iTunes and Large Libraries: Still Slow, Slow, Slow
I have a lot of music: my iTunes library currently contains about 40,000 tracks. I buy a lot of CDs, buy music from the iTunes Store, listen to audiobooks, and download podcasts. This library increases in size as I rip more music, and it has gotten to the point where performance is very, very poor.
I have a Mac Pro (with four cores) that has 4 GB RAM and plenty of hard disk space, so I’m clearly near the high end of potential performance. But as iTunes has progressed, it has not improved its performance; whenever I make any changes in my library (change tags, add tracks, download podcasts), it takes about 5 seconds for the program to become responsive. I get a spinning beach-ball and the program simply pauses (though, to be fair, in most cases it continues playing music if I’m listening to something with iTunes).
I first saw performance problems when ripping CDs, a bit more than a year ago when I bought my Mac Pro. I had hoped it would be faster than my previous computer, a G5 iMac, but it was only marginally more rapid. So I bought a second optical drive: a 52x CD-only drive (the Mac Pro has a superdrive which reads CDs slower than that). This improved ripping speeds a bit, but I finally got fast rips when I created a second iTunes library just for ripping – this proves that the problem is the library size, not the program itself, my optical drive, or my Mac. I can get up to 40x rips now, at the ends of CDs, compared to a max of around 22x with the superdrive.
My iTunes Library file is large: 68 MB. My guess is that iTunes, when working with a file this size, has to write the file anew each time there is a change, and that this is what slows down the program. I see 5-second delays when I simply download a podcast (at the end of the download, when, I assume, the file’s information is written to the library file), or when I uncheck tracks from smart playlists that contain only checked tracks. Any operation that leads to changes in the library file seem to cause the program to hang for five seconds.
I don’t see any solution, other than Apple improving the performance of iTunes and its library files. As people use iTunes more, they are likely to increase the number of tracks they have, and their performance will degrade, so more users will be seeing these problems, especially with slower computers.
At each release of an iTunes update, I hope that Apple will resolve this problem. Alas, after yet another update today (7.7.1) it seems to be even worse when ripping CDs.
UPDATE: When Apple release iTunes 8, responsiveness improved greatly, but there are still lags when tagging files and when importing. It is better, but it’s still far from perfect.
What about you, readers? How is your iTunes performance? How big is your library? Add your thoughts to the comments below.


You bring up an interesting point. Do you think your problems are due
strictly to the number of tracks, or is it the physical size of the collection? In
other words, would a collection of 40,000 tracks ripped in 192K AAC have
as many issues as the same collection ripped in Apple Lossless or AIFF? I’ve
recently started going all digital and have ripped most of my CD collection
into iTunes. Currently I have about 15000 tracks – all from 192K – 320K
AAC – on one library on an external drive. While I’m not currently
experiencing any unacceptable delays or hangs, I suppose it’s likely I will in
the future. My next move was going to be adding the 300 or so Grateful
Dead shows I’ve got (on about 800 CDs). Perhaps I should create a separate
library for those, or consider ripping them at a lower bit rate as they’re not
CD quality to begin with. Either way, thanks…you’ve given me something to
think about.
I’m certain that it’s the number of tracks, not their size. This is
because the
library files increase in size as the number of items in the library increase.
This said, it is
also the number of playlists you have. I used to have a playlist that contained
all my
checked songs, and another that contained all my unchecked songs (each
was about half
my library). When I removed those two playlists, my library shrank by more
than 5 MB. So
if you have a lot of playlists, and if you don’t use them, try culling them. What
I’ve done is
change some smart playlists that contain music by composer or performer to
only contain
25 tracks selected at random, rather than all of them. For example, my 3600
tracks of
Schubert lieder were culled to just 25 tracks, saving a lot of space in the
library file.
Go ahead and add all your Dead shows – having that music to listen is far
more important
than a slightly slower iTunes. :-)
Kirk
I very much agree. I also have a large library that suffers from performance
issues. Another thing that seems to contribute to the performance woes are
smart playlists. I have created close to 600 playlists (mostly smart playlists
that group similar artists/albums/etc. and what I have rated as their better
songs), many of which contain more than a 1000 tracks. Changing the rating
or modifying the genre of a single track will bring up the spinning beachball
for more than a minute. I’ve confirmed it’s mostly related to the smart
playlists by copying the library, and then deleting most of the rating based
playlists at which point performance will vastly improve. … Fortunately I
mostly listen to my music via my SlimDevices Squeezeboxes so I don’t have
to live with the iTunes beachballs much.
Each track in a playlist adds an entry in your library, so lots of playlists – either
smart or dumb – increase its size.
Kirk
See my comments on iTunes here: Big, Bad iTunes
Your problems are more to do with the fact that you’re using an NAS than
iTunes itself. Taking 15 min to an hour to add files has nothing to do with
iTunes – if I drag a folder of music files on iTunes, it starts adding them right
away. It takes time to copy the files to the new location in my iTunes Music
file, but that’s normal. I think you’re exaggerating. Check your network setup
to find out how to get better speed – you mention gigabet ethernet, but that
means nothing; your NAS is accessed by AirPort, so it depends on which
speed 802.11 you’re using.
Frankly, you’re being unfair, criticizing something because of slowness that
has more to do with your setup than the program itself. I’m criticizing
slowness inherent in the program; you’re blaming your network lag on
iTunes.
Kirk
Hi Kirk,
I think you misunderstand my use of the AirPort Express – I’m only using it as an endpoint for digital audio. The wireless capabilities are disabled. It’s wired via a gig-e connection.
Same goes for my Mac Mini (gig-e wired connection to NAS). I mentioned in the article that dropping a folder of music into iTunes can take an hour or more to add them to the library when doing this over wireless to my laptop, but the same is true over the gig-e connection to the Mac Mini. I’ve measured the raw transfer speed to/from the NAS, and it’s reasonably good — nothing that would account for iTunes’ glacial performance.
My guess as to the performance problems is that it may be rewriting the rather large iTunes Library file for every track scanned — I haven’t confirmed that though. All I can say is that Apple appears to be doing something pretty dumb in an inner loop.
wh
Gotcha.
Try changing the library location to your hard disk and see if the folder gets
written faster; if so, it’s something with your network connection. I’ve never used
iTunes with a networked volume for the music, so I don’t know if that could be
a problem, but your delays are far longer than what I’ve heard about elsewhere.
Kirk
I have 1600gb of music. wowwwww its a lot, and its all in a 2000gb drive. Even if the library will be the same drive, it unes and whole computer slows down, but what slows it down? somewhere files get duplicate
So my library file is just over 52 MB. I’m running a G4 snazzed up to 1.2 Ghz. Since I upgraded to 7.6 I can’t do squat. All my music is on an external firewire drive, and I’m thinking I need to go back to 7.5. Whenever I click on anything in iTunes I get the beach ball for anywhere from five seconds to five minutes (no exaggeration). I asked in the discussions for help in downgrading, but have not gotten a reply in a couple of days.
