Help, yep another new member with a problem

[m13kyf]

I don't know if this is still the case, but when I first got my Touch and tried to use the USB one thing you had to do was, leave it totally alone possibly overnight to let it totally finish the scan. Yes it can take a few hours for it to actually finish, and during that time you don't want to do anything on the Touch, no listening to music, or mucking about, just let it sit. I bet this is especially true of WAV files, since it has to "guess tags" to fill in the database. But even then, using the TinyLMS in the Touch has always been hit or miss, since it just doesn't have the power or memory to really work consistently. I gave up on it very soon, started running the full LMS on a computer and actually started to enjoy the whole idea of having a music server system.

One other thing to try, plug the USB drive into the computer and delete the Database file manually. That way it will be forced to do a clean scan.

thanks

this is where I think the problem is, it scans the files then fails when it starts to make its database I can see it say 'percent done: 0% (1/5234)' after a sceond of this message it goes to 'Neither the Logitech Media Server nor the scanner are running' 'Start Logitech Media Server' or 'Wipe and Rescan'

have also removed the file via the computer, still no joy

[m13kyf]

Afaik media player does not put in any data in the files besides the names, so artist or album or genre menu migth be empty .
(Unless this changed recently )

There is another menu under "my music" called "music folder" there you should be able to traverse the file and folder structure as it is and not using any tags.

All lossles formats are the same (including WAV ) it is myth that WAV sounds better than FLAC hopefully you are not an avid TAS reader ( then this is going to be uphill ). The only special with WAV is that it is an old format space inefficient and don't have that good meta data support,( it is not what's on the CD btw ) .
Ways around that ( except the obvious use a lossles file format with good tag support ).

I think tag&rename can tag WAV files .
Or use cue sheets , other better rippers like EAC or dBpower amp can produce them during rip and they are also secure rippers ( WMP is not ) . Able to compare the rip against a database to verify that you get perfect rip ( you would get perfect in 99% of the cases anyway, but WMP or iTunes would never tell and fudge it it in such cases)

it is seeing the artist under my music before it crashes while scanning, I guess its using the part database its created. The whole best file format Im quite happy not to get into and is that the issue I m having anway. And it doesnt explain why it worked after a few cd's as suggested here in what to do before doing hte whole collection so you know all is working. Have I really go to re scan everything. Afterall I used a format it does support.

[rayman1701]

Does your hard drive have its own power supply? I know that bus powered drives can have more issues with TinyLMS, but I couldn't get it to work well even with a powered USB drive. And the reason it worked with fewer files, is it had to do less work, and the more work you make TinyLMS do the more problems seem to arise.

[JohnSwenson]

The problem here is that LMS is crashing when it starts to do the "deep scan". The scan is in several pieces, the first just looks in the directories for filenames and dates and builds a list of files that are new, this phase seems to work fine. Then it goes and scans the actual files looking for tags and embedded artwork. Then it looks for separate artwork files.


First lets check your directory structure: TinyLMS cannot handle a large number of files in the same directory, the best approach is a separate directory per album and then just the files for that album in the directory. This can be the audio files (*.wav in your case) and possibly a coverart file (cover.jpg). Is all this true?

Your problem seems to be that the scanner is crashing when doing the full scan on your first file. Probably about 75% of crashes with TinyLMS eventually turn out to be related to artwork. So lets first look at your artwork, what format is it in? JPEG (jpg) is the least likely to cause a problem. The pixel dimensions should not be large, 500 x 500 pixels is usually considered a good choice. Check to see that you don't have artwork embedded in the sound files (I'm not sure you caneven do that in WAV) . LMS can handle embedded artwork, BUT due to memory limitations on the Touch a separate image for each track can really cause problems, for TinyLMS it's best to just use a separate cover.jpg and not use embeded artwork.

John S.

[kidstypike]

The problem here is that LMS is crashing when it starts to do the "deep scan". The scan is in several pieces, the first just looks in the directories for filenames and dates and builds a list of files that are new, this phase seems to work fine. Then it goes and scans the actual files looking for tags and embedded artwork. Then it looks for separate artwork files.


First lets check your directory structure: TinyLMS cannot handle a large number of files in the same directory, the best approach is a separate directory per album and then just the files for that album in the directory. This can be the audio files (*.wav in your case) and possibly a coverart file (cover.jpg). Is all this true?

Your problem seems to be that the scanner is crashing when doing the full scan on your first file. Probably about 75% of crashes with TinyLMS eventually turn out to be related to artwork. So lets first look at your artwork, what format is it in? JPEG (jpg) is the least likely to cause a problem. The pixel dimensions should not be large, 500 x 500 pixels is usually considered a good choice. Check to see that you don't have artwork embedded in the sound files (I'm not sure you caneven do that in WAV) . LMS can handle embedded artwork, BUT due to memory limitations on the Touch a separate image for each track can really cause problems, for TinyLMS it's best to just use a separate cover.jpg and not use embeded artwork.

