More of an "issue" than a "bug"...

[Jon Leggitt]

Sorry if I'm being nitpicky, but I've run into a small issue when moving from "Rotation", "KJ Rotation" or one of the singers' entries (pretty much anywhere, actually) to "Library". There is a small lag time (usually around 3-4 seconds) between clicking on Library and the library actually coming up. This would be completely trivial, except for the fact that if a song is playing, the video freezes (audio is fine) for the same amount of time.

Granted, it's a minor issue, but having to wait until a musical break or the end of a song before I can do a song search is less than ideal. I've taken to using pen and paper to jot down searches (and singers) I can't get to immediately.

[dave]

let me guess: you have lots of songs (> 40,000) and you have a PowerPC machine. Right?

[Jon Leggitt]

Well, you're half right.

While I have do have a ton of songs (100K+ collected over the course of 12 years), I'm running kJams Pro on a 2.16 GHz white Intel MacBook, with 4GB of memory.

[dave]

okay, then you're running in to the "dammit i didn't use SQL" bug.

you see, when i started coding this up right in the beginning, i wanted to get running QUICKLY, so i wrote my own admittedly rudimentary database, just enough to get me by. which works well for say 60,000 songs, tho you start to see lots of progress bars at that point.

I will be transitioning to using SQL as my database, soon-ish i hope, which will make all those progress bars go away. You are not being nitpicky, you are being precise: there should be ZERO delay when doing a search or sort or switching to a different playlist. This will all happen when i switch to using SQL instead of my rather brain dead database that I wrote myself.

now to be clear: soon-ish means "when i finish with my current skunkworks project", which will likely take a while. I suppose I could do it in parallel. It really REALLY needs to happen. The more people that complain about this, the more likely it is that i'll move it up on the schedule.

[Sedge]

In that case, add my complaint to the list - slightly tired of watching lyrics lag as a search take place, although they snap right back after it's completed - more walking on eggshells, waiting for the almightly "Intrumental Break"... (although I am admittedly running below spec hardware - so it's not all your fault - still trying to wean my 21k library to 10k tracks-ish)

[dave]

lyrics should never lag when doing a search, as the search is happening on a background thread.

the only time i utterly can't avoid doing something on the foreground thread is when I must update the databrowser, eg: switching playlists, or AFTER the search is done, filling the browser with search results.

[Sedge]

I suppose the video lag is actually at the end of search when the browser is displaying results. I hadn't really watched it close enough to pinpoint that, but it rings true. (note - this has nothing to do with network searches - those seem to run just fine. Sometimes, I will pre-search on my networked "kiosk", if someone is just asking casually if I have something - just to avoid any lag. The lag is never more than a couple seconds, and often less than a second, but that's enough to befuddle a singer who doesn't *know* the song.

[dave]

well what hardware are you running on? PPC?

[Sedge]

well what hardware are you running on? PPC?

Yeah, G4 1.5. 1.25G mem (max allowed). That's why I haven't been very vocal about it. Perhaps not even SQL can save me - but here's to hoping!

>>Sedge

[dave]

In your case SQL will not save you. A new computer (intel dual core) will totally save you.

[Jon Leggitt]

My observations mirror what Dave had said. I don't get any lag whatsoever during searches. My problems only occur on loading the library before a search.

[Brendan]

Actually, i just upgraded to 2 Gig but when i was running with 1 Gig, i never had a prob with my Macbook.

[dave]

are you saying that when you had 1 GB of RAM, that you did not have any "delay" issues, but that when you upgraded to 2 GB RAM, and nothing else changed, then you started having delay issues?? If that is true, then it is a problem with your RAM. I have seen this before (on a windows machine). When I took the ram back out, i was back to no delays again. I would seek a higher quality RAM if I were you.

[Brendan]

No, Sorry i was just making the point that i was not having any issues with search when i was running with only 1GB of RAM. I do see a difference in overall performance now that i have 2 GB.

[dave]

hm, ok. well i expect that you too will see an improvement once i switch to using SQLite