But, I did see something new just now. Apple seems to have finally noticed the large library problem. Check this out:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6477381#6477381
Kirk, could you possibly give me advice on how to revert back to 7.5?
Thanks,
Shawn
Remove the current version, and download 7.5 here:
http://www.oldapps.com/download_iTunes_mac.php
Kirk
I simply trash the application, install 7.5, then point to my external drive’s library directory? I don’t need to delete any log files or anything other than the application itself?
Thanks for writing about this, Kirk. I have asked many friends about their experiences with iTunes, but none of them have the large music library I do.
I run an internet radio station and receive an average of 200 new CDs each month, so my library is large and growing.
My library contains 61,658 songs as of this writing. I can’t tell how many playlists because they are organized into folders, but it’s definitely in the hundreds. The Library file is 136.8MB and the Library.xml file is 130.2MB.
The Mac I use is a MDD Dual 867 with 2GB RAM. It’s a bit long in the tooth but still a fine machine for most of the things I need it to do.
iTunes has been slow for me since my library crossed the 25,000-song threshold. Since then I too have experienced long lag times while trying to rename or otherwise edit song information. To be honest, for the past 2 years I’ve been waiting for iTunes to stop working entirely, and am impressed that it still works despite my the size of my library.
That said, with the "upgrade" to iTunes 7.6, it would appear my iTunes is finally in it’s last throes. When I launch it, even if nothing else is running, it stays in "Not Responding" spinning beach ball of death mode for about 10 minutes before I can actually work with it. This makes me sad.
I wonder if Apple is working on an iTunes Pro application for those of us with large libraries. While it would be nice if it was free, or bundled with iLife, if it could handle my library smoothly I’d buy it on it’s own.
As was stated in an earlier comment, users’ music/media libraries are going to continue to grow. While the large libraries described here are not the norm, certainly more and more people will run into these performance issues in the coming months and years as their personal media libraries grow.
Let’s hope Apple is working on this.
Ted
I don’t know if they’re working on a pro version, but I think they simply need to
improve this version, because more and more of us have lots of music.
FWIW, I got so frustrated that I filed a bug report with Apple, and have been
contacted twice by Apple engineers for more information, so I think they are
taking this seriously. I’m simply afraid that they weren’t aware of this, that they
hadn’t tested the program with libraries as big as some of us have. Go figure…
Kirk
Having a lot of the same issues with itunes regarding performance. I am a huge fan of SMART playlists, I don’t know how many I have but there are a lot. I have just over 100k songs. I use Windows on a brand new HP and still running into the same problems. I know it comes with a grain of salt b/c I/we have many more songs than your average itunes user. I’m just stunned that with all the updates apple provides that this issue has never been resolved… with sooo many of us having the exact same problem. I’m glad I read all of this and now know it is not my computer. i was pretty confident it had to do with the amount of content however, everything is located on my internal hard drive therefore, the issue is definitely not the transfer rate from an external drive.
Smart playlists definitely slow down iTunes. Try using fewer, or turning off live updating on some of them, even just temporarily. I did, and see a clear difference.
Well, my library is not anywhere as big as yours, but I get similar problems.
I have a 2.33GHz MacBook Pro with 3GB RAM and about 8000 tracks in my
iTunes library. Still, since 7.6 things have grind down to a halt. I watch a
video news podcast where each piece of news is in its own episode. With 7.5 I
could watch the episodes one after another without any problem. Now in 7.6
iTunes seems to need 5-10 sec to register the episode as played which halts
the video. Also, it doesn’t register the track straight after you finish playing it,
but rather in 10-15 sec. Which means that I have to wait up to 25 sec
between news pieces, some of which are even shorter than that.
What I’ve noticed is that during startup iTunes 7.6 loads its library in an
obviously inefficient structure in memory, so that on my machine it starts up
with at least 700MB. There seems to a memory leak somewhere as well,
because the used memory can grow beyond 1.5GB – and that’s for 8000
tracks. I can imagine the results for 70k tracks.
So thanks for the link for iTunes 7.5 – I’ll be installing that next and hopefully
7.6.1 will come out soon to fix the memory issues.
Ventzi
Quite to my amazement, 7.6.1 doesn’t solve the outstanding performance
issues.
I had the same problem. I am running 7.6.2 with over 13k songs which takes up about 75 gigs. All of a sudden iTunes got terribly slow. Checking the Activity Monitor, I was getting over 100% while doing basic tasks changing songs, adding music or getting info. I verified it wasn’t a smart playlist (by deleting them all) and made sure no podcasts were downloading.
I finally fixed the problem by rebuilding the iTunes library. See instructions at apple: How to re-create your library.
Now it runs just as fast as it ever has. Hope this helps.
I tried that, and it didn’t help me.
Kirk
105gb sitting on an external USB 2 drive. 95% Apple lossless AAC; 7k > songs,
and iTunes 7.7.1 running on a first gen, Leopard OS X, CoreDuo 2ghz iMac 2gb
RAM. No delays, perfectly good response times to alterations of metadata etc,
The only thing slightly different is I ensure all drives are thoroughly
defragmented using iDefrag.
It’s because you only have 7K songs. It’s not the size of the music files that
counts, it’s the size of your library file. Check and see how big it is; mine is
currently 71MB.
Ripping CDs yesterday, I time some stuff. There are two 8-second lags when
ripping tracks. The first one second after the track starts importing, and the
second at the end. If every time something gets changed there’s an 8-second
lag (and this is on a quad-core Mac Pro) then obviously it’s going to be slow.
Ah, so much of this is familiar to me. I’m running iTunes 7.7.1 with 45000 tracks on a Mac mini. This is the only thing running on the mini. The bottleneck with iTunes performance is invariably the CPU. The iTunes process repeatedly rises to 100% and stays there during many application operations.
My library database is about 135mb, and I believe the size is contingent on Playlists and other data, such as Comments, which are stored in the database (this info per Apple), not in the music files themselves. I use Comments as a place to identify song styles, which a few hundred of my playlists use to categorize my music. I can modify a single track’s Comment and wait approximately 4 – 5 minutes for the job to complete.
Some bottom up iTunes changes are going to be necessary. But I’d love to continue this discussion with other users so we can help each other maximize performance of iTunes the way it exists today. Feel free to get in touch.
jasonwoerner@gmail.com
I don’t think the bottleneck is actually the CPU. You see the CPU working, it’s
true, but I think the bottleneck is the program needing to write the library file
each time a change is made. On a Mac mini, you have a slower CPU than, say,
my Mac Pro, so it’s going to take a bit longer, but you also have a much
bigger library file. Remember that adding comments to a file also involves
their being written to the file itself, not to the library, so that slowdown
sounds more like the hard disk being the cause. I think the Mac mini has only
a 4200 RPM hard disk, so that’s another factor.
You can prove that the comments are stored in music files by adding
comments to a file, removing it from your iTunes
library, than adding it back. The comments will still be attached to the file.
They may also, however, be in the library file.
So it could still be writing that file again as you add comments. But I don’t
see that adding comments should take any
longer than other operations – does it?
