Is MediaMonkey3 a CPU/Memory pig?

[dbdog]

Ok, I'm a challenge with 75,000 songs to manage but I thought MM3 rocked for large libraries...but 50% CPU use and 250MB memory use is outrageous! Have I got a leak?

When I view my library (i.e. click on "All" Artists) and it loads them into the library view my CPU use goes up to 50% and stays there until I select an album or artist to subset the library. I understand the CPU load when it is loading but why does it continue to use the CPU long after it's all loaded? It also hogs a wack of memory (250 to 950MB!). Then when I select an album or an artist it drops to 2% CPU and 157MB of memory. Still more memory than Winamp but I can live with that.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'd love to stick with MM3 if I can get it to handle my library efficiently. I thought MM was good for large library management.

Cheers
dbdog

[Lowlander]

Which version of MediaMonkey are you using? Do you have any additional scripts/plugins installed? What CPU, Windows do you have?

[dbdog]

Which version of MediaMonkey are you using? Do you have any additional scripts/plugins installed? What CPU, Windows do you have?

Hey Lowlander,

Thanks for replying. I'm using:

• MediaMonkey 3.0.6.1190 Gold
  Tried to do a clean install but my media library and settings seem to be hidden somewhere because they stick around even when I uninstall, remove program files and application data folders and do a registry cleaning! I followed the clean install instructions on this site.
  I didn't add any plugins when I reinstalled
  Windows XP Home SP3
  Pentium 4 CPU 3 Ghz
  1.25 GB Ram

Thanks for your help.

dbdog

[Lowlander]

Library & settings location. You might also try File > Maintain Library.

Your numbers seem to be out of the ordinary, but I'm not sure what could be causing them.

[dbdog]

Library & settings location. You might also try File > Maintain Library.

Your numbers seem to be out of the ordinary, but I'm not sure what could be causing them.

Thanks. I managed a clean install and it didn't change a thing but I think I have identified the problem. When I show album art (instead of just "show details") like in "Show Album Art with Details" it starts loading up my memory like a runaway train. It seems like it's trying to load all my artwork into RAM! When I select an artist (i.e. subset my database) the memory use goes down again. When I reset it to just "show Details" without album art and restart MediaMonkey my memory use stays at 120MB and is fairly well behaved.

The runaway train seems to happen when I select "show album art with details" and then navigate away from showing my full library and then navigate back to it (i.e. by clicking on the "album& Album artist" node).

Seems like either I have a problem with my settings (though I can't see any related to how album art loads) or MediaMonkey 3 is not able to show a large library in "show album art with details" mode. I can't see any other posts related to this issue. I couldn't be the only one whose noticed this. Show album art with details is likely a very popular view.

Anyone else? Solutions? I have to admit that some of my album art is fairly high res so that might be a contributing factor. But still, for an application that prides itself on being able to handle large collections you wouldn't expect an app to load all your artwork. BTW, all my art is in folder.jpg files in my album folders.

Cheers
dbdog

[rovingcowboy]

yep your using a lot of memory there at first which is more likely cause of your large library, if you start with a full now playing playlist, monkey will load all the songs in the now playing playlist or as many as he can get in a short time. then start playing the song when you click on one, or dump the songs he started loading if you change playlists.

but monkey is using the new style of skin, which i think might be contributing to the memory useage a little.
you can try and get a couple programs.

one is called " Cleanmem " the other is " Priority " both free both at majorgeeks.com cleanmem just takes the allocated ram from programs that started up but never got used that do not release the unused ram, that way you can get more ram for use with other programs. it might not be very visable of a help on over 1 gb of ram, but if you got that huge of a library it might help.? also priority is a prgram you can start before you start any other exe, and it will change the priority of those programs started after it, to high priority which could help in monkey's case with that huge libray,

there are also options in mm 3 you can change to off if you don't use them that might be some help.
run through the options and see if you can turn them off don't forget to check the config of the plugins
and the options of the float/ mini player and the equilzer's options turn off any that you don't use.

also try the hardware acceleration and see if turning that down or off has any effect for you. not much else you can do but that stuff should help. monkey is doing more and handling more then the other players which is why he starts up with a lot of ram then gets rid of it.

The runaway train seems to happen when I select "show album art with details" and then navigate away from showing my full library and then navigate back to it (i.e. by clicking on the "album& Album artist" node).

the above is because monkey is set to defaultly convert the album art to small bmp thumbnails to use for the album art view and save them in a cache. you can go in to the ini file for monkey and turn that off if you want too.
just change the number 1 to zero in the proper line.

