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[RobOK]

I get a lot of slowness in MC 12.  I know everyone says it is much faster, but not my experience.  Are there general rules of what causes slowness (like a 10+ second view refresh or a hang of the UI for a long time.)

A couple of things:

* most of my media is on a USB drive (Maxtor).  I have heard this can be a slow down, but is that really true?  I suspect a lot of you are using USB drives with no slowdowns.

* panel definitions -- are there things that slow down the view creation and update.  i.e. custom fields or calculations?


I have done a lot of scanning of log files, but it really doesn't tell me much.  Is there something specific to look for.

Library:
29,000 Images, mostly JPEG, some NEF (Nikon RAW)
300 Video files
11,0000 audio, almost all MP3, some m4p


Media Center Registered 12.0.110 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2991 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1047 MB, Free - 408 MB




Thanks for any ideas!

[jgreen]

Rob,

I posted about my own experiences in startup times just an hour or so ago.  Out of 20k tracks, have of them are on a USB drive.  It's the panes that are slow to startup and refresh, particularly panes that have expressions.  Try a default view of artist/album and see what happens.

Interestingly, columns don't make much difference.  My main audio view shows 29 columns, including lyrics, and yet startup is instantaneous (as long as I don't have an expression pane).   

[marko]

I have an 11 pane image tagging view scheme that loads like lightening with build 110. It's first pane is expression based, the rest are regular library fields.

Couple of tips that might help:

Did you catch Drosoph's thread the other day? Try turning off the "missing file check"  - tools > opotions > tree & view > advanced > display missing file image in lists (slow on network drives) I think this alone might help you dramatically.

I've found that rather than building the pane in a viewscheme using an expression, use the same expression to create a "calculated" library field instead, then pick that "standard field" for the pane. These latest builds have definately closed that gap, but if there are a couple of expression based panes in there, I still think it's quicker to make them library fields in their own right.

[jgreen]

marko--

I switched my remaining expression-based pane to a field, and the difference is HUGE, for the same expression.  Thank you again, you're always coming up with helpful tips. 

[jgreen]

While this still seems faster, it did slow down somewhat when I made the expression field the top item in my column sorting.

[hit_ny]

I've found that rather than building the pane in a viewscheme using an expression, use the same expression to create a "calculated" library field instead, then pick that "standard field" for the pane. These latest builds have definately closed that gap, but if there are a couple of expression based panes in there, I still think it's quicker to make them library fields in their own right.

I went a step further, and the diff is about 30%.

Create the field from an expression, then copy its contents to another field and display that instead. The effect is like using a cache, course its not always uptodate so  I have a smartlist to use to update (Move/Copy fields) ever so often.  I plan to use this method when they introduce mathematical expressions.

Not too practical if you rely heavily on expression based panes, but for just one pane, common to a few viewschems it can help.

How you compose the expression/smartlist can actually make a diff too, that's something that needs its own thread.

[RobOK]

Thanks for the tips all.

*  I did not have the missing file option checked.

* an additional observation:  The first time I hit the Audio tab it takes 30 seconds, then I switch out and back in and it takes half a second.  Is it building a cache internally?

*  I will look for where I use expressions or not, but have to be over the weekend.


Here is a link to jgreen's post mentioned above:  http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=36975.msg252466#msg252466

[hit_ny]

* an additional observation:  The first time I hit the Audio tab it takes 30 seconds, then I switch out and back in and it takes half a second.  Is it building a cache internally?

Feels like its done in RAM, so it remains there for some time (?), then gets flushed when you need more RAM.

[dcwebman]

This is kind of obvious but I didn't see it mentioned here so thought I'd throw it out. If you're using a USB drive, make sure you're using a USB 2.0 port on your computer. I still have old computers with USB 1.1 and that's going to slow down your drive.

[marko]

This is kind of obvious but I didn't see it mentioned here so thought I'd throw it out. If you're using a USB drive, make sure you're using a USB 2.0 port on your computer. I still have old computers with USB 1.1 and that's going to slow down your drive.

I thought about it, then went "naah, surely not?" XP chucks that "this device can work faster" prompt as well when you stick a usb2 device into a 1.1 port.
Still, you never know...

[RobOK]

I'm sure the drive is 2.0, how do i check whether the port is?  Control Panel?

[Matt]

* an additional observation:  The first time I hit the Audio tab it takes 30 seconds, then I switch out and back in and it takes half a second.  Is it building a cache internally?

This isn't right.

Do you have advanced expression panes or columns?

Have you moved thumbnails to the USB drive?

Could you post a chunk of the log that shows this 30 second load.  It'd help us narrow it down.

Thanks.

[glynor]

Well, you can check in the Device Manager.  But, even knowing that the port is USB2 doesn't tell you how well the implementation of it works on your board.

Here's an article that tells you how to check to see if your computer has a USB2 controller.

But, like I said, that just tells you that you have one, not that its working well.  To check the actual throughput on your USB2 drive, you can use a free application called HDTach.  I just tested my USB2 drive (with the Long Test) and I saw sustained Read rates (the top graph in the results, and the average is listed in the "results" details on the right) of (average) 21.2MB/s.  I have a pretty nice USB2 drive so your's might not be quite that good, but if you see much lower read speeds (ignore the burst speed, since data is cached that just tells you how fast your RAM is) either your board isn't properly supporting full USB2 speeds or your drive isn't.

Just to give you an example of how much slower even a USB2 drive is compared to internal drives, I tested my SATA RAID5 drive... It managed sequential read speeds of (average) 80.2 MB/s.  My "TV recording" drive (a SATA drive on the motherboard's SATA connector) managed 57.8 MB/s.

At USB1 speeds you'd be lucky to hit 1MB/s (which would pretty much fully saturate the 12mbps bus minus overhead).  If you had the drive connected to a USB hub, you'd see even lower speeds.

[KingSparta]

USB drive (Maxtor)

Off the top of my head

Make sure it is pluged into a 2.0 USB port, 1.1 USB ports are slower and on some computers there maybe both 1.1 and 2.0 usb ports and i have found some of them are not marked.

I have Two Firewire 800 Drives (Much faster), And 4 USB drives, I Don't have any problems accessing them.

[glynor]

Off the top of my head

Make sure it is pluged into a 2.0 USB port, 1.1 USB ports are slower and on some computers there maybe both 1.1 and 2.0 usb ports and i have found some of them are not marked.

I have Two Firewire 800 Drives (Much faster), And 4 USB drives, I Don't have any problems accessing them.

Unless the USB2 ports are on an add-on card, generally the motherboard will have either ONLY USB1 ports OR USB2 ports.  It would actually be more expensive for the manufacturer to include certain ports that are only USB1.1 capable on a system that also has USB2 ports (they'd need two controller chips).

I've never seen such a thing.

Assuming all the ports on your computer are on the motherboard directly (and not on a PCI add in card), then you'd have either USB1.1 ports, or USB2 ports, but not some of one and some of another.

[KingSparta]

I've never seen such a thing.

I have one

4 USB 2.0
2 USB 1.1

This computer is like a 2001 vintage, It Is also a Gateway.

They may have done it for compatability issues.

Like I had a mp3 player that would connect to the system on a USB 1.1 but would not work on a USB 2.0 port. later they had a fermware upgrade for the player that allowed it to work on a USB 2.0 port.

This was about when USB 2.0 first started showing up.

I have never really looked to see if they were all on the mother board, i may need to look now.

I did find out on gatways site that "All Gateway desktop computers that have shipped since November 2002 are USB 2.0 compliant."

[glynor]

I have never really looked to see if they were all on the mother board, i may need to look now.

If they are, I'd be pretty surprised, but anything's possible!

That MP3 player must not have been USB1 compliant.  USB2 is fully backwards compliant, which is why they don't have to (and don't) include separate controllers.  It's pretty likely that the MP3 player manufacturer "cheated" somehow when they originally built the device...

[glynor]

* most of my media is on a USB drive (Maxtor).  I have heard this can be a slow down, but is that really true?  I suspect a lot of you are using USB drives with no slowdowns.

I didn't even notice the Maxtor part of the original posting until someone just mentioned it.  Have you seen these?

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;topic=27912.22#msg202264
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=30023.msg208734#msg208734

There's a bunch of reports in the Weird and Wonderful thread about problems with Maxtor USB and Network drives being solved by a firmware update.  Seems to me they had some problems with their USB controller on the drives they shipped.

I hate, hate, hate Maxtor.  Thankfully they're gone now (got bought out by Seagate) so they won't be spreading their craptasticness around anymore.  Seagate's going to continue to use the brand name, but they'll be Seagate drives now (they'll release their low-end models under the Maxtor name).

[RobOK]

Could you post a chunk of the log that shows this 30 second load.  It'd help us narrow it down.

Thanks Matt,

Of course now I cannot recreate it.  I noticed I had some Podcasts downloaded, could this have been it?  I will still try to recreate it, but now everything is moving nicely.

[KingSparta]

Thankfully they're gone now

Not yet, I had a drive issue and had to send it back to them Sep\Oct.

since most of the phone numbers are disconnected now I attempted to talk to Seagate Support, and they gave me another number that was good for maxtor, But She stated (it that time) that they have not fully taken over Maxtor yet. She did not say when they will completely take over Maxtor.

Maxtor Had some good drives and i have owned them thru the years along Seagate drives. I think my first maxtor drive was 250 megs around $600 for it when it first came out. My first 88K 5 1\4 floppy drive was about $650 (Percom disk drive) I think it went down to $450 about a year later. they were built like a tank maybe 20 or 30 pounds. I think i have a picture of one on my website www.centercitybbs.com they went out of business years ago.

[glynor]

Maxtor Had some good drives

The operative word being "had".  They haven't had anything worth buying for quite some time (I'd say since the Quantum buyout deal a while back).

I didn't realize the buyout wasn't complete.  I thought I had read somewhere that it was done...

