Troubleshooting Network and Slow Storage

further information: Troubleshooting Guide

Media Center generally doesn't care where the media files themselves live on disk, if the storage where they're stored is unreliable in some way, it can certainly cause trouble. If you are having issues and your media files, or your Library, are on a slow, network, or external disk this will help you to mitigate these issues.

Library Location on Disk

One area where Media Center does require as much performance as is possible is on the disk where its Library is stored. It is best to store this on the highest performing disk that is possible in your computer, especially if your computer has an SSD. Media Center's Library is not excessively large (the author's current library is 103MB with 119K files, for example), so size is not typically a serious constraint. Using a Library stored on a slow disk will degrade performance.

Please Note: Whenever MC refers to "the Library" it does not mean the media files themselves. Instead, the Library refers to the database MC uses as its back-end.

By default, MC stores the library in your user profile's AppData directory, here:

• Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 19\Library
• OSX: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/J River/Media Center 19/Library

If you aren't sure where your current Library is stored, you can check its location using the Library Manager under Playing Now in the Tree.

Storing the Library on a network volume, slow "media drive", or external disk is not recommended. Whenever possible, it is better to store the Library on a fast, internal disk (or high-performance RAID volume), and access the media itself stored elsewhere (on a NAS, big external disk, etc). If needed, use the built-in Library Server functionality to share your Library with other machines. This system uses a local cache of the connected server's Library, which allows it to still have fast access, and it periodically syncs any changes with the server.

If you are using a network user profile, or have your entire Windows user profile stored on a slow disk for other reasons, you don't have to use the built-in default Library. You can clone your existing Library over to a new one and store it wherever on disk you'd like. Make a folder to store your Library's data on your fastest disk, and use the Library Manager to clone your existing Library over to the new location. After you've done this and loaded the new Library, you can delete the old one from the Library Manager if you don't need it.

Media Files On a Slow or Network Disk

While we said that Media Center doesn't care where the media files themselves live on disk, if the storage where they're stored is unreliable in some way, it can certainly cause trouble. If you are having issues and the media files are on a slow, network, or external disk:

Playback Issues

1. Copy a few of the misbehaving media files over to a fast, internal disk (such as your system drive).
2. Try to reproduce the issue.
3. If the issue vanishes, then you know the source of the issue is probably something to do with the place where the files are stored, and can investigate solutions to those issues.

General Performance, Hangs, or Lag When Opening Views

One other issue you can encounter relates to a particular option in MC. If many of your media files are stored on a slow external or network disk which often "disconnects" (or goes to sleep), performance in MC can suffer when viewing large lists of files. If you have your files on a slow disk like this, and you find that MC hangs for a long while when first launching, or when first opening a particular view in the tree, then try:

Options > Tree & View > Advanced > Display missing file image in lists: Disable

This option enables or disables the little red Xs that show up overtop of the icons or thumbnails for files that are missing from disk. This is a nice option to have enabled (because it immediately alerts you to files missing from disk), but it can be very slow if the files are on a "bad" disk.

Note: If you need to disable this option to get adequate performance, but you'd still prefer to use it, you can sometimes mitigate the performance impact by specially crafting the Media Views you use in Media Center. If you are able to exclude large quantities of files (which are often "missing" or which you rarely need) from the views you typically use, and hide the "troublesome" files away in a specific use view elsewhere, then you may be able to improve usability while keeping this option enabled. The performance impact of this option depends largely on how many files are visible at once within a view that are on a slow disk. If you think you might be able to do this, and disabling the option above fixes your problem, feel free to ask for help on Interact and explain your disk setup.

Thumbnails

Showing the Reporter open in the tree while building thumbnails in the background.

Media Center uses pre-generated thumbnails to optimize the display of artwork throughout the application. However, for files that have never been "viewed" before within Media Center (their Thumbnails shown in a view) they must be generated on-the-fly before they can be shown. This requires a read operation (and for video files a quick render of the source) for every single file that is visible on screen, and can lead to severe performance bottlenecks if a large proportion of your Library's media files are located on a slow disk. This can cause stuttering or lagging when scrolling through views in both Standard and Theater Views, and sometimes performance problems during playback (if thumbnails are still rendering in the background when playback starts).

It will greatly speed navigation of artwork-heavy views if you pre-generate these thumbnails while your computer is otherwise idle. You can tell Media Center to build all missing thumbnails via: Options > Tree & View > Thumbnails > Build missing thumbnails

This operation runs in the background (showing progress in the Action Window) and can take some time for large Libraries or very slow disks. It is often best to start it off and go to bed!

If you notice that views are difficult to work with at first, and draw the thumbnails slowly as you scroll, but that performance improves once you stay in the area where the artwork generation has all been completed, you will probably benefit greatly from having a high-proportion of your thumbnails pre-drawn. MC19's Reporter function lists the proportion of thumbnails that have been pre-built: In the Tree, open Services & Plugins > Reporter to check it.