITE-ON  DVDRW SOHW-1693S   Addr: 4:0:0  Speed:48  MaxSpeed:48  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /

Hard Drives are C: D: E: and an external hard drive I: (all SATA except E:)

I am tring to play back the files from the "drives and devices" menu on the left of MC. I should point out that I do not do the search routine at startup to look for files (if that is what you mean by import) since my list changes so often and new files are constantly added.

Also, for what it's worth, I seem to recall that MC worked ok until I installed a new Wide-Screen Monitor...but everything else works fine.

[JimH]

As a test, try importing a few files.  You can do this from the Tools menu in MC or you can right click on the files in Windows Explorer, choose Media Center, then import.

Are the files on the external drive?

[Brian2112]

Interesting...

File import seems to work just fine (had one lock-up after reading 6000+ files on drive E: (internal)), but everything else is ok.

I'm not using MC with my external drive - it holds my sample libraries (400 Gigs of .Wav files)  

I haven't tryed browsing since I imported files...might try that now - if you don't hear from me, I'm re-booting...LOL!!

Also, I need a quick way of sorting by date (not in the tags, but the actual file date). I always need access to the most recent version of my music. Sort by date doesn't seem to do it (guess I can read the manual)

Again, I thank you for your help!
Brian

[JimH]

Sounds like you have a workaround.

Again, please check the thread I mentioned above.  There are some strange things that happen on PC's.

You can add fields to any view by customizing the view.  There are several date options.

[Brian2112]

Dear Jim,

Thank you so much for your help! The workarounds will be just fine until I find the solution (which I will of course report immediately). In return I present a humble offering to you and MC users – my latest composition “Grand Cathedral of the Human Mind” tagged with the album art in MC. There’s a lot in it (including a complete symphonic orchestra and choir at about 3min 20 sec in…)

http://scoringhouse.com/GCHM/Grand%20Cathedral%20HM2MC.mp3

Again, I very much appreciate your help.
Warmest Regards,
Brian


EDIT: Oops - goofed the tag, here's the pic for Album Art:
http://scoringhouse.com/GCHM/Spherenotext.jpg

[JimH]

That's very kind, Brian.  Thank you.

[jgreen]

Brian, just a thought, here.  If you're running multiple audio apps, maybe there's some contention for resources going on.  Either ports, or maybe the audio card channels.  Every now and then I get a BSOD when running Audacity alongside MC (not that you're running Audacity).  I think there's an issue when you pause--rather than stop--playback and start another app's playback.

As for importation, I suggest you try it with your synth collection.  Create a new library within MC and just catalogue your synths.  You can then categorize them, add notes, group by type, etc.  Obviously, you don't want to be loading 400 gigs of synths (50,000?  100,000?) every time you start MC.  400 gigs of WAV pop tracks (~10,000 tracks) is probably a typical robust load for MC (I run 15,000 tracks and MC leaps like a gazelle).

There are rumors (started by JimH and Matt), that MC12 will have a backgound auto-import feature.  This would seem ideal for you.   

Matt and JimH, is you're listening in, something that might work great for brian would be a menu of import presets, so that properties can get filled by default, simply based on filetype AND folder hierarchy. 

Matt, these are not "options", these are "presets".

[Brian2112]

Matt and JimH, is you're listening in, something that might work great for brian would be a menu of import presets, so that properties can get filled by default, simply based on filetype AND folder hierarchy.

JGreen,

...And File Date...hehe.That is a great idea and would be very helpful! Thank you!!!