Oh... Here.  The buyout is complete.  They might not have fully integrated their business units yet though.

[RobOK]

Glynor,  thanks on many fronts for the tips.

Using the link, I conclude I am USB 1 as my controller does not say "Enhanced" anywhere as noted in the article.  Nothing says USB 2.0, so I think I am USB 1.

However, running HD Tach, a neat little tool, my Average Read is 27.9 MB/s, which based on your note is not bad.


All in all, I don't think it is my drives.   It seems to be a gremlin that has now gone away for me, but I can't really say why.

[RobOK]

Recommendation for good external drives then?  (link?)


Thanks,

[KingSparta]

They might not have fully integrated their business units yet though.

I'm sure it was a massive task, support maybe the last to close down.

[KingSparta]

It maybe cheaper to buy a USB 2.0 controller if that is true, they are rather cheep now days.

I guess Maxtor is out for a recommendation.

If you really need a drive checking "Best Buy" Or "Circuit City" online.

Along With Seagate Western Digital Has Good Drives.

USB Enclosed Drives Should Have A Fan Or A Metal Body To Displace Heat Properly. I don't know if you ever held a hard drive when it is running but they get rather hot, And heat shortens the life of the drives.

[glynor]

Well, for pre-built ones, Seagate or Western Digital are about all I'd buy.

I wouldn't buy a pre-built one though.  I have a AMS Venus D3 USB Enclosure case.  They have versions for IDE-->USB, IDE-->USB+IEEE1394 (FireWire), and SATA-->USB+eSATA.  They're available on NewEgg (a great, reliable, cheap online vendor), and they work great and its mind-numbingly simple to assemble the drive into it!

Here's one that'll work with a regular Parallel ATA IDE drive (the regular, "old" style of hard drives):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

And here's the one that'll work with a "new style" SATA drive (either SATA1/150 or SATA2/3.0Gbps):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145660

That way you can buy whatever internal drive you want (again, I like Seagate and Western Digital) and: a) save a little money, and b) upgrade your capacity later if you need to.  They also have the handy benefit of allowing you to temporarily swap in another drive.  I use this all the time with mine.  I have a bunch of internal disks that I use for different purposes.  Some of them I don't need very often (backup and whatnot) and I store them in the closet and only pop them into the case when I need something.  Also, if someone brings me a computer that won't boot or something, I can use the case to grab info off the drive with a working computer.  Lots of useful stuff!

Here are some current Parallel ATA IDE drives:
PATA100 (IDE) Western Digital

PATA100 (IDE) Seagate


Here are some current SATA drives:
SATA1 (150) Western Digital

SATA1 (150) Seagate

SATA2 (3.0) Western Digital

SATA2 (3.0) Seagate

NOTE: The speed of the drives (the SATA 150 vs. 3.0, and really the PATA vs. SATA) makes no difference if you'll only be using it inside the USB enclosure, as my tests mentioned above show.  Any internal drive is going to be fast enough that it will be much faster than the USB port can handle traffic.  The biggest thing is that companies aren't really releasing big PATA drives anymore, so if you want to be able to upgrade to a bigger drive in the future, you'll probably want to go with the SATA case.  For example, Seagate has a 750 GB drive now, but it's only available in SATA.  Western Digital doesn't have a 750 yet, but it and 1TB drives are coming soon, but will likely be SATA only.  For drives in the enclosure only, SATA1 vs 2 makes absolutely no difference.  Just pick whatever one's cheaper (and make sure to check SATA2 drives because sometimes they're cheaper than SATA1 oddly).

EDITED to add internal drives and more info.

[Mr ChriZ]

Unless the USB2 ports are on an add-on card, generally the motherboard will have either ONLY USB1 ports OR USB2 ports.  It would actually be more expensive for the manufacturer to include certain ports that are only USB1.1 capable on a system that also has USB2 ports (they'd need two controller chips).

I've never seen such a thing.

Assuming all the ports on your computer are on the motherboard directly (and not on a PCI add in card), then you'd have either USB1.1 ports, or USB2 ports, but not some of one and some of another.

It was actually quite common just after USB 2 came out.
My boards like something like this, 4 USB 2 ports + 2 sets of header pins, and 4 USB 1.1 Ports.
Mines an ASUS A7V333.  It's a pain in the rear end because
I can never remember which ones are which!
Knowing me I'll label them just before I trash the thing.

The USB 2 ports on mine are quite bad, my USB drive is about 40% quicker
on my brothers computer using HDTach, but the drive is definitley in USB 2 mode
on both of them.

[glynor]

Huh!  Well I stand corrected.  That does sorta make sense.  Back when USB2 first came out the controllers were probably not as common (or cheap) and there was still a big back-log of USB1 controllers out there they needed to use up.

And now all the chipsets have USB2 built right into their southbridges.

I went right from the ASUS A7V133 board (PC133 RAM Athlon/Athlon XP) to a couple of ASUS A7N8X's (nForce 2 DDR400 Athlon XP), so I never experienced that myself!