[dbdog]

the above is because monkey is set to defaultly convert the album art to small bmp thumbnails to use for the album art view and save them in a cache. you can go in to the ini file for monkey and turn that off if you want too.
just change the number 1 to zero in the proper line.

Thanks so much for your help. This sounds like my issue. Can you help me identify the correct line in the ini file please? I see one that looks likely but it is already set to 0:

DontUseCoversCache=0

Cheers
dbdog

[rovingcowboy]

ooops change the zero to a 1 in that line. i had mistakenly thought they had the line saying
usecoverscache.
sorry.

[dbdog]

Hey rovingcowboy,

Ok I've done a clean install and set DontUseCoversCache=1 and have the following behavior:

When I select "show details" view and start mediamonkey it behaves ok and uses 130MB of RAM to show all my 75,000 songs in "albums & album artists" node. When I then switch to "show album art with details" view it behaves fine using just a small amount more RAM. Here's the weird part - then when I shut MM3 down and restart it keeping the same view (i.e. "show album art with details" and viewing the "artist & Album artists" node) it starts eating RAM till it's all used (usually around 950MB) and then starts seriously slowing down the machine until everything grinds to a halt!

It still seems to be loading all my artwork into the cache! Grrrrrr. I have verified this by scrolling down my albums with the scroll bar and seeing which albums artwork is there and which ones take a few seconds to show. I'm looking at it right now and with about 635MB of ram eaten up, its about half way through my collection. And it still climbing...

Ok, I could buy more RAM but this seems like a bug to me. Any help would be appreciated. One thought I had was somehow eliminating the option to view my whole library in this mode since I'd never really want to scroll through all my albums this way. There doesn't seem to be an option to do that and by default it loads the whole library so I can't ever shut MM3 down viewing "show album art with details" because next time when I start up >>> runaway train!!!!!

Assistance greatly appreciated. I'm loving everything else I see about MM3.

Cheers
dbdog

[rovingcowboy]

its a bug
your right about that. it should not grab all that ram just because its opening with a different view showing.
the main listview with album coverart in the list is new mm 3.
i wouldn't think all the bugs are out of that yet. send a pm to one of the developers and see what they
say. try jiri or peke or ludek or petrcbr because i think rusty is busy typing code for the mm3.1 version.

[dbdog]

Thanks. Will do.

[Peke]

Well, regarding assistance. It would be nice that you open support ticket and send us Debug log file so that we can see what and why so much ram is eaten.

[dbdog]

Well, regarding assistance. It would be nice that you open support ticket and send us Debug log file so that we can see what and why so much ram is eaten.

Thanks Peke,

I've done that now and created ticket GFM-638785. I also have a debug log file for you and just need to know where to send it. I opened MM and let it load up my RAM for a few minutes and by the time it had eaten 400MB I shut it down. By then over 2000 covers had been loaded into my cache and the log file is over 44,000 lines long and is over 3MB. I would have copied the log into the ticket but it's too long.

Cheers
dbdog

[nohitter151]

the above is because monkey is set to defaultly convert the album art to small bmp thumbnails to use for the album art view and save them in a cache. you can go in to the ini file for monkey and turn that off if you want too.
just change the number 1 to zero in the proper line.

Thanks so much for your help. This sounds like my issue. Can you help me identify the correct line in the ini file please? I see one that looks likely but it is already set to 0:

DontUseCoversCache=0

Cheers
dbdog

FYI: The covers cache is simply .bmp files resized and extracted to a temporary folder on your hard drive so that the covers can be loaded much more quickly into the album art views. By using DontUseCoversCache=1, you're telling MM not to save the extracted covers to your temporary folder, which means the art has to be resized dynamically in the computer memory every time you open the art view. You should expect much higher memory usage with this setting, not lower. Seems that is the opposite of the effect you're trying to get.

[rovingcowboy]

even so nohitter151, thats a lot of ram for artwork to take up. ? unless the images are in-fact saved as tiff files. or some other huge size. then those will eat up ram like theres not enough in the world. but i thought i seen them say the image's were all .jpg files. unless they are saved at a size larger then 500 x 500 and 600 dpi then that should not matter. but if they are 1200 x 1200 by 1200 dpi then that is the reason there. and if they are tiff. files that size, why, why, just go out and get a 9 course dinner and come back after you eat, the images might be showing then.