I believe the bottleneck is the CPU because I watch it hover at 100% during the operations that take the longest. Once the CPU isn’t utilizing 100% of the CPU, iTunes becomes responsive again.
Regarding where the Comments field lives: here’s a relevant section from Apple’s support doc describing the library file (emphasis mine). The URL is http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660:
"This file is a database of the songs in your library and the playlists you’ve created. Some song-specific data is saved in this file. If you delete the file, iTunes creates a new, empty copy when you open the application, but any playlists, song ratings, *comments*, or other information you created is lost. The iTunes Library file is only used by iTunes."
I can edit track name, number, year, album artist, genre, grouping, etc. for a group of songs and watch the progress bar flit through each file in a second or so. But, if I edit the Comments field for the same group of files the progress exhibits the CPU issue I’ve described and each file takes a few minutes to change. Please repeat the experiment, I’d love to hear your results.
JDubs
It takes me no longer to edit comments than anything else. In fact, it might be a
bit quicker than other tags…
And you can see that the comments are stored in the file; just open one in a
different library, or even open a music file in a text editor and search for any
comments you’ve entered. The library may store a _copy_ of your comments,
but that info is stored with the file itself, as all tags are.
I’m surprised (and excited) to hear that you don’t experience the bottleneck for comments specifically.
Here’s another possibility: I have a few hundred smart playlists that are generated depending on text located in the Comments field. I can imagine that when a song’s Comment field is modified, each of those Smart Playlists is recalculated, and perhaps the iTunes Library file is rebuilt. Can anyone shed some light?
Jason
I’ve found that large artwork files can slow iTunes down. Hiding the artwork
pane can speed things up, for different thing depending on whether you have it
set to show art for the currently playing track or for the selected track.
Naturally, coverflow will slow you down too for the same reasons.
I don’t use coverflow.
I just tried hiding the artwork pane; it makes no difference in the time to check
or uncheck a track; I still get the beachball when I do that.
Have you tried running Instruments or Activity Monitor’s sample process to get
some clues as to what’s slowing it down?
I’ve used Activity Monitor, but I don’t think I’ve often dug in with the sample process feature you mention. I’ll give it a shot. I’ll also take a look at Instruments.
My issue with iTunes is almost definitely CPU-related. And it’s caused by iTunes activity. But the mystery remains what iTunes is trying to do and why it has to race the processor to do so.
Jason
I have a library of over 63,000 songs, running on an internal drive on a dual
2GHz PowerMac G5 with 4GB of RAM and I experience exactly the same
problems you’ve described. It is definitely the library file size, which as you’ve
said is directly dependent solely on the number of tracks (and to an extent
playlists) you have, as I have had this problem since well before I had even
30,000 tracks on there.
I haven’t found a solution yet that works for me. I tried splitting the library
and using one of those library switching utilities, but that was hassle and
meant I had to remember which library I’d added things to to and so on.
Altering ID3 tags is the most infuriating part of it – it takes 5-6 seconds just
to change the name of one track. It strikes me that Apple really ought to
update the system with a decent database back-end that wouldn’t require
iTunes to write the entire library file out to disk every time you make a
change (which is, as far as I can tell, what is happening). MySQL or another
free DBMS could easily be used to store the library, and then making changes
to metadata would take no time at all.
I’m really hoping they do something to address this in iTunes 8.0–I just batch changed a mere 90 files (in a 40K+ library) and the operation took over five minutes to complete, with one CPU core pegged the entire time.
Yes, in fact, yesterday I spent some time culling my library and changing tags.
Took me about the same time. I removed about 9000 tracks, though, and my
library file went from 72 to 65 MB. Things seem just a tad less slow. But, yea, I’m
really hoping the next iteration of iTunes will do something about this problem.
I’m a little late in entering this forum, but I’ve been struggling with the same
problem as y’all for months, and somehow tonight’s Google search landed me
here. I don’t have too much new to add, except that my lag time (usually
about 35 seconds per operation) occurs when changing info like the artist
name, composer, album. I have minimal delay with the fields designed for
user input, like genre, ratings, grouping, etc.
Since I, like others on this forum, use iTunes as a music organizing tool and
database, this gets to be a real drag if I’m trying to update my library. Well, I’ll
keep looking for a solution, as we all appear to be, and will post anything
interesting back here if successful.
(I have a MacPro Quad-Core Intel with 8 GB RAM and keep my iTunes library
on a 3 TB G-Speed fiber-channel RAID by G-Tech. The library itself is almost
all Apple Lossless except for some hi-res stuff, and has about 55,000 songs
taking up 1.3 TB of space)
By the way, Kirk, sorry to hear about your MacPro spewing toxic fumes! I’ll
keep posted to see what that was all about (I’m a physician when I’m not
playing music on the Mac).
Hey, how about our man, Obama!!
Regarding the library size: you’re on the high end there with 55,000 tracks.
As I wrote, my response
time got better with iTunes 8, though I still get delays when adding tracks
(but they’re shorter). The
location of the files doesn’t make a difference – in your case on a fiber-
channel RAID disk set – it’s the
location of the library file that is written. But do post if anything improves. I’ll
also update the article if
there are any changes.
Re the toxic Mac Pro: it took about two weeks to flush the odor from my
office. I bought an air
filter/purifier at the end, and ran it for several days, and was able to return to
my office. It has now
passed, but it was clearly an allergic reaction to something.
Re Obama: Yes we did! ;-)
Kirk
It has been interesting reading this thread, I started using iTunes when the first 3rd generation iPods came out, that must be 4/5 years ago now.
Initially I thought iTunes was great for its simplicity in design and the ease with which you could find/ organise songs, create CDs. But once my library got to any size iTunes just struggled. Today is no different – you can’t expect someone on a Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM to be waiting seconds for the application to respond.
Let’s get one thing straight here, no application has any excuse for taking seconds to add a file or change the tag information in a library.
Apple software devs have for some insane? reason not switched the library database from XML to another data structure. XML is not in any way the correct method of storing large amounts of information. The main arguments: 1. Filesize: XML adds a lot of unnecessary metadata (at least for a db) 2. Loading/ Saving: The whole file needs to be read into memory or saved to disk as there is no random access in XML
When you have to read/write 60MB, 100MB or 160MB to disk for a 20byte edit (say a track title change, [20 characters]), this is insane! Don’t blame your computer, don’t try to recreate your library umpteen times, don’t blame the UBS disk or the NAS, and don’t reason that this is a difficult problem for Apple to solve (and tell people not to criticize iTunes too much) – the answer is basic computer science, use an efficient data structure.
I can’t understand why they don’t just store the library a proper database, look at other applications which do this well, MediaMonkey sticks out in my mind, but also WMP doesn’t have such problems with the library (if my memory is correct).
I like iTunes but the love is lost when it becomes unusable.
The library file is _not_ XML; the XML file is a secondary file that’s created from
the library file for use with other applications. This said, it could be that having
to write _two_ files slows things up.
One other thing: I wonder if the library file itself isn’t compressed, because
when you look at it with a text editor, there’s no normal text inside it. Again,
that could slow things up a bit.
