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<blockquote data-quote="NFW" data-source="post: 80450" data-attributes="member: 25294">I have a 600mhz Via mini-ITX system running MediaPortal and I am concerned that I have underestimated the CPU and disk speed requirments.&nbsp; For now I am only interested in playing music, so I was hoping that this low-power super-quiet system would be sufficient.&nbsp; However, there are a few scenarios in which the MP UI locks up for several seconds or minutes, and that is making me question my hardware choices.I should point out before I go further that all of my music is encoded with WMA lossless, so the files are pretty big, and I think that might be part of the problem.&nbsp; They're also stored on an external drive connected by USB 2.The worst scenario is when I select a playlist with a 100-200 songs. The first song starts playing after just a few seconds, but the UI is frozen for a couple minutes.&nbsp; I have run into this problem when using playlists created with MP and with Windows Media Player.&nbsp; What is the cause of this freeze, and is it likely to be fixed?&nbsp; Or even possible to be fixed?&nbsp; My best guess is that MP is opening all of the files in the playlist, or something like that.&nbsp; But if that's the case, then what exactly was MP doing when it was scanning my music library?&nbsp; I assumed that it was building an index - could that index be used to speed up the opening of a new playlist?&nbsp; The other possiblity that occurs to me is that MP might be populating the list control in the UI.&nbsp; Could that be done on a background thread, or with a timer, to keep the UI responsive while the list is populated? The other problem scenario is adding music from the library to a playlist.&nbsp; Again, the UI hangs here, though not for as long.&nbsp; Again, my best guess is that MP is opening each of the files to retrieve artist/album/track info, and again I wonder if an index could be used to speed that up.I'd like to keep using the hardware that I have, but if these issues cannot be addressed that I'll have to upgrade.&nbsp; Should I start saving now, or can these scenarios be sped up or at least parallelized to keep the UI responsive?Thanks in advance for any ideas...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="NFW, post: 80450, member: 25294"] I have a 600mhz Via mini-ITX system running MediaPortal and I am concerned that I have underestimated the CPU and disk speed requirments. For now I am only interested in playing music, so I was hoping that this low-power super-quiet system would be sufficient. However, there are a few scenarios in which the MP UI locks up for several seconds or minutes, and that is making me question my hardware choices. I should point out before I go further that all of my music is encoded with WMA lossless, so the files are pretty big, and I think that might be part of the problem. They're also stored on an external drive connected by USB 2. The worst scenario is when I select a playlist with a 100-200 songs. The first song starts playing after just a few seconds, but the UI is frozen for a couple minutes. I have run into this problem when using playlists created with MP and with Windows Media Player. What is the cause of this freeze, and is it likely to be fixed? Or even possible to be fixed? My best guess is that MP is opening all of the files in the playlist, or something like that. But if that's the case, then what exactly was MP doing when it was scanning my music library? I assumed that it was building an index - could that index be used to speed up the opening of a new playlist? The other possiblity that occurs to me is that MP might be populating the list control in the UI. Could that be done on a background thread, or with a timer, to keep the UI responsive while the list is populated? The other problem scenario is adding music from the library to a playlist. Again, the UI hangs here, though not for as long. Again, my best guess is that MP is opening each of the files to retrieve artist/album/track info, and again I wonder if an index could be used to speed that up. I'd like to keep using the hardware that I have, but if these issues cannot be addressed that I'll have to upgrade. Should I start saving now, or can these scenarios be sped up or at least parallelized to keep the UI responsive? Thanks in advance for any ideas... [/QUOTE]

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