John S.

John

Tag&Rename can embed artwork .jpegs into .WAV files, these work without problem on TinyLMS.

However, the OP has indicated that he has ripped and tagged using Windows Media Player, this does not embed the artwork, but puts four hidden artwork .jpegs in the album folder. (attached screen shot). I had no problem scanning and playing this album using TinyLMS.

I don't know what type of tagging WMP uses for .WAV files, but when I opened this same album in Tag&Rename the WMP tags do not show up at all, just the file name.

[Mnyb]

John

Tag&Rename can embed artwork .jpegs into .WAV files, these work without problem on TinyLMS.

However, the OP has indicated that he has ripped and tagged using Windows Media Player, this does not embed the artwork, but puts four hidden artwork .jpegs in the album folder. (attached screen shot). I had no problem scanning and playing this album using TinyLMS.

I don't know what type of tagging WMP uses for .WAV files, but when I opened this same album in Tag&Rename the WMP tags do not show up at all, just the file name.

There is no WMP tags for WAV's WMP keep it own database over it's imported music files if converted to WAV, for the unsuspecting user this looks like they have tags ,but they don't .
I don't know to which extend this data is shared with windows explorer ? or at least this was how it worked last time i checked ? I have no running windows machine at the moment (it is ordered arriving soon ).

If LMS/TinyLMS pick it up it usually by the "guess tag function" , if folder are consistently named like artist/album/song or some such .

Edit. as John said one folder per album !! best practice is a folder per artist and in that folder , folders for each of the artists album /Artist/Album/Track

[kidstypike]

There is no WMP tags for WAV's WMP keep it own database over it's imported music files if converted to WAV, for the unsuspecting user this looks like they have tags ,but they don't .
I don't know to which extend this data is shared with windows explorer ? or at least this was how it worked last time i checked ? I have no running windows machine at the moment (it is ordered arriving soon ).

If LMS/TinyLMS pick it up it usually by the "guess tag function" , if folder are consistently named like artist/album/song or some such .

Edit. as John said one folder per album !! best practice is a folder per artist and in that folder , folders for each of the artists album /Artist/Album/Track

Thanks for the heads up on this, TinyLMS must use "Guess tags" then. Good stuff to know.

Thanks again

[m13kyf]

Thanks for all the replys chaps

all the music is in folders by artist. inside each artist folder is each album in separate folder.

the post abot album artwork might be it. if I browse images on the USB drive via the squeezebox touch, I can see 4 images for each album. so if this is the problem what is the best plan of action. They are hidden if I look at the folder via a pc so I'm guessing I need to show hidden files and delete three out of the four files and keep the biggest one making sure is no bigger than 500 x 500 pixels. Do I need to tag the file some other way with the album artwork. could I use media monkey for instance and re tag all the wavs with album artwork.

I did try a factory reset last night. That didn't resolve the problem.

So to summarise it looks like it worked fine when there wasn't too many CDs and the TinyMS (i guess this is the media server on the squeezebox touch and not on a pc) could cope. Now there are a lot more the TinyMS can't. If I downloaded the Logitech media server on a pc. got that to scan all the files. Foes it generate its own database files like the TinyMS does. Could I then copy this over to the USB drive and fake the TinyMS to read this so its all done for it.

[kidstypike]

Thanks for all the replys chaps

all the music is in folders by artist. inside each artist folder is each album in separate folder.

the post abot album artwork might be it. if I browse images on the USB drive via the squeezebox touch, I can see 4 images for each album. so if this is the problem what is the best plan of action. They are hidden if I look at the folder via a pc so I'm guessing I need to show hidden files and delete three out of the four files and keep the biggest one making sure is no bigger than 500 x 500 pixels. Do I need to tag the file some other way with the album artwork. could I use media monkey for instance and re tag all the wavs with album artwork.

I did try a factory reset last night. That didn't resolve the problem.

So to summarise it looks like it worked fine when there wasn't too many CDs and the TinyMS (i guess this is the media server on the squeezebox touch and not on a pc) could cope. Now there are a lot more the TinyMS can't. If I downloaded the Logitech media server on a pc. got that to scan all the files. Foes it generate its own database files like the TinyMS does. Could I then copy this over to the USB drive and fake the TinyMS to read this so its all done for it.

To be able see the hidden files in Windows you need to show hidden files, and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files". The screen shot is from FreeCommander which you can download here: http://www.freecommander.com/
You need to keep the file named Folder.jpg, this is only 200x200 pixels, so shouldn't be a problem for TinyLMS (yes, this is the cut down LMS that runs on the Touch).
You can't scan the USB drive on a PC and transfer the database to the HDD, a lot of folk would like this feature!

[dasmueller]

As John Swenson stated you should haver one album per folder. There is no need to have all Grateful Dead albums in one folder, this just adds another layer for Tiny LMS to work through. As long as the artist tagging you use is identical for each album they will all show up under the same name when navigating to what you want to listen to.