Troubleshooting Background Tools

Media Center handles a few activities in the background. These are typically tuned to have a minimal performance during use, but in some cases (particularly with older hardware), the background processes can have a noticeable impact on foreground behavior in MC. Things to check are:

Applies To:

• Hanging
• General performance sluggishness

You can check to see what MC is currently doing in the background via the Reporter function under Services & Plugins > Reporter. In particular, if you are experiencing performance issues or hangs, check the following items:

Thumbnails

Is Media Center building Thumbnails in the background?

MC must build optimized thumbnails of all media files before their artwork can be displayed in views. This can be done as part of Auto-Import, or automatically in the background during use. This process, if running, can have a (occasionally severe) performance impact.

The Reporter function will list if Thumbnails are currently being built (though this can switch on and off as you browse Media Views within Media Center as required). It will also list the total number of Thumbnails you have built currently for your Library and the percentage done.

If a low percentage of your Thumbnails are built, and you are having performance issues (especially ones as you navigate through Media Views in Standard or Theater Views, or during playback) then you can force MC to build the entire set via:

Tools > Options > Tree & View > Thumbnails > Build missing thumbnails

Auto-Import

Is Auto-Import running in the background?

In some cases, corrupt or otherwise troublesome files can cause performance problems periodically in Media Center. If you are experiencing general performance problems, it is worth deactivating Auto-Import in the background to see if the problems go away. If so, indicate that this eliminates the problem when you report the issue on Interact.