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[JustinChase]

Why does MC change the current song info about 5 seconds or so before the next song actually starts playing?

It makes many things less enjoyable/more difficult for me.  Is there any way it can be changed?  Or made an option to change.  Maybe it serves some grand purpose I can't fathom, but if i could change it to just change when the song actually changes, that would be great.

Matt?

[pocket]

This is probably due to the cross fade.  If you set cross fade off, or make it to lag between songs, this should go away.

[JustinChase]

No.  It's the way MC sends the info.  It has done this as long as I can remember.  i just don't know why they do this.

[rocketsauce]

It's been discussed here several times. IIRC, it has to do with the next file being buffered before the current file is done playing. You could probably find some of the old threads if you set the search parameters to go back a year or so. And, just out of curiosity, how does it make MC less enjoyable/more difficult for you to use?

Rob

[lalittle]

You could probably find some of the old threads if you set the search parameters to go back a year or so. And, just out of curiosity, how does it make MC less enjoyable/more difficult for you to use?

That's actually the very thing was discussed in those old threads.  In my case, I was listenning for a specific anomaly in the last few seconds of a song.  Having the counter switch to the new song prematurely made this difficult to do, as well as making it difficult to see a point in time where the issue took place.  I had to use another app to do this.

Someone could just as well ask "why do you need a time counter at all?"  It's just something that some people find useful, and if a time counter can be useful in the middle of a song, it can also be useful in the last several seconds.  With MC, the counter is rendered useless during the last portion of any given track.  I would very much like the counter to count ALL the way to the end of a song.

Larry

[JustinChase]

And, just out of curiosity, how does it make MC less enjoyable/more difficult for you to use?

One, I use the Playing Now plugin, and I use it to rate songs, but I can only rate after listening.  When MC changes the currently playing info 5 seconds before the song actually ends, I often end up rating the wrong song, because it changes as I co to rate it.  Then I have to open to full screen, navigate to playing now, rate the correct song, open the taggin dialog, and change the incorrectly tagged song back to ?.  Way too much time for so little reward.

Two, when looking at visualizations that show the track name at the beginning of the song, it actually shows the name of the coming song at the end of the current song because of this.  It's not a big deal, but it is quite irritating.

Three, it just seems wrong to me.  And when things seem wrong, it frustrates me.  It's just part of my bizarre personallity.  Therefore, it's soft of a constant reminder that I would rather not see.

Again, it's not a showstopper, but I would rather it not be that way.  It does not seem like it should be that hard to fix, maybe just add a 5 second delay before showing the info if it actually needs to be queed up 5 seconds early.

[Sauzee]

Me too.

I'd prefer it if MC didn't change the playing now listing early, for the reasons given above.

[Matt]

You can reghack to change the buffer time here, which will help / eliminate this:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Jukebox\Properties
PlaybackSecondaryBufferDurationMinimum

A fast computer can probably use 1000 (1 second) instead of 6000.  Streams or slow content may not work as well though, so use it at your own risk.

[JustinChase]

Thanks Matt.

I'm just curious though.  What will not work for streams?  They won't play at all, or I'll hear some lag?  Will the crossfade still work?

Is it hard to just make the info show whne the song actually starts?  The timer seems to work fine, i.e. it starts at 0:01 when the new song starts, why not just have the info show up at the same time?

Anyway, I'll try the reghack and see how that works.

[JustinChase]

My registry shows 2 entries

PlaybackSecondaryBufferDurationMinimum
PlaybackSecondaryBufferDurationMinimum (1000)

I'll change both?

[Matt]

The reason this happens is because we need to start another track before you actually hear the end to do buffering and cross-fading.

Creating a layer that delays the display is more complicated than it might seem for several reasons I won't bore you with.  However, this means this won't change for a while.

The (1000) is the CD Burning settings (CD burning is essentially another playback zone), so you probably shouldn't change it.

Thanks.

[JustinChase]

Thanks Matt, unfortunately, it didn't work.  It still changes with 6 seconds to go on the current track.

Maybe someday you'll have a magical brain flash and a 2-second fix will spring to mind and you guys can get this changed.

I'll live with it the way it is until then.

I really appreciate your efforts on this, thanks.

[Mysticeti]

I find the premature change a bit annoying myself.

Perhaps it's the cognitive dissonance that results from hearing one song but seeing info about different song?

[Sauzee]

Perhaps it's the cognitive dissonance

Now........Where did I put my dictionary?  

[Matt]

Thanks Matt, unfortunately, it didn't work.  It still changes with 6 seconds to go on the current track.

Maybe someday you'll have a magical brain flash and a 2-second fix will spring to mind and you guys can get this changed.

I'll live with it the way it is until then.

I really appreciate your efforts on this, thanks.

Put it on gapless or standard.  Also, make sure MC isn't running when you edit the registry.

[JustinChase]

Put it on gapless or standard.  Also, make sure MC isn't running when you edit the registry.

I edited the reg w/MC closed, and restarted the whole machine already.

It's not that big of a deal to me.  I'd rather listen in smooth crossfade than have the name right, so I'll just deal with it.

Thanks again for your help on this.

{crosses fingers for Matt to have a stroke of genius}

[Mysticeti]

Perhaps it's the cognitive dissonance

Now........Where did I put my dictionary?  

Yeah.  I guess that was a bit much, eh?  But I wanted to avoid just writing a "me too!" type posting.

[ZenDav]

  Yes, me too.  I couldn't understand how no one else had a problem with the early hop to the next song.  This is especially annoying if your trying to replay something near the end of of track and even worse if its a short track.  Just try dragging the marker yourself and try to hit just the last 3 seconds or so.  Gees, this is THE biggest interface problem I have with this wonderful program.

  And no I don't have any cross fadeing.  I do have the default buffering as I haven't edited the registry (bad workaround).  I would actually like a LOT bigger cache so it wouldn't skip at times as it sometime does if I'm doing other work.  Some people might like to pre-see the next song title coming up as the current one nears the end but not by making the music progress bar pre jump to the next song.  It's just wrong.  The music progress bar does move from the start to the end, so at what point is it actually tracking correctly??  In the age of multi megabyte pcs, why wouldn't a bigger buffer be possible??

  Something that might be better than the current cross fadeing would be the option to specify a overlap -or- gap after removing the starting and ending silences.  Try listening to an audio book with no gaps between sentences every three minuites or so.

  This probably seems like the recent flaky complants regarding the randomness of your sorting.    Anyway, this would be a good item for the top of your 10.1 wish list.

-zendav

[xen-uno]

> I would actually like a LOT bigger cache so it wouldn't skip at times as it sometime does if I'm doing other work.

MC>Tools>Options>Playback>Output>your output mode>Settings (button)>adjust buffer slider

[Matt]

Thanks Xen.  For skipping and hiccups, that's the buffer to configure.

Also, remember if you have cross-fade on, it is playing the next song at the same time as the previous ending.  In that case, some amount of what you're seeing would be expected.

[JustinChase]

thanks xen, I never knew that was there, but I'm glad it is.  I have always had a little hiccup when my screensaver turns off, hopefully this will help.

Matt, thanks again for the help, and if this could get on the to be addressed list, I'm sure many people would appreciate it, even if they don't post about it here.

Have a great spring day!