iTunes Coverflow? Look flashy EATS memory?

LeperousDust

LeperousDust

LeperousDust

Soldato
Joined
4 Nov 2003
Posts
5,738
Location
Edinburgh
Anyone else having any problems with it? I've just recently retagged all my music and given everything album art. So i've only just started messing around with coverflow, but browsing through albums like this iTunes quickly runs up to 200mb easily, when i turn off coverflow though iTunes doesn't actually seem to flush anything? I think its chaching everything....?! :confused: Anything i can do about this apart from simply not using it (:p)?

Personally i don't really use iTunes but i know all my friends will when on my PC (it's basically what they're used to, and i can't argue it's almost the defacto standard now thanks to iPods - plus it saves me "teaching" them). I know they'll want to mess around with coverflow because its flashy (and they're easily pleased like me obviously :o). But i seriously can't do anything else on the PC when iTunes is open after browsing in coverflow, even email/internet/notepad etc... It's actually beyond a joke not really sure what Cupertino where thinking of!
 
coverflow is just ***** for ram. I have around 60 gigs o' music, and coverflow takes up around 800 megs of ram when all the images are loaded. I haven't noticed iTunes not releasing the ram once it closes, but tbh, I stopped using it as it's ultra bloatware.
 
uvmain said:
coverflow is just ***** for ram. I have around 60 gigs o' music, and coverflow takes up around 800 megs of ram when all the images are loaded. I haven't noticed iTunes not releasing the ram once it closes, but tbh, I stopped using it as it's ultra bloatware.
Click to expand...

What, I have over 80Gigs (15k+ songs) of music and my itunes never hits over 100meg of ram even with coverflow active.
 
lsg1r said:
What, I have over 80Gigs (15k+ songs) of music and my itunes never hits over 100meg of ram even with coverflow active.
Click to expand...

Have you tried using it to browse ALL your albums though, thats the only time i run into trouble...

Andy: As i said, i don't really want to use it, but my friends will, i just want to try and sort the memory problem out because it literally cripples my laptop...
 
I'm still on iTunes 6.2, as it's low on resource usage, doesnt have to have the ipod service running without reinstalling itself everytime you try disabling it, and it's very quick and smooth to navigate around
 
Steedie said:
I'm still on iTunes 6.2, as it's low on resource usage, doesnt have to have the ipod service running without reinstalling itself everytime you try disabling it, and it's very quick and smooth to navigate around
Click to expand...

Good old days hey, What happened? :D :o

Hmmm after some searching seems there isn't a fix but to downgrade, guess i'll just stick it out and wait for an upgrade/fix...
 
Steedie said:
I'm still on iTunes 6.2, as it's low on resource usage, doesnt have to have the ipod service running without reinstalling itself everytime you try disabling it, and it's very quick and smooth to navigate around
Click to expand...

Anyone know where you can get hold of older revisions of iTunes?

Mine used to run grand on 6.x etc.

It was when iTunes 7.x was released that it all went pear shaped for me.

Cheers
:)
 
LeperousDust said:
Have you tried using it to browse ALL your albums though, thats the only time i run into trouble...

Andy: As i said, i don't really want to use it, but my friends will, i just want to try and sort the memory problem out because it literally cripples my laptop...
Click to expand...

yep, browsed the lot and it had no impact on the amount of memory it is using. Might be something to do with the way I have it set up (my music is on a nas)
 
lsg1r said:
yep, browsed the lot and it had no impact on the amount of memory it is using. Might be something to do with the way I have it set up (my music is on a nas)
Click to expand...

It's possible, i'm thinking it may be something to do with my embedded art?

iTunes initially doesn't embed album art, it just assigns a high res image and links it to its "art database". Whereas i've embedded everything so my iPod shows album art as well as other music player...

Now iTunes seems to read the art embedded in the tag instead of its own database and possibly caches it for future use.

How is your album art set up? Can you see album art in windows explorer with just icons (i've got screenshot somewhere to explian that better if you need it...)
 
I did, just meaning that I honestly can't understand why people still use iTunes, it's a massive memory hog which enjoys editing ID3 tags.

Sorry if it wasn't relevant enough for you :P
 
I agree, but that doesn't stop iTunes and WMP11 being the defacto standard... I'm not going to start teaching my friends how to use something different because its too much hassle, i'd rather tame what everyone can use. Parties would be crap if everyone was trying to use foobar to search my library because they just wouldn't flow... iTunes is perfect for parties with its 'party shuffle'.

Anyway i use foobar in its barest form to play music i launch from windows explorer, if i want something fancy WMP11 is VERY good for something extra and good on resources. So i'm fine in that department cheers :)
 
LeperousDust said:
It's possible, i'm thinking it may be something to do with my embedded art?

iTunes initially doesn't embed album art, it just assigns a high res image and links it to its "art database". Whereas i've embedded everything so my iPod shows album art as well as other music player...

Now iTunes seems to read the art embedded in the tag instead of its own database and possibly caches it for future use.

How is your album art set up? Can you see album art in windows explorer with just icons (i've got screenshot somewhere to explian that better if you need it...)
Click to expand...

currently got mine set up to just auto update via itunes (there are a few obscure albums which I've added). Got the intention to add album art to all mine in the near future to save hassle later on when I get a wireless audio system set up, so if I ever get myself in gear I may be able to check properly for you :)
 
That sounds like the missing link then, iTunes has got something horribly wrong memory wise with my embedded art. Your art is downloaded and placed in a database in the iTunes folder and then the file itself is linked to that database its not "real" art tagging (as you seem to know) and nothing else but iTunes can take advantage of it, making it pretty useless. So i've embedded art in all my files which iTunes technically detects and plays nice with, but it seems thats what is causing the HUGE memory footprint. Annoying really!
 
When you think about it (after talking about it) - how big are your album artwork files? Assuming you have 15k songs like me with an average of 12 songs per album you would have 1250 albums. Now assuming each of those album covers are 1/2 meg in size you would have 625megs worth of imagery which needs accessing. Add on 100meg for general itunes access etc and you would be hitting 725meg of ram required for fluid use, add in any playlists etc and I'm sure you could easily hit 800megs in terms of required space.

Might need to shrink the file sizes of the artwork :D
 
True and you are right but i'm never browsing all the album artworks all at once. It's fine to begin with and i expect a performance hit, but as your maths shows iTunes never flushes the album art out of memory when i've stopped looking at it, even when i minimise it or go back to "ordinary" view! Thats certainly NOT right surely?
 
well all itunes does is minimise the "window" coverflow is in, its still active even if you're not looking at it. As long as the program is open its going to store the files somewhere. It would be better to store a database/thumbnail option somewhere but hey its easier for them to code it this way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom