Slow track skipping

[the Puck]

Hey there. Excuse me for clogging up the forums with a question I could possibly answer with reading the docs or just searching a bit - normally I would do that, but it's summer over here and I get out as much as I can.

I just quickly grabbed rockbox for my Ipod (cant remember right now whether its first or second gen, but I thought it wouldn't make a difference right now) because I just hate how that thing behaves originally. Ill spare you the details about what I hate.

Anyway. I just put all my mp3s in the music root folder (dont laugh - thats how I like it), set the limits to accept all those files in one dir - and weeee off we go.

A quick "wweeeeee off we go" was the whole purpose of this exercise.

Now skipping a track can take, I dont know, maybe 30 seconds? My bet is on the whole "one big folder" thing, if the music was in a lot of smaller folders, it would work a lot better, I guess, amirite?

Hints? Suggestions? Ways to deal with that (ideally, I want one big folder AND quick skipping, if that's even the issue)?

Either way, thanks in advance.

[saratoga]

Is the disk spinning up while you wait those 30 seconds?  If the track isn't buffered when you try to skip to it, you'll have to wait for a spin up and buffering, though I'm surprised it takes that long. 

[the Puck]

Yeah, I figure its a buffer thing and has to do with data being shoveled from ye olde harddrive upon startup. If I give it a while and just listen (dunno, 3 or 4 tracks worth of time), I can skip a few tracks just fine before I hit that point again where the drive starts to shovel like a 80 year old coal miner.

It's actually a bit of a coincidence I even know that that ipod used to put the tunes in a lot of smaller folders it caches. but even if you skip over one whole of those folders (pod creates them itself) a new one is loaded up pretty quickly. Short version: original firmware is really really fast and responsive (and nicer to my battery life, too). However, IIRC there's not a lot of "randomness" or rather a lot of fake randomness when it comes to shuffle.

I still like that not-being-a-princess-about-that-data-transferring-thing attitude of rockbox a lot more than the need to synchronize my ipod with my collection - via itunes on top of that. bleeeurgh. But getting back quick and responsive button feeling sure would be nice.

Oh and btw... 30 (sometimes even a bit more) might be the extreme case, but it surely was not an exaggeration. I'm seriously trying to get help here.

[saratoga]

It's actually a bit of a coincidence I even know that that ipod used to put the tunes in a lot of smaller folders it caches. but even if you skip over one whole of those folders (pod creates them itself) a new one is loaded up pretty quickly. Short version: original firmware is really really fast and responsive (and nicer to my battery life, too). However, IIRC there's not a lot of "randomness" or rather a lot of fake randomness when it comes to shuffle.

Its not about the folders, its just that if you're using the OF, its likely buffering the tracks in the order you're skipping through them.  I'm not really clear whats going on with rockbox, but it sounds like you've managed to skip through tracks that have not been buffered.

[the Puck]

But it's really really easy to do that, even when I'm not skipping a lot of tracks. Sometimes it's enough to skip two tracks and the problem starts. It does it with or without shuffle.

Is there a setting I could have screwed up so the buffering doesnt work properly?

Or Is my harddisk just THAT crappy (i mean, in terms of mp3 players that thing is ancient...)? I dont know whether or not a defrag will do anything, I'll quickly check it. (I quickformatted that thing, installed rockbox and put the music in the root folder).

Maybe some wild guesses or blind shots I can try just to alleviate the problem a bit?

[yapper]

Something does seem amiss. On my 2nd Gen iPod it is a bit slow when skipping forward a few tracks, but I'm talking maybe 1-2 seconds delay, not 30 seconds as you mentioned.

I tried skipping forward 10 tracks, and that slowed down to about 10 seconds delay, but again still not anything like your 30 seconds.

My tests were done with typical music tracks (approximately 4 minutes duration, 128k or 256k bit rates). Performance with larger files is likely to be worse.

[soap]

When was the last time you used your iPod in a similar manner in the original firmware?

[BruceHP]

You might want to search this Forum, but, I seem to rember a problem relating track skipping and large album art.

[the Puck]

When was the last time you used your iPod in a similar manner in the original firmware?

I'm not sure what you mean. Apart from the arranging of the files I use it just like that every day while biking. No playlists, no nothing. If there's a track I dont like, I just fumble for the skip button and that's it. Works like a charm - but I didnt like that I cannot just use that ipod like a normal drive (when it comes to putting music on it), so last thursday I gave rockbox a spin.

You might want to search this Forum, but, I seem to rember a problem relating track skipping and large album art.

A what in a what now? Unless that album art is somehow embedded in the mp3s I shouldnt have any. Why would I use diskspace on pictures, that thing is for music (album art IS pictures, right?)

edit: I just tried it with only 6 files in the music folder, and it worked perfectly. With 1600, as it stands right now, its slow as molasses. Oh buffer, why wont you behave? It makes the whole thing pretty much un-usable.

[Lear]

As far as I know, the FAT file system just isn't very efficient when dealing with folders with many files in it. However, if you enable the dircache in Rockbox, that isn't a problem any more (provided you let it finish scanning before doing anything; it shouldn't take many seconds anyway). If it was enabled, then the problem is something else...

But if you only had 6 files in the folder, then maybe all of them fit in the buffer, so skipping would indeed be fast then.

[the Puck]

Yup, that did it. Directory caching was off, but it seems that was the default setting.

Is it a bad idea to enable it for ye olde iPods per default?
 

[evilnick]

It's not that it's a bad idea to have it switched on (in your usage case), more that it uses more memory as it has to store the data of where all the files are.
This leads to (slightly) less memory available to play music, which in turn leads to less battery life.

Rockbox is used by many people in many different ways. Some use the Database, some prefer using the Files browser so there's a pretty careful balance so that the default options are "most useful" to the majority of the users.

This is one of the reasons that we have such a thorough and hopefully accessible manual (hint hint) 

[the Puck]

yeah, yeah, I know, RTFM 

[pondlife]

IMHO directory cache should be enabled by default for all hard disk players (with the exception of the Archoses?).

Who here runs DOS without SMARTDRV.SYS  ?

pondlfe

[Llorean]

Remember, directory cache still has some limitation with regard to the maximum number of supported files (that are very easy to hit with our support of various chiptune formats). Until it fails more gracefully (and obviously) enabling it by default probably isn't the best idea.

Ideally, of course, it wouldn't actually fail.