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[JimH]

We're about to pull the trigger and release Media Center.  I'd like to hear your opinions.

What this means is that we will give it to CNET / download.com to review and to add to their pages.  Then we'll make a lot of noise about MC.

I wish we could take longer to polish and refine, but we will probably go on working on it and issue a 9.1 maintenance release in a month or so.  Maybe we'll add a feature or two.  We'll make releases here on Interact a little less frequently.

I have to say that I am EXTREMELY PROUD of the JRiver team and the work we have produced.  They gave it everything they had for months on end.  It isn't easy.  AND we've had a lot of fun!

Congratulations, Nikolay, (going down the hall now) Matt, John G, John T, Bob, Steve, Jim N, and Yaobing.  Thanks to Peter who helped steer, and to PixStudio who've provided a new face for MC.

We're getting very significant interest now from some important potential partners.  They recognize that we are on the cutting edge with this product.

So, unless you tell us otherwise, we'll release.  It may be tonight's build.  It may be Friday's or Tuesdays, but this show is going on the road.

Lastly, thank you.  You've sometimes been tough on us, but we often deserved it.  And in spite of that, we feel like we have a lot of friends out there.  You have been an immense help in deciding where to go, what to do, how to do it.  We owe you big time!

[ChicoSelfs]

Hi Jim, to me it's ready, i still have a few minor problems, not much, MC don't crash now so i think it's ready to the big audience out there, i speak in my name and i think every body else we are very proud with you guys too. Sorry if we are a pain in the ass ( don't know if it wrights like that ) sometimes but we want only the best from the best programmers of a multimedia Jukebox. You.

[NoCodeUK]

I think it is almost ready to ship.  Just don't use tonights build as it has an error in HS (see the bug thread )

Seriuously thouigh I have really enjoyed working with you guys on this.  It has been a fantastic journey with lots of ups and downs but in the end when you look at the fantastic product in front of us all it was all worth it.  Thanks to all the guys for producing a great bit of software!!

Adam

[KeystoneCop]

I Think things are going well,  I found a BIG (to me) Bug when filling properties from file name .  If you want my opion.  I would say when your team says there are no show stoppers I would go after a 5 day freeze.  (if you keep making so many changes you risk the chance of intoducing errors).

Or release a version and still have test versions.

John Gateley said he would check on track lookups to see it duplicate finger prints are a problem. I have not got an answer to that (I think the track lookup would be a good selling point)


UPDATE:: The BUG was a Problem Between the keyboard and the Chair.  This problem has been around for a long time.

[KingSparta]

Been Busy Lately at work but i still Use MC9 Every Day

Seems Ok To Me.

I only Had One Major Problem And MC9 Would Crash Due To  Slide Show I Have Learned To Avoid Slide Show.

I still remember the night I first heard this song when dancing at the Disco Club. I Was wearing bell bottoms and a Tie like JimH had in that picture of him when he was selling wood stoves.

The Club Was Called The "General Store" In Clarksville, Tenn

'Take Your Time (Do It Right)' Charted At 03 In 1980

Listening to: 'Take Your Time (Do It Right)' from 'Billboard Top Hits - 1980' by 'S.O.S. Band' on Media Center 9.0

(I Am Having Some FlashBacks Right Now)

[Jaguu]

Yes, it is ready to go! Congratulations to the whole J River Team! I am learning more and more the huge difference of developers listening to users and those that do not!

It's really alienating when some other companies just return canned emails when you provide feedback. No wonder their products get stagnant over time!

1) Next time:  don't stay behind with the documentation, work in parallel. I know programmers don't like documentation, but the bigger a product/project  the more essential documentation becomes! I had to learn it myself the hard way!

2) Hope their will be a 9.1 version as some areas need more refinement, but this is mostly for advanced users, new users will hardly notice.

3) And also next time: Multilingual. It took Microsoft many years to learn that there are other languages than English in the world, hope J River will realize that too one day!

So, ready to take off!

[nila]

It's come on Great.
You guys done a great job. Was going to say it's not due to the time it was taking to deal with the burning inside MC but that's fixed in tonights build so good job.