Ok I’m corrected on that one Kirk :)
I wonder how often the XML is kept up to date, every change to library or less often etc… Must have a propper look at how its working myself, once I get my old PC with mp3 collection up & running again.
I just did a test, and they’re both updated at the same time. That could be part
of the slowdown, in fact…
My library hit the brakes hard and is very slow to accept changes…Not sure
what happened, but when I added some music yesterday, making changes
became a real grind. I think the library went from 32k to 32.2k in items.
After reading this, dropping some smart (but not smart enough) playlists
along with some other stuff, I noticed that iTunes repeatedly writes a file in
the itunes folder. The result of my actions was a 2M reduction in the iTunes
file size so I stopped. In my case, the file that is being written routinely is a
1M file. I’m not smart enough to know what this is but maybe you do….
My library file….73M
The XML file….66.2
iTunes writes a temp file, but that’s deleted after the library and XML files are
written. Are you saying that file remains? What’s the file called?
sorry….forgot to check in yesterday…..
The files pop up and then are removed.
since posting, I also repaired permissions….there were a couple that needed
work, but nothing clearly itunes.
Either way, working any track data lately is not as slow as it was.
My iTunes library file is very big, and I’ve experienced the same agonizing beachball spinning episodes. I don’t really want any "smart" functions in iTunes. Just smooth playback.
I actually never copy files to the library, I just add them. I prefer organizing my folders myself. For example, I don’t want a thousand tracks in one "Compilations" folder, I’d rather have a folder for each album.
I have long stopped using iTunes to tag files. I use MediaRage to check and amend all tags, add album cover artwork etc. Only when I know all is good with the new files I drag them into iTunes to add them to my library. I still have some wait time when I browse through my collection during playback, but at least this way I don’t have to wait 2 minutes between tagging each track.
Hope this suggestion helps. … and hoping even more for a better "no frills" iTunes soon!
I’m just guessing here, but it may be that "organizing your folders yourself" –
which seems to be an obsession with Windows users carried over from MP3
players where you manually add files and folders – could slow down iTunes. It
means that the program has to look in a number of different locations to find
files.
Again, it’s just a guess, but it would be worth testing someday…
I somehow doubt not copying the individual files to the iTunes library contributes to the slowness. It seems to be the library file writing process that produces the beach ball spinning.
I never use Genius, smart playlists, I never rate my music, nor do I want to know how often I’ve played each track, etc. So it pains me to think that all this keeping track of statistics in iTunes is to no use to me, but it does slow down the program. This is where I wish for a "no-frills" iTunes
I’ve never used Windows, but when I used iTunes the first time I was horrified at the idea of the program "taking over" … putting the files in my user folder, re-organizing subfolders etc. It seemed like the right thing to do for all the newbies with iMacs who just want the machine do all the organizing. To me it was weird, especially the idea having one "Compilations" folder with thousands of tracks. For any individual back-up plans, that’s not so ideal….
Also, my library wouldn’t fit on a single internal HD anyway, at least I have it all on a couple of internal HDs.
Do other people have similar problems/concerns with their itunes collection?
First, it _is_ the library file writing that is the problem. But whenever you copy
a file to your library, the library file gets re-written. The only other solution
would be to have the program parse the disk to see what’s where; that would
be much slower.
As for the organization points you make, I still don’t see the problem. First,
the Compilations folder still has compilations organized by album; it doesn’t
just toss the tracks there. The iTunes Music folder (which doesn’t have to be
in your user folder; I have a hard disk dedicated for my music) keeps things
organized perfectly, by artist and album, so if you ever want to back up files
by sorting them (though, again, I only back up my entire disk) you can.
iTunes lets you keep your music where you want; you can have it not
organize folders for you, but then you’d put the music where you want and
add it to your iTunes library; iTunes doesn’t move it, it just notes the location.
But it’s a computer – don’t you want it doing things for you? Do you worry
about your e-mail program organizing your e-mail? Or do you spend time
moving your messages around and expect your e-mail program to follow?
Fully agree and share your experience. Mac Pro 8 core 3,2GHz 10GB and still
very slow response to changes. 90MB library re-writen each time something
new. iTunes 8 further deteriorates the situation. I use the same trick (open
empty iTunes to work fast whenever I have to do heavy work). It’s a shame
Apple does NOTHING for their best customers.
Since the response time is very short with small libraries, why Apple would not
use some kind of "differential update" of the Library file (like any iPod sync or,
iPhone sync, or like SmartUpdate with SuperDuper …). That could considerably
shorten the "write" time when needed, rather to re-write it entirely ???
Hope someone from Apple iTunes development read all those complaints
sometimes … and does some smart development of iTunes …
I don’t know the logic behind the way they write the library. There must be
something to do with preventing the database from getting corrupted or out of
sync. But since you can’t really perform more than one operation at a time, I’m
not sure why. Frankly, I have a feeling that it’s just not designed for large
libraries, and that they’d have a lot of work to ensure better performance. I’ve
written about this for Macworld several times, so Apple is certainly aware of the
issues.
It seems that the latest iTunes update 8.1.1 has addressed this issue. I do see a much better performance now. Still the beachball will show up once in a while, but at least not ALL the times.
I just got a new MacPro and am considering setting up a striped RAID array with three 1TB HDs (with CCC backup and the OS & apps on a separate HD) for work files and mp3s.
I somehow expect a better disk read/write for my iTunes media files from this …
Anyone has experience with this setup?
I don’t think the RAID would make much of a difference; the read/write speed doesn’t seem to be what slows down iTunes, but rather the writing of its library files. But it is much, much faster now.
Thank God, I am not the only person who has suffered this problem.
I upgraded my computer thinking it was old and slow.
All along, the size of my iTunes library was the cause.
(I some suspected this when using my almost empty iTunes on my G3 laptop which ran faster than my Leopard running desktop.)
I look forward to Apple’s or some one’s work-around to this bugging problem.
If you are using FOLDERS in iTunes to organize your Playlist, get rid of them, the Folders, that is, that might solve your issue. I have over 45K songs, 246GB along with nearly 600GB of movies and TV Shows and iTunes is brisk on a lowly G5 iSight iMac. One other thing, ALWAYS use a Firewire Drive, there is a drastic difference between Firewire and USB, not sure why but there is. Good Luck
It is nice to find other people with large itunes collections. When calling Apple, I have been unable to find a tech who has any experience with large libraries. Anyways, I have recently been having issues with slowness in importing already ripped cds to my library (I use a separate program to rip) I can deal with the slowness but if I click on the itunes window by accident, or scroll within the window iTunes and OS X often crash. I am using iTunes 9.01 with 64k songs and 89MB library file running on a 3ghz imac with 4gb ram. Plenty of free hard drive space and both ram and hard drive test ok. Apple keeps telling me it must be hardware or a software corruption issue–that library size should not affect iTunes performance. I love iTunes and have been using it happily for years but does anyone know of music manager for the mac that handles the database more efficiently?
I don’t think any program works better than iTunes with large libraries. At least I’ve never heard of any, including the many Windows programs that handle music.
