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Topic: 1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC) (Read 4854 times) previous topic - next topic
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1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

I am at ~1.5 TB of music (60,000+ songs) and Foobar is now taking it's sweet time to open up. My system specs are very good:

Intel 2600K (i7 Sandy Bridge)
16GB of RAM
Intel 510 SSD
2 x 2TB Caviar Black
AMD 6990 (MSI)

I'm running Columns UI with Album list panel, but even in default view it still takes a long time to open.

Is there a solution for this? If not, is there anyway to have Foobar close to tray or just run as a service?

Thanks!

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #1 –
For compassion , what program do you have a reference program that opens with the same library in less time?

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #2 –
WMP opens up with no lag.

I am not blaming Foobar, as I understand loading a library this big is not an easy task. I'm just wondering if there are any workarounds. If not, just preventing Foobar from closing (close to tray?) would also solve this.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #3 –
think how long itunes would take! probably takes that long on your system with no music in your library

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #4 –
You can allow foobar to be minimized to tray via Preferences/Display/Columns UI/Notification area. If you have autoplaylists, those can hold back the startup quite significantly as your library gets bigger. I also found that the Album list panel becomes quite sloppy rebuilding its view with a lot of files involved when something changes, so you might want to try something like the Filter panel(s) if you experience anything like that, although it shouldn't affect startup times as far as I know. Other than that, some slow down is inevitable.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #5 –
Typically, the issue is not the size of your music files, it's the size of your database.dat that is found in your profile folder, which contains cached contents of all your files' tags.

e.g. my database.dat is 6.75 MB for ~14,000 items.

If your database.dat is significantly larger per track, you probably need to delete some crap from your files tags, including any non-human readable data that shouldn't be in a file's user-readable tags.
elevatorladylevitateme

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #6 –
Hah. My 1.6TB takes a bit over a minute. It makes the installer time-out when restarting foobar.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #7 –
Console tells it detailed.
Many autoplaylists?

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #8 –
I really like how Boom Audio Player handles the Media Library, it's instant to open and play any file on the HDD.

Hope foobar2000 can get the same treatment.
Windows 10 Pro x64 // foobar2000 1.3.10

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Daeron on
You can allow foobar to be minimized to tray via Preferences/Display/Columns UI/Notification area. If you have autoplaylists, those can hold back the startup quite significantly as your library gets bigger. I also found that the Album list panel becomes quite sloppy rebuilding its view with a lot of files involved when something changes, so you might want to try something like the Filter panel(s) if you experience anything like that, although it shouldn't affect startup times as far as I know. Other than that, some slow down is inevitable.


Thanks, but removing my autoplaylists did not help load time at all. As I mentioned before, even reverting back to fully stock DUI does not improve load time.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #10 –
Quote from: shakey_snake on
Typically, the issue is not the size of your music files, it's the size of your database.dat that is found in your profile folder, which contains cached contents of all your files' tags.

e.g. my database.dat is 6.75 MB for ~14,000 items.

If your database.dat is significantly larger per track, you probably need to delete some crap from your files tags, including any non-human readable data that shouldn't be in a file's user-readable tags.


My database.dat file is 21.1 MB for ~64,000 items, which is actually slightly less then you per item.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Erich_2 on
Console tells it detailed.
Many autoplaylists?


Console log:

Code: [Select]
Added 63644 items
Changes merged into library
Watching: D:\music
Album list panel: initialised in 2.614 s
WSH Panel Mod ({356BC219-12C6-44A9-9520-D4D0B1B9FCA7}): initialized in 4 ms
Seekbar: taking GDI path.
Seekbar: Frontend initialized.
w7shell: init started
w7shell: GDI+ initialized
w7shell: COM initialized
w7shell: running on Windows NT 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1
w7shell: DWM composition enabled
w7shell: WA_DISALLOW_PEEK successfully set
w7shell: WA_HAS_ICONIC_BITMAP successfully set
w7shell: WA_FORCE_ICONIC_REPRESENTATION successfully set
w7shell: WA_FLIP3D_POLICY successfully set
w7shell: all green
Autoplaylists initialized in: 0:00.421907
"Not Played" : 0:00.159705
"Recently Added" : 0:00.121687
"Recently Played" : 0:00.140397
TouchRemote initialization started
TouchRemote database id: D4900E9FC2963CD6
TouchRemote initialization finished
Startup time : 0:06.733613
w7shell: taskbar button create notification got

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #12 –
The rescanning on startup (that can be turned off, can't it?) doesn't really bother me, it is rather that it takes many seconds to search. Is the database algorithm really state-of-the-art?