I have a few big concepts already in my head for v10 that would be GREAT so tell us when your open to suggestions/ideas etc.

Some great concepts and ideas put into v9 and I love it. It's a huge upgrade over v8.

Only bug you really HAVE to get fixed before release is the search text when it's highlighted - it's still totally illedgible and it just totally doesn't do the product any justice.

[Lynn]

Hi Jim,

Great job, and the team should be proud of their efforts!  There is no other product that comes close to MC.

Deciding when to ship is a tough decision.  There will always be more bugs to fix, and not enough time to fix them (not to mention fine tuning of features).

I would recommend looking at the last week's bug fixes, and assume that similar problems remain to be discovered.  If you are comfortable with releasing that level of problems to the world (and heartless reviewers), then MC is ready to go.

My take is that MC has stabilized in the last month, and the featureset is mature. There are a few major bugs lurking that should be addressed. For instance, I left MC 1.48 running all night to wake up to a locked system, and I have also seen some stuttering in playback of MP3 files using ASIO.   However, these could be addressed in a point release.

I use MC to play music using ASIO (no video, burning, etc), and based upon the features I use, I would say go for it!

Best regards, congratulations, and good luck!
Lynn

[Omni]

To quote myself from work:  "Ship it!"

[Doof]

I think it's very very close, but not quite yet.

But only because of the runtime error crash I just posted about in the bug thread.

And the library selection on failure is pretty big, too.

[aussie1]

I'm happy.  Great job!

[zevele10]

To me ,the Audio Analysis - Memory Leak looks like a real problem.
But ,in another hand ,i understand that only some of us have this problem ,so cannot see it as a stop over

I do think that you have to set the MC icone in the toolbars to be the same than the one on the desktop.
Not for my pleasure ,but because the icone in the toolbars look like a beta one , not a finished product.

You know that you can spend X weeks and X builts to polish MC ,or months ,or years....

So ,one day ,you have to take the decision ,and i think now is the right time.

Anyway ,GOOD LUCK ,MAZAL TOV or like french say : MERDE.

[cct1]

I got MC9 initially to use with my ipod--in fact, if I had not found MC9,  I doubt I would have gotten an ipod.  It  is absolutely fantastic as far as I'm concerned, and from an "Ipod" standpoint, I think you're good to go.  Incidentally, because of MC9, I bought an mp3 deck for my car, and I REALLY think you all ought to reimburse me, say, 10% of the cost, since I wouldn't have gotten it if it weren't for MC9 ...

Seriously though, I have two recommendations on release, take them for what they're worth:

1.  Advertise on the "Ipodlounge" website.  I know I brought this up before, but I think MC9 is sooooo much better than Xplay for the price, and you'd generate a ton of interest.  

2.  Allow a "new" 30 day trial to everyone  (perhaps this has already been addressed) once MC9 is out of beta--wipe the slate clean, start from scratch.  There are a number of ipod owners that trialed MC9 early in it's development, weren't happy, and moved on.  Now, since MC9 is close to release, and the bugs are worked out, they've been watching us rave about it over at the lounge, they want to try the completed product.  IMHO, if you do this, you'll gain a worthwhile number of paying customers...


I hope there is a way you can get "in" with Apple--MC9 is so much better than mmjb w/r to the ipod...

Thanks for a great product!!!

[Rands]

You have my vote of confidence.  I've been solely using MC9 for quite a long time now and the software seems to be incredibly stable considering the amount of stuff it is expected to do.  I have quite a few friends who are interested in it but not until it comes out of beta.

[DWAnderson]

First let me say that I respect the ambitious nature of your undertaking. If your program didn't do many neat things that no one else's does then I wouldn't be taking the time to help you make sure that it works for me.

That being said, the prevalence of fatal errors I experience when using what should be pretty basic functionality (for a program that deals with all types of digital media) would indicate to me that the product is not as close to being final as it should be. For almost 20 examples, see my post under the thread for version 152.

The parts of Media Center that I have used that deal with audio files and picture files seem fairly solid. That is emphatically not the case with the portions that deal with video files and even streaming audio.

I recognize from my experience beta testing Snapstream that dealing with digital video is not easy, but my take is that by attempting to doing so, but not thoroughly testing the fuctionality in those sections the stability of the product is compromised.

