Synchronization slowing down while progressing

[hato]

I am using MM in combination with a Zen Vision:M and synchronize a library which currently holds approx. 1000 mp3 files. I am surprised how fast the trasfer starts - about 1s per file - but after a while (a couple of hundred files) it unfortunately slows down around 5s per file.
Any other users experimenting this? Why isn't the transfer rate flat across the sync process? Otherwise, MM is fantastic.

[heinimuecki]

maybe there is chaching activated for that device. that doesn't depend on MM but on the operating system. have you tried to copy a bunch of files to that device from within windows explorer? what's the behaviour then?

[hato]

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I did compare with other alternatives (like Media Explorer). Once MM has slowed down, it becomes effectively much slower than transfers which use other applications.

[heinimuecki]

just to make it clear to me. did you copy the files directly after connecting the device to your pc? were they copied fast then or slowed it down after a while? does it slow down only from within MM? in that case it could be a bug. what version of MM do you use?

[hato]

> did you copy the files directly after connecting the device to your pc

Yes: I usually connect the Vision:M to the PC, wait till it appears in the MM tree then perform a Sync.

> were they copied fast then or slowed it down after a while?

Fast at first (approx. 1s/3MB file) then it get worse as time passes by.

> does it slow down only from within MM

I tried MediaSource (Creative) - Zen Explorer (Creative) and Windows Media Explorer... and didn't notice any slowing down during the sync process. But there are difference in transfer speeds between those programs (e.g. MediaSource being the slowest). If MM was not slowing down, he would possibly be the fastest.

> what version of MM do you use?

The latest one to my knowledge, 2.5.2.

[heinimuecki]

well seems to be something in MM. is it a gold version? if yes could it be that there is a auto-conversion going on during synch (tools->options->portable/audio devices)?
2.5.2 is the latest official version. the very latest at the moment is 2.5.3.959. it's a beta but it works fine for me (except the cd-burning plugin). i would suggest to download this version from the beta-testing forum. if that shows the same behaviour i would make a bug report as described in the bug reports forum.
btw the slowing down will probably only occur on your first synching because that's normally the session with the largest amount of files.
normally later processed synch sessions will be very faster because in that case only modified or new files are added/updatet.

maybe this helps

[hato]

heinimuecki, thank you so much trying to help me. I appreciate.

> is it a gold version?

Indeed.

> if yes could it be that there is a auto-conversion going on during synch

These were disabled.

I will try to download the latest beta version and issue a bug report if he problem persits. Thank you again for your kind help.

[Todd]

I, too, have been experiencing this issue. I have 2,000 files, and the first 200 were done in about 5 minutes, the remaining 1,800 took over 4 hours. It was going along at 3-5 s per song, then towards the end, 45-50 s per song, and then it is still sitting after all songs have synched with the bar at the bottom and still writing to the DAP. Like hato, auto-sync items were disabled. It is a very frustrating problem.

I am using MM with a Sansa e200 series DAP. I will have to use the Drop/Drag functionality in MTP next time because it shouldn't take that long...

[Guest]

Make sure that you are using a naming mask such as:

\Music\<Artist>\<Album>

under the Synchronization Options for the 'Synchronize Tracks to:' value. I was having the same extreme slowdown as the number of tracks increased. I just made that change and MM is now syncing at full speed!!!! I'm at about 6,500 tracks now and still zooming. Before it was piling all the tracks into just the \Music directory. By splitting the mp3 files into multiple directories it has less work to do. This is for syncing to a Zen Vision:M specifically but should help with other players as well.

I listen to audio books and podcasts and I split each mp3 file into into smaller mp3's with 5 minute max time. A 60 minute podcast would be split into 20 smaller mp3's. Makes it easier to skip forward/backward. Yes, I use a script to do that as well as add a number to the beginning of each file to keep things sorted. That's why I end up with LOTS of mp3 files and have been frustrated with the speed. I am SO happy to have solved the syncing speed, now I can use MM for music AND non-music files.

[pl5bnsf]

Sorry, wasn't logged in for that last message. Just wanted to mention that I also moved my external hard drive and the Zen to USB ports directly on the motherboard instead of in a shared USB hub. I don't know how much that will help but by not having both of these high-usage devices sharing ONE USB port like the hub does, each has it's own dedicated bandwidth to work with. Like I said, I won't claim much/any speed increase directly for doing that. I just never realized that USB hubs shared the bandwidth, just makes sense to give each 'favored' device it's own port if you can.

[habajaba]

I have the same problem with my Dell DJ, except not only does it get slow.... but it NEVER winds up finishing. Many times I've had to rebuild the filesystem on the DJ because of pulling the plug on transfers from MM. The DJ will just start freezing up until I go into the safe mode and rebuild the filesystem. The puzzling thing is that WM10 works fine on the same system with the same Dell DJ. I broke down and tried it on my laptop with MM and it works fast and finishes without problem. So it actually seems to be specific hardware mixed with MM that causes the problem for me. It really stinks that MM doesn't work on this machine, but it seems the issue is too hit or miss for the developers to fix in MM.

[Sp8z]

Hello,

I had the same problem with my Creative Labs Zen Vision M mp3 player and synchronizing to Media Monkey.

Symptom, synchronization took all night long, errors in the morning, Microsoft Delayed Write failed. 2517 mp3 at 192 kbps, 14 gigs.

Below is how I arrived at the solution.

1) Changed path to mp3 storage on Zen Vision to Music\<artist>\<album>\<artist> - <title>
-didn't help

2) Filled in information on all missing tags.
-didn't help

Still synch'd slowly
3) After synch finished I would instantly re-synch and see songs being reloaded??? Wrote down a song that was slow to load. Checked out the song, it was corrupt. Re-ripped the album.

4) The re-ripped, slow-to-load tracks suddenly loaded in less than 5 seconds. Then the synch locked up on the next corrupt song.

5) Painfully eliminated all corrupt songs by synching, seeing song title, terminating synchronization, re-ripping song/album in question. Painful as sometimes "terminate" would work quickly and sometimes it didn't.

Not sure how the music became corrupt, but eliminating the corrupt files allowed the Zen to synch quickly.

Note: Playlists only appeared after final non-terminated synch. I think they are written last, so as the synchronization never finished they were 'missing'

I hope this helps you solve your synching issues.
-Sp8z

p.s. The cat looked like he was imitating a monkey...

[cappie]

I too was frustrated by syncs that started taking hours to finish, if ever.
Sp8z gave me an idea (thanks) - I started looking at the files that it stuck on for a while, then looked at their properties.
Aha! They all had corrupt album art tags,
Since I keep (almost) all my art as jpg files in the album folder I just cleared all the album art tags and rescanned the library to refresh the file links.
Synchronization is now much much faster!