It wouldn't help to make fb2k load the database into RAM? Or maybe it already is there?

(Brainstorm: If the amount of data in the tags is the issue, then ... what about a 'basic search' (toggle by special character prefix?) that takes only the most essential (up to user specification) tags?)

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Andreasvb on
I really like how Boom Audio Player handles the Media Library, it's instant to open and play any file on the HDD.

Hope foobar2000 can get the same treatment.

Because it's fb2k core with various functionality stripped down and metadata indexing much reduced (no search over arbitrary fields, full file properties read from file on demand rather than cached).
I cannot do the same within fb2k without axing functionality that some people consider essential.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #14 –
Quote from: pr0phet on
Console log:

...

Welp, remove those third party components one by one and figure out which one is your primary offender.

Given normal hard drive speeds, a startup time of 6.7 seconds isn't really terrible for having that large of a database.
elevatorladylevitateme

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #15 –
with over a 1TB here mine takes 17secs to fully load.

i have a tonne of autoplaylists and watch folders though.

6 seconds ain't that bad at all!!

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #16 –
Autoplaylists are very inefficient by design...
Also Columns UI Album List panel seems to be slower than the Default UI one, from what I've seen; pr0phet's log shows that it takes 2.614 seconds to initialize which is a significant factor.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #17 –
Columns UI Album list panel can be populated later (when needed), not during startup initialization.
Deactivate Population on initialization in the Album list panel dialog in Preferences.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #18 –
I've been using foobar2000 with Columns UI forever ...and I have tweaked and analyzed its behaviour for a very long time ...I've been through all of these 'questions' by the OP and made long-term observations...

- 6-7 seconds startup time for a very large database is very very good; if foobar fully kicks to life after 7 seconds without any continuing background groans then it is running beautifully and stable.

- I too noticed the 'Album list panel' sluggishness a long time ago and found through trial and error that the 'most stable and fast' solution for Library management using CUI is to use three elements: (1) Make Panel(s) using the Filters (2) Popup window using DUI Album List (menu toolbar > Library > Album List) (3) Popup window using DUI Library Search (menu toolbar > Library > Search)

A feature suggestion: I think Peter should encourage users to 'learn' the built-in query syntax language by making the 'Query Syntax Help' file much more easily accessible; I suggest it be added as a menu toolbar item under 'Help'.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #19 –
Is your foobar (and its db file) on the SSD?

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #20 –
Quote from: K336 on
Is your foobar (and its db file) on the SSD?


Yes, Foobar and it's DB file are on the SSD. My music library however is not for obvious reasons.

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #21 –
So it's become apparent that Album list panel is at least partially responsible for the delay, since disabling it cuts my load time by a 2-3 seconds. It's very unfortunate that there are no Album list panel alternatives for us Columns UI users. The funny thing is that I only use the folder structure (directory structure) view, which doesn't even need to pull any data from tags.

Does anyone know of a different way to display my library by folder structure in CUI?
 

1.5 TB later, Foobar takes 5-10 seconds to open up (on a top spec PC)

Reply #22 –
I recall 'foo_playlist_tree_mod' and 'foo_uie_explorer' having the same functionality, but I have no idea whether they have problems on their own (I'd assume though) since I never really used them. You can still technically use the default Album list as a pop-up by the way, just can't dock it.

Besides, what's the problem with using Filter panels and relying on actual tags as multiple people suggested? It's not like it's going to be any slower (quite the opposite). As far as I know to build the Music Library database in the first place you 'pull in' all of those data anyway. Any noticeable slowdown is more related to how fast the individual library viewers handle that feed.

On a side note: assuming you don't have a very deep folder structure, you could also just create multiple Filter panels with '$directory(%path%,X)', each representing one level and the last using '%filename%' to somewhat recreate the folder structure. It would be highly unintuitive though.