I don't mean to be overly harsh, but are the reviewers you would send this to likely to be less harsh? Will they believe that it is ok that the portions of the software dealing with video and streaming audio aren't that stable because, well these are just bonus features that other programs don't have at all? I think it is more likely that they'll call bugs, bugs and say that you have over promised and under delivered. I'd rather see the product get a good review and pick up more adherents so as to make it stronger in the long run, than released in its current state.

[Cmagic]

Hello,

Yes MC9 is ready for release I think.
Although I regret that custom fields can't be visualized in either vis studio or track info like it was the case for MJ8, that way I lost the composer display under MC9 !
Anyway, I understand that you should release MC9 and I'm confident this will be addressed in subsequent releases.

So for the time being, break a leg, bonne chance, bon vent, good luck to/à MC9.

all the best,

Christian

[wickesy]

Hi Jim,

I'm still having the odd problem with lockups after pausing audio but I would say go for it.

Thank you and the rest of your team for one of the best products I have ever used.

[d_pert]

Hi, the media-player buttons on my Logitech Cordless Keyboard are still not entirely 'captured' by Media Center - this standing since the beginning of MC builds that you've made available.

The track forward and back buttons work fine. However, the Play/Pause button is still routed only to Windowz Media Player regarless of whether MC has the focus. The Stop button only affects MC if it has the focus. I'm running Windows XP pro, super-stable, no crazy software, all latest drivers from everyone, etc.

This has been a 100% consistent problem since I first heard about MC after MJ. Possible to fix before release?

I know that if I found a basic player-only program where the buttons did work I would probably switch to it, and keep MC for all other functions (i.e. tagging etc.). Windowz Media Player is 'out' because its library navigaion features are TERRIBLE.

What percentage of media player users have media buttons on thier keyboards? 25-40% of all keyboards in use now?

Despite this keyboard-related problem, MC is still the best, most sophisticated, and all around fun media player program EVER, and I congratulate and THANK you guys for all the work.

P.S. - I had exactly the same problems many builds ago with the MS Natural Keyboard Pro media keys so this may apply to all media keyboards? Yikes!

Good luck and thanks again.

[Sergio]

I think it's ready to ship too.

I've been more of  alurker recently, but I've been trying every two builds or so. The only problem I have is a system slowdown for a second or so whenever MC finishes a playlist, but that is hardly a show stopper.

Great work guys, you have made a really excellent product in record time. I hope to be like your coders one day  

[ozgurg]

Hi everybody,

MC 9 emerged as a real "Media Center" and developed very quickly.

I assume, Before "pulling the trigger" a new help file will be introduced, and the annoying audio analysing problem will be solved.

There will always be problems and bugs, and some of them will be caused by MC, so the "check for updates..." item should point to the right location.

But, I have to tell, that MC is much more "ready for ship" than many softwares on the market.

[MarkCoutinho]

Go for it, but....

1) 'my' crash (mentioned in http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=beta;action=display;num=1049806905), which is experience by someone else too, should be reproduced and fixed. (Remember: I have this on two different machines with different Windowses)
2) (don't know if this is done yet): make it harder for people to crack the program. There are lots of version 8-cracks on the web. You guys earn better for such a great program
3) send your Pressrelease also to pc-mags in Holland: Robbin.Ooijevaar@computertotaal.nl and nieuws@fnl.nl at least.

Good luck!

[DocLotus]

Everyone else has pretty well said all the neat things about MC9 so all I can say is...

Go for the GOLD!!