Kirk, how big is your library now? Have you experienced any changes with iTunes 9?
About 46K tracks, currently. No, iTunes 9 didn’t change anything for me.
Turns out my problem was software related. I finally broke down and did an erase and install of the OS and now everything is working well. Go figure (I had previously recreated the library from the xml file, downgraded from 10.6, archive installed the OS all to no avail.)
Anyways, if it is any use to those of you still having difficulties, I have a large library (90MB, 63,000 songs, 405GB) and it is now running relatively well. Beachballing for less than 10 seconds when adding new albums. pausing for less than 5 seconds when editing tags.
I’m up to 75,000+ songs and it’s crashing again. running any resource intensive applications while adding music to library can crash the whole OS, requiring a restart. I’m running Snow Leopard with iTunes 9.2 on a 3ghz imac with 4gb ram. Editing tags does not cause crashing and is still pretty quick.
Just a guess, but have you checked for disk problems? A crash when adding files makes me think it’s something to do with writing the files.
According to disk utility and drive genius, the disk is good. These are the only write oriented crashes I experience (I think) and the memory passes testing as well. I watch a lot of movies from my hard drive so I am constantly writing and deleting large files. Those writes do not cause hanging or crashing.
I’ve run into this problem as well. I’ve got about 40,500 tracks and album art for all 3,000 albums. While it was still slow prior to adding album art about six months ago, I noticed that having the album art significantly slowed down loading and scrolling, which is understandable. With the newer graphical iPods and the iPhone/iPad instead of the older generations of text-based interfaces, though, it’s really nice to have album art….
Hi all, glad to see that this problem has not only hit the Windoze users. I have a library sitting at 69589 songs at this moment in time, running 7.7.1, but apart from the slowness, I (and a friend with a similar size library running 9.1.1) have found iTunes to loose some tracks now and then.
We suspect that it has to do with iTunes struggling with the large library files.
One thing that I have noticed though is that if for some reason a track is missing in the iTunes library (the ‘!’ shows next to the track), this tends to slow iTunes down. I did this exercise a while back and went hunting for missing tracks on the HHD. The more I found and relocated, the quicker iTunes became.
Just a thought on my 2¢ worth of info, hope this shed some light.
Hello 2+ year old post!
Windows 7, but have had this problem *since* XP. Back then my library was about 30,000. Now it is 75,000+ songs.
And always, iTunes has run painstakingly slow, and choppy, even just to browse my library. Stutter stutter freeze.
I’ve enjoyed reading posts around the web about this issue, whereafter someone invariably suggests: “perhaps there is a problem with your system”.
Ah, but no. Upon the most pristine of clean installs on the most up-to-date of recent systems, iTunes runs badly when dealing with large libraries.
So for you and your slow iTunes on Mac, I have no comfort to offer.
On Windows, Windows Media Player has actually become my weapon of choice for allowing access to my library for parties. It runs like a charm. Somehow the same library that defeats iTunes doesn’t trouble WMP in the least.
But a wasted opportunity, it seems, for not having iPod integration.
Alas.
Same same.
-68 MB Itunes Database
-4200 tunes
-a handful of playlists and not that big
-reasonable CPU
-Hybrid HDD
On a clean build with pretty much itunes only installed(music is my number 1 priority), bad bad bad performance. It takes minutes to add a new album. I would use WMP but I am addicted to iPod/iPhone integration.
The problem as i see it is the size of the database, 68MB XML file, come on apple there has to be a better way!! Reading, writing, inserting and updating, this can not be the best solution to this problem, what about some kind of db server running within iTunes, not just a cached index for reading?? Just because XML is a convenient and easy standard doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the option to go for.
I appreciate that it would ruin the opportunity for other developers to access the data should a proprietary database be implemented, but I just want it to work and fast. And come on… who are we talking about here, it’s not Open Source.
I like iTunes(not love) but i am conflicted by the performance versus convenience problem. I’m thinking about getting an android phone and waiting for someone to develop something faster that can handle large libraries and has remote integration and using AirFoil. Unfortunately I don’t have the time or skills to do this, otherwise I would seriously give it a go.
I would pay for it, it’s a big part of my life.
Well, a few comments.
4200 tracks is nothing. I kind of wonder if your problem isn’t something other than iTunes.
As for the XML file, I don’t see how it’s that big with that number of tracks. Also, the XML file is not read; it’s written. The library file is read and written, and it’s much smaller.
My problems were fixed by purchasing a larger drive. It seems that all my previous beach-balling was caused by excessive seeking due to a fragmented and overfull hdd. I now have 30% of the drive free and iTunes works like a charm.
iMac core2duo Penryn 3.06Ghz, 4GB memory at 800 Mhz, iTunes library and music files (600+ GB) stored on external 1 TB G-Tech Drive w/firewire 800 connection, 85,000+ songs, iTunes library file 26.3 MB.
Hi Kirk,
My mistake, I meant 42000.
Clearly a big piece of humble pie is due for this clown.
Thanks for the insight.
On a clean built machine with nothing else running I get exactly the same issue as I described above(Windows 7 64 4GB 7200 Hybrid HDD for anyone that’s interested).
However, since my last rant I moved my library off the OS volume to a 400GB volume and have achieved a significant performance improvement(Thanks for the idea Jake).
Cheers
glfrancisco, googling for solutions to my slow itunes library, but that’s just one of the problems popping up since installing a seagate momentus xt hybrid drive in my MacBook Pro… I think all my recent trouble stems from that disc, so i think i’ll just leave it as is til my brand new laptop arrives in about two weeks :-D
I did what C. Runksynych said. I had a lot of missing files (30000+). Now iTunes is lightning fast again!
Thanks!!
Laughable, really! There I was reading my way through many of the oh-so-familiar comments and, huh? iTunes version 7?!!!! Here we are, now in iTunes 10, and also 3 years later and, alas, we continue to have the same problems! I unfortunately am unable to contribute to the discussion with some solution, but rather to “add a voice” to the what seems a common issue. Is it wrong that I find comfort in finding others in distress?!
To echo many, I too have a slow, unresponsive program when ANYTHING is changing. I too have come up with the conclusion, however speculative, that it had to do with the .xml library file. I also have a large library (135,000 items across the music, movie, tv show, etc library folders), with a .xml file around 250MB. I can guarantee it has nothing to do with system resources, having recently upgraded to an 8-core, 10gb memory MacPro (which can seemingly handle just about anything else I throw at it!)… the unresponsive behaviour within iTunes has followed me through, regardless of the system. Again echoing the above, ripping cd’s, altering tags, even changing parameters on smart playlists causes a minimum of a 5 second “beach ball moment”…and this is sometimes extended to almost a full 30 seconds.
My most frustrating action is ripping. During the entire process of adding material to my library the program is all but dead.
Perhaps this will be corrected by Apple, as many have now hoped for, suggested, had faith will happen… although, admittedly, I’m beginning to question whether that will actually happen given the age of this thread!!! Perhaps THIS page needs to be submitted in with a support ticket to Apple…! It will become more widespread as people continue to increase their library sizes…! I alone still have at least 1000 more cd’s sitting on my shelf that have yet to be added…!
do you have a lot of smart playlists? Try this, if you do: edit each one and turn off live updating. Quit iTunes and relaunch it. Then see how much more responsive it is. It makes a difference for me, with a library roughly half the number of items as yours.
