iTunes 7.6.1 update - still broken

In article <fpljv7$8bk$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall.RemoveThis@iol.ie>
wrote:

> Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
> > The iTunes update is a waste of time. iTunes 7.6.1 still regularly
> > beachballs to scan your library. It still plays only low resolution
> > movie rentals. I'm starting to suspect that the iTunes development team
> > was replaced with a room full of screaming monkeys a couple of years ago.
> >
> Monkeys they may be, but it isn't up to them. The movie companies are a
> strange, paranoid and illogical bunch. It will probably come soon, at
> the moment it's only on apple TV. You are a thief as far as they are
> concerned and they don't want their precious HD 'content' in itunes
> until, well until some voodoo has been performed.
>
> When does it choke? Mine does when I change names or artists (sort of
> understandable because it has to rename and/or move the files) and when
> I change a genre (odd, that). 6820 songs in library though about half
> are samples. But apart from that it doesn't, so it could be something
> else than iTunes that's the problem.
>
> Andy

iTunes periodically scans your music library for unknown reasons.
Changing songs or scrolling the window seems to invoke scans of several
songs, starting alphabetically. Certain files (Apple says movies do it
but I call BS on that) cause the scan to stall in the QuickTime library
for several seconds. iTunes isn't multithreaded properly so the GUI
stalls along with it. Having your music on NAS makes the stalls long
enough and frequent enough that iTunes can't be used.

You can see iTunes scan your library by running this as admin on the
command line:

fs_usage iTunes

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 >> Stay informed about: iTunes 7.6.1 update - still broken 

Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtri DeleteThis @dslextreme.com> wrote:

> In article <fpljv7$8bk$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall DeleteThis @iol.ie>
> wrote:
>
> > Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
> > > The iTunes update is a waste of time. iTunes 7.6.1 still regularly
> > > beachballs to scan your library. It still plays only low resolution
> > > movie rentals. I'm starting to suspect that the iTunes development team
> > > was replaced with a room full of screaming monkeys a couple of years ago.
> > >
> > Monkeys they may be, but it isn't up to them. The movie companies are a
> > strange, paranoid and illogical bunch. It will probably come soon, at
> > the moment it's only on apple TV. You are a thief as far as they are
> > concerned and they don't want their precious HD 'content' in itunes
> > until, well until some voodoo has been performed.
> >
> > When does it choke? Mine does when I change names or artists (sort of
> > understandable because it has to rename and/or move the files) and when
> > I change a genre (odd, that). 6820 songs in library though about half
> > are samples. But apart from that it doesn't, so it could be something
> > else than iTunes that's the problem.
> >
> > Andy
>
> iTunes periodically scans your music library for unknown reasons.
> Changing songs or scrolling the window seems to invoke scans of several
> songs, starting alphabetically. Certain files (Apple says movies do it
> but I call BS on that) cause the scan to stall in the QuickTime library
> for several seconds. iTunes isn't multithreaded properly so the GUI
> stalls along with it. Having your music on NAS makes the stalls long
> enough and frequent enough that iTunes can't be used.
>
> You can see iTunes scan your library by running this as admin on the
> command line:
>
> fs_usage iTunes

I can't say I've ever seen such a problem here, ever! My iTunes has been
working absolutely fine, and I have a fair mix of MP3s, AACs and movies.
I mostly use my music over 'Shared', and even that works flawlessley.

However, there are some issues with OS 10.5 beachballing at times, which
is a problem I have had, and has been reported a few times on the Apple
forums. I fixed mine by migrating into a new User account. This seems to
be linked to whether you installed OS 10.5 as a clean install, or a
simple upgrade.

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.mac.com/andrewhewitt1/>
 >> Stay informed about: iTunes 7.6.1 update - still broken 

Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtri DeleteThis @dslextreme.com> wrote:

> iTunes 7.6.1 still regularly beachballs to scan your library.

I don't understand why you would claim to know what happens with _my_
library, but iTunes hadn't previously and still does not beachball at
all when scanning my library.

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 >> Stay informed about: iTunes 7.6.1 update - still broken 

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 >> Stay informed about: iTunes 7.6.1 update - still broken 

In article <gkreme-DD901C.09291122022008.DeleteThis@news.giganews.com>,
Lewis <gkreme.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

> In article <1icpddn.nlwa29yilsxhN%wildrover.andy@googlemail.com>,
> wildrover.andy.DeleteThis@googlemail.com (Andy Hewitt) wrote:
>
> > I can't say I've ever seen such a problem here, ever! My iTunes has been
> > working absolutely fine, and I have a fair mix of MP3s, AACs and movies.
> > I mostly use my music over 'Shared', and even that works flawlessley.
>
> I have my itunes library mounted on a SMB access point. It works fine.
>
> I haven't noticed any beachballing, but then again, it's never the
> foreground app.

It's a problem that Apple knows about. On their discussion boards,
Apple Tech Support recommends that you remove all large files and video
from iTunes to solve the problem :(

I suspect it has to do with the retarded QuickTime/MPEG4 file format
where all of the vital indexing ends up at the very end of the file. A
resource-intensive optimization process can move the index but it's not
always performed.

Of course, Apple could always hire engineers that know multithreading so
the GUI doesn't hang.

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 >> Stay informed about: iTunes 7.6.1 update - still broken