[PhDSM]

I think it is almost ready to ship.
To my point of view everything is fine beside the access to some fields in Trakinfo and visualizaton studio. In both cases you have features that were working in MJ 8 and do not work anymore on MC 9.0.
However I don't think they are difficult to fix.
I have also notice minor bug in the visualisation studio itself.
For your information let me recap the TrackInfo and visualisation studio main issues:

In trackInfo, the following keys :
>TRACKINFO_INSERT_CUSTOM1
>TRACKINFO_INSERT_CUSTOM2
>TRACKINFO_INSERT_CUSTOM3
>CUSTOMNAME1
>CUSTOMNAME2
>CUSTOMNAME3
are not working.
And to be consistent it would be great that you enable enable acces to composer field via TRACKINFO_INSERT_COMPOSER

In Visualization Studio the text field:
>CUSTOM_1
>CUSTOM_3
>CUSTOM_3
are not working.
And to be consistent it would be great that you enable acces to composer field via  >COMPOSER

Also in Visualization Studio. when I edit the text,  VS never saves the changes, I have to do it directly in the
.mjv file

Rgds

PhDSM

[RhinoBanga]

In my opinion I wouldn't consider MC an "all-in-one" product until the CD burning issues are resolved.

It's a basic feature which people will want to use a lot; but for myself, and others, it's just plain unusable/unlogical, for example:

  1)  The delays when clicking on the CD burner
  2)  Lack of feedback as to how much is left/used when you're adding tracks


Unfortunately I can't test the "wiping out the queue after a burn" issue as when I tried to burn a single track onto a cdrw MC hung on me (I tried several times and it always happened ... mc 9.0.152).   The CDRW is fine as I used Nero to burn the same track just fine.


Don't get me wrong, I think MC is almost ready ... but not quite.

[Joe Karnes]

Thank you Jim and also a big thank you to all the staff at J River for a wonderful product.

I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer so I have not worked with any aspect of MC except music, which I have been using with MJB and MC for several years.

I just installed MC 9.0.153 and the help menu still pertains to MJ 8.  I do hope that a new help menu specific to the final release of MC will be included with the final release.  For me addressing as many questions before they are asked is a much simpler process.

Thanks again to all the J River staff and to all the beta testers.  Joe Karnes

[xen-uno]

Still can't rip or play CD's out of Yam F1 USB external on MC 9.0.153. I have another drive that plays / rips fine, so it's not stopping my show. Still unable to nail down a default sorting that truly does "stick" (very, very annoying). Overall though, pretty bug free.

Burning /  Drive Z: YAMAHA   CRW-F1E            Addr: 1:0:0  Speed:4  MaxSpeed:44  Use MJ Engine:Yes
 Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
 Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

10^-27

[daven]

Its been over a month since I updated media center, I was waiting for the kinks to be worked out before I committed.  Many weeks (or months, really) ago I had raised questions about the integration of audio, video and images-- specifically, it seemed strange that there were "album" and "track#" tags and view columns for the video and images.  i was told that these issues would be worked out as the software was developed.    but this software still seems like a great audio library manager and player with other multimedia formats tacked on.  at the very least, there should be seperate preferences for the different formats, such as which fields you want to be displayed.

well just my 2 cents.  otherwise, the only other thing keeping me from laying out my money is shn support (i'm an addicted member of etree.org)

[loraan]

I have the same issue--just noticed it today with the latest build. In previous builds, MC had to have focus for the media buttons to work, but they all worked. Now, I just noticed that stop and pause/play don't appear to work. Haven't tested more thoroughly  because I've been busy, but it's nice to hear I'm not alone.

Hi, the media-player buttons on my Logitech Cordless Keyboard are still not entirely 'captured' by Media Center - this standing since the beginning of MC builds that you've made available.

[whoeveryouare]

A stupid question perhaps, but will it ever be possible to configure the MC9 toolbar to show text for each toolbar button, rather then just "selective text on right"?

I have a huge monitor, and had a huge toolbar in MJ8 that I relied on heavily.  I groaned when I noticed that the toolbar usability took a nosedive in MC9.

[whoeveryouare]

The help file is a mess.  Many things missing.  No, I'm not going to list them. (Update: OK, the docs aren't done yet.  Understood.)

Plugins?  I don't have a plugins item in my tree view at all.  I have installed the "sleep timer" plugin, but it doesn't show up anywhere--including the plugin manager.

Update: The problem seems to lie with the plugin itself.  I manually downloaded int_sleeptimer.zip, extracted the DLL and placed it in the MC9 plugins directory, then used the plugin manager to "add plugin".  It gave an "Unsupported plugin type" error.  The confounding thing is that the page that lists Sleep Timer 1.0.6 indicates that it is compatible with MC9.