This is just an aside and doesn’t have anything to do with the problem, but I just wanted to recommend XLD for CD ripping on Macs. Itunes has never had a great ripping engine and XLD (OSX Lossless Decoder) is free and produces top quality rips in FLAC, MP3, OGG, etc. formats.
XLD is a great program, but it can’t access Gracenote for tagging info. So if your discs aren’t listed on FreeDB or MusicBrainz, that can be a problem.
I do mention XLD in every Macworld article I write about ripping and converting, though, it’s by far the best tool out there.
Agreed with both of you! I too have XLD, and LOVE it, but, alas, it doesn’t have the support for much of the id3 tagging. With that said, years ago my library WAS in flac, and I still have an external drive filled with material I’ve been slowly converting into AAC… XLD rules for this!
Kirk, I have proceeded with disabling the live updating in all but 2 smart playlists, thrown a disc from one of my many cd folders still awaiting to be ripped…. and watched my psychedelic beach ball do it’s thing…! Sigh… I was so full of hope….!!!!! Thank you regardless! Taking any and ALL further suggestions!!! (and do you think I should stop singing to the monitor? Maybe it’s rebelling due to my lousy voice?!)
Hmm, sorry to hear that.
Is your library on an external hard disk? In particular, is your library file on an external disk?
What about other changes – say changes to tags for an album – with live updating off. Are they faster?
Sorry to say, no, tagging is just as slow. The process of adding an album artist to an album was a full minute process, and 50 seconds of that we were playing with our beach ball again…!
Media files ARE located on multiple externals, mostly firewired (one USB drive). (allocated library disk space is 10TB…even with the MacPro’s 4 internal HD slots, I could only hold a max. of 8TB…) The library files, however, are on one of the internal hd’s (in its default location).
Multiple externals – I bet that’s your problem. iTunes has to read from all those disks every time it updates the library, so if you have multiple disks, the data throughput being limited, that’s probably slowing it down. Especially if one is a USB drive. My music is on a single external connected via FW 800; when I had an FW 400 drive in the past, it was slower.
Kirk, WILL MOST DEFINITELY try that! I do have them set to live updating, so perhaps that will make a difference…I currently have about 20 smart playlists, so maybe…?! ALWAYS open to suggestion!!!! (read: tell me to talk nicely and sing lullabies to the monitor, and I probably will….!). Will write back to give either a thumbs up or down….! Cheers!
Hmmm… yes, that does make sense. Not sure how to correct that, however… I have recently bought my first 3TB drive, it now being the largest available… with a large library, doesn’t one NEED to extend the media files on to a second, or more, drives? What do you do when your drive fills up?
Well, my music fits on a 1.5 TB drive, so the only times I’ve faced that problem I’ve just bought a bigger drive. (And bigger backup drives.)
I do, however, cull my library from time to time, removing thousands of tracks I don’t listen to regularly, and put them in other folders so I can add them back if I want.
you could create a raid 0 volume with a couple of your internal drives using disk utility or you could purchase an external raid box like a Drobo from data robotics.
Ohhhh, now why didn’t I think of that idea, Jake?! Me likes that!!! That WOULD solve not only the reads from multiple drives, but also the ridiculous collection of externals plugged in! Even with all the plugs available on the MacPro, there IS a limit, and my last 3TB purchase filled the last front plug! I am most definitely going to look further into this idea! Many thanks!!!
Unfortunately removing tracks defeats the purpose of the digital collection… we have been attempting to “down size” by moving practically an entire wall of bookshelves of cd’s and dvd’s into storage and digitalizing the collection, which can then be synced via the appleTV’s, the iPads, the iPods, etc. We have music playing almost all day every day within the house through the amp (connected to the MacPro/iTunes), and at least one of us has some iPod out with them… a little crazy, admittedly! I have been wondering what to do about the storage issue, however… I think the raid volume idea is brilliant! Hmmmm, curious to determine if, once it’s up and running, whether that will solve the painfully slow iTunes issue….
Time to start doing some window shopping….!!!
Downsizing the library doesn’t bother me. In most cases, it’s versions of recordings that I already have in multiple versions, ones that I don’t listen to because others are better.
But the RAID idea could be a solution. There is clearly an I/O bottleneck when you have multiple drives, because the data from each drive is trying to get in before the others. If you do try this, and it works out, come back and post about it here.
Will do! “Kirkville” now bookmarked!! MUCH appreciate all of your help, both of you!!!! Cheers from Toronto!
I just upgraded to a Quad Core Mac Pro 3.2/4G/5780, with a 0 RAID 1.5T pair of HD’s giving me a 3T system disk. This disk is used to “Write To” for all the changes iTunes does when I edit my tags. I blow through my 4G memory like there is no tomorrow. I suppose that even 48G would not be enough. The program seems bent to make a virtual memory swap file on the local boot drive. I have 120,00+ songs, half as Apple Lossless and half as ACC 320’s for my iPods. I make changes to both files/databases at the same time. Each type of file is on the E-SATA motherboard bus, inside my Mac Pro, on its own HD. I don’t share data paths.
To be fair… my converting times, have gone down a lot. I get 48x conversions to ACC’s, a big boot from my G5/2.7 and MacBook 2.0. The new Mac imports rips at a pleasant clip, a welcome improvement. BUT changing tags, brings up the beach ball of death. As the system goes off to where ever Mac Systems go… when this occurs. I sent in an improve iTunes comment, but don’t expect a reply, nor any help with the problem at hand. A modern computer should handle 120,000 songs, without a missed heart beat.
I would RAID 0 a pair of drives or more, for each flavor of files, if I thought it would help. The 3.0 G SATA ports inside my Mac Pro should be fast enough to handle music. I use 2 new Hitachi 2T 7200 RPM drives for my files. My music files load a BUNCH faster, into an empty iTunes file. But doing more than that is just a major stress inducer. Now that I have an Intel Mac with 64 bit mode on by default, I don’t care if Apple improved the iTunes program with a full rebuild, Intel only and 64 bit only. But I doubt that will happen in my lifetime. I suppose even the new Thunderbolt, the next generation of I/O, only on the 2011 MacBook Pro as of now, will help much. The problem seems to be in the program… as best I can tell.
I have LOCKED, my iTunes Music Library.xml file. I keep an empty 12 KB file in a safe place, and use it. This keeps iTunes from writing to the XML file and saves some time. I got some speed from this tip, I found while on Google, searching for slow iTunes performance threads (There are plenty of them). It has no down side of which I am aware. I don’t use third party iTunes software, so I don’t have a need to read this file. It saves some disc space and forces iTunes to write the file just once, to its database, not twice as the default setup comes.