Media Server freezes on me whenever I open options, and try to change the manual port selection.  This is 100% reproducible on my system.  No, I am not going to start a new thread elsewhere.

The toolbar drives me nuts.  I have about 30 16x16 icons, and only two of them have text.  It totally defeats the purpose of having a toolbar.

9.0.154 on WinXP.

[AndyCircuit]

Hi
First let me say that MC was the first software I paid for with pleasure. Can anybody say something better about the guy's made this prog ?

Ready or not ?
I've demonstrated MC to a few friends ("normal" mediaplayer users and your future customers ? ) and out of their sight the main advantages are
1. the database (sorting, finding. smartlists etc)
2. ripping / burning functions
3. coverarts
4. internet functions like artist info

At least this should be bug free as possible in the final release you will launch with big noise because they where astonished to not very amused about my problems i.e.
1.Mulimediakeys Logitech Cordless doesn't work correct
  (no prob in WMP etc) An never ending story ?  
2.Scroll the left tree with mouseweel becomes sticky after a while.I can fix it with closing the Artist/Album tree and reopen it, but if you are a first time user ....?
Not a good first impression.
3.Web Media : So many stations not to receive
4.Some other probs I will post in the bug thread soon

All this is not a problem for me ( I know you will take care about by occasion) but may chase away many new customers. (and you really deserve many of them).This functions will be used first, the fancy ones later.

Maybe you should add (or make MC open for other ones ) some new exciting visualizations. I know this is an unimportant make up thing but ask a woman about the power of attractiveness  

This is just my opinion, take it this way please.I hope this view from the "lower level" of my friends can help you to become #1, you are already for me.

Andy

[Xstatic]

Stabilitywise you are there.

In terms of new customers and reviews, I think you need to rework help menus, not just to rename from MJ to MC but to make the help function much more intuitive and indepth.

I foresee critism about users being overwhelmed by all the different functionalities, without proper help for the NEW user.

[JimH]

Help is being re-written and we won't ship until it's done.

[Bartabedian]

Let's view a big picture: Most people here (meaning beta users), if not all, are already paying customers. Many here are "power" users, utilizing features many, many other users will never see or even need. And who here is currently working in some software that is completely bug free? Right.

Anyway, I use MC everyday, all day and again the next day, and so on and so on...and it's really very stable. In a world of random motherboards\cpus\videocards\audiocards\OS's\CDR-RW's\USERS\  MC does it's job nicely, efficiently, powerfully. Find me a true competitor. MC9 is circa 1988 Mike Tyson.

Let R'rrrrrip.

WP

[zevele10]

daven

I do not understand why ,you and many others keep your files in SHN.
With a nice and free program ,you can convert them to WAV  VERY FAST.
From there go to APE if you want to keep lossless or any format you like.
SHN is not a musical format and not very good sounding.
It is more like a Zip for music.

AND YES MC needs to support SHN.
People using this format are powerfull users
And you have to open another program to convert it or listen to it..NO GOOD !

[RobOK]

I have been lurking for a long time and using many Beta versions.  I love it.

I would recommend some more testing on Windows ME.  I hate that I have this OS at home, but that is what i have.  The most prominent bug is the crashing on Media Server startup.  Workaround is to hit Debug and close any associated message boxes and everything still streams.

iPod support is great!

Tivo support is great!  I never even loaded their software.

Playlists are great, I am sure I have only scratched the surface.

Cover art and song look up is getting better and better.

Agree with other  comments that audio is strongest, am not as happy with slide show/image features.  It somehow seems awkward to me.  One awesome feature would be to pre-load the next picure like ACDsee does.  Great performance enhancement.

I have done little with video or advanced features.

All in all, I think you should ship but be prepared for a deluge of comments and minor bug reports.

This is an awesome product and makes me smile!  

Cheers,
Rob.

[KeystoneCop]

GO FOR IT

Even I cannot make it break now.

GREAT JOB to all you Guys and Gals..  This is great stuff,

I wil add .. BOUGHT IT and I don't buy much...

Keep up the GREAT WORK TEAM, and don't forget to advertise you HELP your USERS VIA YABB.  Thanks to ALL OF YOU for letting me be a part of this. I have had Fun and I hope I did not upset anyone.  GREAT SOFTWARE..  KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK

[daven]

zevele-
in my experience shn has close audio compression to both ape and flac.  with the quantity of music i download (legally, btw) it would just be a pain to convert it all to wav and then to APE.  So until media center supports this format i am using winamp.  i hope the programmers of media center visit etree.org and realize the huge user base they are giving up by not supporting shn (somewhere around 15,000 at last count).

[gkerber]

I just downloaded v9 and installed over my v8.  I've avoided going to v9 before, simply because I didn't have time to deal with a beta project right now.

v9 looks pretty similar and improved, some losses in functionality, which could be my fault for not trying earlier and making suggestions.

But to the point, the HELP is still for v8, it really shouldn't be released that way.  And v9 help would sure help me to understand some of the new feature.

And I really really do want to be able to set a default sort order and not have it get messed up with a single click in the current view.

[starrdog]

I have been a quiet Beta tester of MC9 for a while now.  And for background sake I am a computer support technician with plenty of software experience.  I have worked for a couple of hardware developers and am now a network tech for a med. sized business.  My wife works for a software company, so I understand the process involved here and I have the requisite knowledge to handle a not quite user friendly product such as ver. 9. (No offense, but it is pretty daunting for a regular user).

I have been frustrated with a few things, but overall it is pretty solid.  Thanks for the great product, which I happily paid for and would pay to upgrade.  

I absolutely LOVED MJ8 and (considering the problems I list below) wish I could go back (the converted DB won't let me now... )

But here is my list of stuff that ain't workin' or is missing:

1) In AutoPlaylists, you can no longer delete a single file from the playlist without deleting it from the library.  I use this feature all the time and it seemed to disappear somewhere in the middle of the MC9 development, about the same time the new Delete function was added.  I like the new delete, but please give us back the ability to remove one file from an Auto Playlist!

2) Recording from mic/line in is all screwed up on my version.  I have unistalled and reinstalled and I can't get this to work right -
 a) The auto level function takes 2-3 minutes now
 b) Unless I use .wav encoding, I just get recordings of static
 c) The "listening" is off.  Waiting for sound and track splitting only work properly if I boost the input level to the point that there is intolerable distortion on the recordings.  Please don't tell me to try the fixes mentioned on the website, I have tried them all.  I have a lot of experience using recording in Ver. 8 and earlier versions of 9, so I am not a boneheaded newbie.  
 d) A holdover problem from 8 is that you cannot manually assign track numbers to tracks.  For instance if I record 2 songs and then exit the recorder, I want to go back and record the rest of the album.  I have to record the other songs with the incorrect track numbers, and then manually change them in the player mode.

3) If I try to send a second file to the external media editor, it opens about 20 media editor processes (which I have to close with task manager) and locks up media editor.  This used to work - and I (used to) use it extensively.

4) If you select multiple tracks using the Ctrl key, and then change the album attribute in the tag, they disappear from the library.  Importing function finds them, but fails to list them.  I have to use win explorer to rename them and move them to a new folder to import them again.  I have have this problem repeatedly and I have tried many things to fix it myself, but I think it is a bone fide bug.

5) Is it possible to have the tag boxes auto populate as you type?  Right now you need to hit alt+down aroow to make the list pop up and then start typing, and then hit enter when you have typed enough letters to get to your entry.  AND this function does not seem to be available at all for the Artist tag.

6)  I have never had much luck getting the replay gain to equalize the volume during playback.  I analyze the files, turn on the DSP function and still get some songs blaring at me.  Although not as bad as without it.  But to me this is a minor problem.

7) Please upgrade the website to include more support help without having to trawl through the message boards.  This is really just a basic thing that most software makers do for their paying customers.  I relaize it requires a lot of time and upkeep, but it will make the product more valuable and desireable.  Overall, I would give the website a C+ for design and content.

 One of the fixes I tried to get my CD player to create CDs that could be played in my boombox (a problem on the player end it turned out) was to install the ASPI layer you guys reccomend.  This completely screwed up my cd-r and I had to roll back XP, then reinstall my cd-r software and reinstall ver. 9 to get it working again. I followed all of the instructions to the letter and read all of the documentation, so I am confident I installed what was reccomended, but it was a mistake.