I have read this article many times, and all I can do is just chime in with a, I have the problem as well. I don’t think the locked XML file tip is noted above my post. So perhaps that will be of use to other users with performance issues. Let’s hope that Apple will choose to help out, its users with bigger databases… I’m sure they could improve the program. I have used this program from back when it was called Sound Jam. I suppose the program basic code to be that old.
Thanks for the many comments above, and the insight given on various setups and systems. I love iTunes, despite the hair pulling problems encountered. There is no better solution to music on a Mac, of which I am aware. My Mac is my stereo, and has been for many years. I don’t buy new CD players and such anymore. I just stream the Apple Lossless files to my big SUN amp and enjoy the music. Gone are the 400 disc changers and the hand indexing of slots, etc. etc. iTunes has solved many problems for us, and improved the quality of life in general. I just wish it wasn’t such a DOG to edit.
I have found that the best way to do things, in iTunes, is to rip into an empty library, add your art work, big for lossless and small for acc’s, edit all of the tags, include lyrics and everything else, at the time of the rip. Then export the “finished” album to your hard drive(s) as requires. Then import the files/datasets you wish to use. I try to NOT have to edit existing tags. This is where iTunes is so slow as to cause one to cuss. Not the ideal situation I know, but one way to work around the limitations of the program. Also every once in a while, I copy the music HD to another HD. This puts things back together again (dare I say defrag) and improves performance, at least for me. I know a modern Operating System should not need this, but it is a proven performance enhancer for me. I suppose if you don’t edit tags you will not see anything, but if you love your music and tinker with the tags, as many here seem to do, it will help.
Interesting idea about the XML file. If you do that, though, and you have other applications than need to interact with your iTunes library, they won’t work. However, I’m going to try it for a while and see what happens. I have a box of 13 Mozart CDs to rip, and I want to see if that gets rid of the lag between tracks during the ripping process.
My library has 96,465 songs plus maybe 5,000 podcasts. Is there any reason to (or not to) move from iTunes 8.2.1 to 9.2.1 or 10.2.2, or to Snow Leopard? Sounds like the fundamental problems haven’t changed much, but have there been any improvements (or new features that make the problems worse)?
Mac Pro 2.66, 4 GB RAM, OSX 10.5.8, iTunes library on a dedicated 2TB internal drive
Hi,
Very useful and insightful thread, this – thanks. I should first state that I’m a windows user so am probably already at a disadvantage… Anyway.
My iTunes is becoming increasingly unuseable. I have a large-ish library 30,000+ songs at 270GB or so – all on an external hard drive. My laptop is fine with regards to RAM CPU etc, but adding music, changing tags or ripping a CD completely locks it up. Checking in Task Manager shows it to be dropping in and out – i.e. shfting into ‘not responding’ every 30 seconds or so. And as for gapless effing playback checking…
Is it simply down to the fact that I’m asking too much with the external hard drive? And (naive question) does it matter that the library file itself is located on the C (internal) drive?
I’ll try some of the advice here (clean up ! tracks, get rid of some artwork and turn off live updating on smart playlists) and see what effect that has.Essentially, I’m willing to jump to another player as I’ve had enough!
Cheers,
Matt
If your external drive is connected by USB, there’s definitely some lag. Do you have any other connection options?
It is USB, aye. Not sure what other connecting options there are? I can’t shift it to the internal drive as it would swamp it. Am I doomed?
As an aside, I’ve also noticed that adding music from the library, a process which used to take 20 seconds or so, can now take up to two minutes, sometimes locking the thing up terminally so I have to crash out of it – this is has literally started happening in the last week or so. (Just experimenting with this right now – frozen on importing track 2, Task Manager showing ‘Adding Files and iTunes’ both as Not Responding though music is playing…
And lastly – I’ve only very recently re-built my library due to reverting to iTunes 10.0 thinking the problem was with 10.2.2.902320 (or whatever the latest update was), so don’t have a huge number of playlists.
I wonder if it would help to defragment your external disk. Since you have no other type of connection, there’s not much else you can do. You could also check it for any kind of corruption. If this is a recent change, there’s a possibility that it’s the disk.
Also, have you installed any new software lately that might slow down your computer, notably antivirus software?
if you cannot upgrade your computer, don’t use folders in iTunes, use FireWire 400 or 800 over USB, get more ram, iTunes is a memory pig. Good luck.
For context, I have used iTunes since the beginning on flowerpot iMacs to my current set up macbookpro i7. I have over 154,000 songs stored on a lacie d2 7200 rpm 1.5 tb hard drive connected via firewire 800 and iTunes is fast for a couple reasons, I now have a top of the line MacBook pro, 8gb ram and a 7200 rpm internal hard drive. I also removed all video files to another computer, a 2006 MacBook, it has over 600 movies and 1245 tv shows, it pretty much serves content to my apple tv.
Looking in vain for the ever elusive solution. 170,000+ songs plus maybe 40 G of video. I can’t scroll without a 20 second wait….videos are worse than a bad streaming connection. I have 6G RAM and a firewire 2T drive. I wish there was an ITunes alternative, I dread having to do anything on ITunes
Doesn’t Apple read any of these comments!!
Well, 170K is certainly the high end of libraries I’ve encountered. I’m at 70K, and I know many people around the 100K mark.
Do you have any smart playlists? I’d be interested in hearing what happens if you turn off live updating on all of them.
If you’re using FireWire, you probably have a Mac; what model?
i have a 24″ early 2009 aluminum Mac…
I turned off live updating on all but 2 of my smart playlists…ill try turning those off…but i believe i did try that
An update on my journey with iTunes of late. I have a summer 2010 Mac Pro Quad Core 3.2 w/24G/ATI Radeon 5870 SSD boot/system drive. I’ve bumped my iTunes storage drives to 2×2 WD 2T’s in RAID 0. One striped RAID set for Lossless, one striped RAID set for my ACC’s. The drives only hold music. All user files are on other drives. My boot/system is pared down to 24G on a 80G SSD. The 2 x Raid is all mounted internal to my Mac, using all four bays. The SSD is in the DVD bay. I was disappointed in the as delivered performance of my new Mac setup, as noted above, so I bumped the memory from 4 to 24 (3×8) using the triple channel data path the Mac Pro loves. Went from single 2T HD’s to RAID 0 pairs, using the Bare Feats recommended WD Black drives. I put in the SSD boot/system drive to reduce the iTune rewrite “delay,” that I thought was occurring with conventional HD’s. The load time into an empty library, from Command-O to finish are very much improved, as is my drive copy to backup time.
iTunes just sucks the life out of computers, it would seem. My son keeps telling me that iTunes was not designed to be a editing platform, just a listening one.
I’m getting the spinning beach ball of death on iTune’s tag edits, still. It is some better, but not enough so as to be worth the time and or money. I tried to build a iTunes work station. I guess I could have gotten the faster, six core 3.33 machine… but I’ll wager even it would choke. I have 89500 out of 120,000 songs loaded in iTunes as I write this. I’m at a loss, in what to do or try next. Other things/programs are wonderfully “snappy.” I enjoy a fast mac… so all is not in vain. BUT I though I could leverage iTunes, to work as fast as I do. But that is not happening, and it don’t look like it is going to in the near short term.