Again, thanks for the hard work.  I was ecstatic when I found MJ and I would love MC to work as well.  I have not found another program nearly as adept at helping me encode my vinyl, and that is the BIG reason I like MC.  Please get this working the way it was in good ol' ver. 8 please.  Or else let us convert the database back to ver. 8.

Here's my sys info for reference:

Media Center Registered 9.0.149 -- C:\Program Files\Media Jukebox\9\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1199 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 261 MB, Free - 60 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 D:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read 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 D: BTC      BCE4012IM          Addr: 1:1:0  Speed:40  MaxSpeed:40  Use MJ Engine:Yes
 Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: No
 Use playback settings: Yes /  Normalization: 90 %

Any help or further improvements are really appreciated!  Thanks again for a great product and keep up the good work!

starrdog

[xen-uno]

> And I really really do want to be able to set a default sort order and not have it get messed up with a single click in the current view.

Exactly

It is EXTREMELY[/i] annoying. In MJ's Media Library, I could change the sorting with a column click, go to Playing Now (or anywhere else in the tree), go back to ML, and the sorting would be reset to the default. You can't do that with MC. You and me must be the only ones that find this a major irritant and shortcoming, cause I haven't seen much bit*hin' about it from others.

10^-27

[whoeveryouare]

> And I really really do want to be able to set a default sort order and not have it get messed up with a single click in the current view.

Exactly
It is EXTREMELY[/i] annoying.

I agree with both of you.  Ideally, there would be an option to enable ML-type sorting or the new MC-type sorting.  But if there was no option giving a choice between the two sort methods, I strongly prefer the old ML-type.  The new behavior is aggravating indeed.

[FrankL]

i agree with these last three posts

I can't see a final release without that fixed

[xen-uno]

Furthermore...

If this default sorting only applied to Media Library and it's sub-folders (which I think is the case in MJ), that would be fine with me since thats where I'm at in MC 99% of the time.

10^-27

[MachineHead]

 I absolutely LOVED MJ8 and (considering the problems I list below) wish I could go back (the converted DB won't let me now

Yes you can. Just uninstall MC and make sure to check the boxes to uninstall Library and registry entries for MC. If it was a newer version of MC, it should have made a back-up of the MJ library before it took over as well.

Install MJ and import your library.

[dragyn]

> And I really really do want to be able to set a default sort order and not have it get messed up with a single click in the current view.

Exactly

It is EXTREMELY[/i] annoying. In MJ's Media Library, I could change the sorting with a column click, go to Playing Now (or anywhere else in the tree), go back to ML, and the sorting would be reset to the default. You can't do that with MC. You and me must be the only ones that find this a major irritant and shortcoming, cause I haven't seen much bit*hin' about it from others.

10^-27

For view schemes, you can use ~sort for a predefined sort order. This is what I did awhile back because of some bugs (now fixed) that were messing up the sort order. When I do what you say, it works fine. The order is back to what I set it at originally.

This does not work for view scheme groups AND view schemes within the group because MC reverses the order when displaying the contents (which it really shouldn't do anyway because it's showing the wrong order for the view scheme).

[xen-uno]

> For view schemes, you can use ~sort for a predefined sort order. This is what I did awhile back because of some bugs (now fixed) that were messing up the sort order. When I do what you say, it works fine. The order is back to what I set it at originally

This is fine and dandy IF you don't enter any search criteria into the search box. But using the ~sort is fragile and easily corruptable if you like to find something (like typing in "gerr" to find "Lisa Gerrard"). This sorting deal and criteria fragility in smartlists and even view schemes are the only problems (I consider them major) I have with an otherwise fine program.

10^-27

[lee269]

To paraphrase someone or other - a work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Though I am pretty familiar with MC, I dont work it hard enough like the serious beta testers to find too many problems. Builds have been stable for me for the last few weeks. Id say its ready. Make sure that the check for updates feature is upfront and easily found and blow the trumpet for Interact so that all those new users you deserve can get here for help. Interact is the best word for what happens on these boards, but for those still finding their way I think Id go so far as to call it support/user community or something else that leaves no room for doubt that help is here.

A year ago I thought I was pretty cool connecting my hifi to my PC. Now I can see MC running the whole darn shooting match once I can afford the hardware. Sure its not perfect, but its a big step forward - so bring it on.

Congratulations to you all.

[UPDATE: Oooh, profanity alert - ** means d*mn - no offence intended ]

[okvaal]

I've got three commantaries:
1) During playback, MC seems to be a bit too sensitive to other things going on on the computer (opening other programs, printing, whatever). AFAIR, this has not been the case with other programs/jukeboxes.
2) After working with files in MC, like tagging or changing properties, working with the same files in Explorer/Windows simply won't work. If I try to rename, move or delete a folder that I have been working with in MC, I'm told the file is being used by another program (also if I do not even have the files in question marked or being left in the 'player' window.

I've got something like 14.300 files in MC, and lots of free space/memory.
Media Center Registered 9.0.155 -- C:\Programfiler\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1532 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 387 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 G:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Drive H:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: No /  Copy volume: 32767
 Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No  

Burning /  Drive H: ASUS     CRW-1610A          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

[brookb]

The Memory Leak for Analyze Audio is still there.  It might not be such a big deal if Media Center simply crashed, but its actually much worse than that.

If you leave MC running a large batch of Analyze Audio tracks, and the memory leak occurs, MC uses up all of the real memory, and then starts 'swapping' onto virtual memory on the hard disk.  

Once swapping onto the hard disk starts, the system slows to a crawl, and any other 'important' tasks running may run too slowly or not at all.

Eventually, the 'optimized' swap file on disk is full, and Windows will 'extend' it, thus using up more disk space than you originally planned.  On top of this, this extended swap space is spread out all over the disk, and is very unoptimized.

If you can get things to shut down without a power cycle, then you're doing good.  If you have to power cycle, then you really don't know what files are going to be corrupted.

Once you get the system back up, you've got a highly fragmented hard disk system, with too much disk space assigned to swap space.  You're got to use your administrative skills to reduce the swap file size, and then de-fragment the hard drive (re-optimize).  Some disk defragmentors do not optimize the swap space, so folks with those defraggers are out of luck.

I run MC on a 24 hour server, which functions as a web server and the master home automation controller in addition to sending music into the house.  When MC 'loses it', my web server and home automation quit working.

The end result is that after an older version of the software screwed my system up royally, I've been waiting for months for this problem to get fixed before I actually analyze my whole library.  I'll run a small batch once in a while to see if the problem is gone, but it never is.

To me, this is a show stopper, as it can truly cause damage to people's files and file systems, as well as 'crash' a whole running system that people may be depending upon for other things.  If I was a non-beta user, and MC did these things to my computer, I'd be very upset.

I'd like to know if the developers have ever been able to reproduce this problem.  Many of us have reported it, but none of the designers have ever commented about it (to my knowledge).  Has anyone figured out what the common factors are that cause the problem?  Is it operating system?  Processor?  Service Pack version?  Please respond if you have any insight on this.

Thanks,

Brook

PS: Since I wrote this, I see that there have been responses from Matt and JimH in a different topic.  I'm glad they're looking at it.  Here's my system info:

Media Center Registered 9.0.155 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows 2000  Workstation 5.0 Service Pack 1 (Build 2195)
Centaur Unknown 803 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 490 MB, Free - 216 MB

Internet Explorer: 5.50.4807.2300 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81 / Shlwapi.dll: 5.50.4807.2300
Shell32.dll: 5.00.3103.1000 / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer

Ripping /   Drive E:   Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: No /  Copy volume: 32767
 Eject after ripping: No /  Play sound after ripping: No  

Burning /  Drive E: YAMAHA   CRW2100E           Addr: 1:0:0  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

Antivirus: Norton
Firewall: Computer A: None:  Computer B: Ontrack System Suite 4.0
Processor: Computer A: AMD Athlon.  Computer B: Via C3
OS's Win2K: Computer A: SP2.  Computer B: SP1
Doing other things on the computer at the same time: Sometimes - doesn't make a difference.