Perhaps the new, upcoming OS Lion will give us some wonderful new performance upgrade? I expect a new iTunes version to go along with the changes to Lion. One can only wait and hope that Apple will fix the database hog that iTunes has come to be. Thoughts and or suggestions… I’d love to talk to someone who has a bigger collection, and a Mac that works up to speed.
Cheers all…
Well, what’s interesting here is you have a powerhouse computer, and only about 20% more tracks than I have on a Mac mini. I get a lag when editing tags, but rarely a beachball.
My guess is that there’s something going on that would be really interesting to discover (especially because if I could find out what’s going on, I could write a Macworld article about it.)
Are you interested in hooking up for a voice chat, maybe with screen sharing, via iChat? I’d like to see what’s happening, and see if I can figure out why yours is so slow. You can email me at the address near the top of the sidebar on this page.
Hi Guys,
I have the same issue. I have around 20,000 tracks, and I ripped my entire DVD collection have around 1,000 movies.
I have two instances of my collection running, a copy at home, and another copy in my office.
At my office I have a year old iMac accessing the music and movies over the network all media hosted on a NAS, and at home I have a AMD Phenom 2 6-core with 4 gig of ram, with four 1tb drives that run at 6gb/s.
And either way I still get tremendous lag.
As anyone used a program like doubtwist? and will any third-party program worth with apple tv?
How are you accessing your NAS? By wifi or by Ethernet? If it’s the former, then it’s most likely the NAS and your network throughput that are the problem. I saw this when testing a NAS.
However, for your home setup, this is odder. 20K tracks is not much, and as long as you don’t do anything to your movies (such as tagging), iTunes won’t read those files once they’re in the library.
In my office the nas is directly connected to my router, but my computers and apple tv are all wifi connected.
And I do edit the ID3 tags and put movie posters within the tag.
The lag didn’t begin until i started to rip all of my DVDs and add them to iTunes. I’ve began purchasing movies via iTunes in stead of DVDs, and i can’t believe Apple hasn’t done anything to improve performance especially with the new Apple TV not having on board storage, and the launch of Airplay
Well, the NAS is certainly slowing things down. I’m trying to figure out if movie files slow down iTunes, and it might be the case. iTunes shouldn’t be reading those files unless you change tags on them. Do you have lag at other times as well?
I get a 2 seconds lag everytime I change to another track in iTunes, while the same operation works fine in VLC. The audio files are on a NAS I access through wifi, the library is on the main drive.
Now tell everybody iTunes has nothing to do with it =)
One thing that puzzles me is getting the beachball when just SCROLLING. Surely that isn’t writing anything to the Library file…
Add artwork to your files (tv shows, movies, songs). Once the meta data has been written with an image, iTunes no longer needs to scan the file for a poster frame each time.
My current thoughts on large iTunes libraries and such. I currently have about 5,000+ albums (CD’s) and around 75,000+ songs titles. I keep an AIFF copy and an ACC 320 copy of these albums. The AIFF’s are for my home listening enjoyment, the ACC’s are for my iPod(s), and mobile use. I was getting the beach ball of spinning death all the time, while editing and or working on the database(s). Using a tip I got from Kirk… I have moved my iTunes folder to its own HD and made it a SSD. I also have my boot/system on its own SSD HD as well.
I use DiskWarrior to look at and keep track of the directory data of my discs. I have noticed that my boot/system drive is much happier with the constant adding/deleting/changing/thrashing I do while working on my iTunes libraries, is on its own disc. I hardly have any directory fragmenting and such. It seems that, for me anyway, that this change, having iTunes on its own HD limits system maintenance and problems. I never thought to put the finger on iTunes prior.
I use iTunes differently than most? I have my library on its own SSD as noted above, and my AIFF/ACC files on another RAID drive(s). I use Command O to import the files I wish to this library. (Using the Option key while starting up iTunes lets one create and or select the library you wish to use.) I have created a ripping library, a working and or converting library, an ACC and AIFF library. They switch back and forth as fast as you can quit the program and hit the iTunes icon in the dock, while holding down the Option key.
This has made my life a lot simplier and a bunch faster. I load what I need/want and leave the rest on the AIFF/ACC HD’s. I have noticed that the size of my files gets out of control on the SSD. No problem, from time to time I just format the drive and start over. Now remember this SSD HD has NO files, AIFF or ACC that reside upon it. Or only long enough for me to rip them and put them away. I just keep the pointers on the iTunes SSD drive. This is wicked fast… I find scrolling through all of my albums, in any view mode, to be a thing of beauty and joy. NOT the pain that I have endured prior.
The new 64 bit program is a much welcomed addition to iTunes. My converting times have gone from 45 x to 60 x. This is converting AIFF’s to ACC’s. Ripping time is the same as before. It seems that file size, in the new 64 bit version of iTunes are a tad larger than they were prior. A small price to pay for the speed and general handling improvements of the latest version of iTunes.
At times I have both AIFF’s & ACC’s loaded together, this is 150,000+ songs… and I am able to get around and edit/tag/fix years etc. without much of a problem. This is a ton better than what I was experieancing.
Things I have learned. Your music files are much happier, when you tag them, add the artwork, lyrics etc. et al. Anything you do or may want to do. while the files are on/in the ripping HD. Changes made to song names will change in the album folder. You can change the track numbers and such and they will be the same as in the file. If you do this “remotely” as I call it. Having your files on the main disc and or storage of your choice, the data will change for the song, but the data in the album folder will be unchanged. An interesting paradox. I like my files and my meta data to be one and the same. It seems that file size gets bigger when you wait to fix your tags. A comparison of a fresh ripped and tagged album and one that was made to the same standard in a haphazard method differ for the worse.
We all know, or should know that if you change a single . (dot) in a file, iTunes will rewrite the whole file. It does so once for itself and once for the XML file. I lock my XML files to stop half of this nonsense. My point here being that files that are ripped and tagged to your current standards… make the best iTunes database files. They are not “exploded” and or spread all over your storage HD(s). Looking at drives with iDefrag shows what a mess of the file gets made when you edit later. I’ve got so that if I don’t have time to do it right, it will have to wait until I can. Files created and placed on your storage drive, that are in one piece, are happier files. Yes, the computer can find all the bits and pieces… that is not the point here.
Album art: iTunes uses the artwork from the first song, as the display icon. Knowing this now, I use smaller and compressed versions for all remaining tracks/songs. For example in my ACC’s I use a 320×320 in the first/head file and 256×256 or 160×160 for the balance of the tracks. If I want to see the “Big Picture” I can go to the first track/song and there it is. The rest of the songs/tracks only need the artwork to ID them. This saves a bit of space and makes the files quicker to handle. I want the smallest file that has the best quality. You can bend this bit of info to fit your own specific needs as you require.
iTunes works regardless of the metrology one uses. Apple has done a wonderful job here. I am just sharing some hard won insight into what could be an improved method of creating your files. I am also happy to wave goodbye to the spinning beach ball of death as well.
Now I’ve said it, watch the beach ball show up again…
Rodney J. Sorensen