Unoffical empeg BBS

Quick Links: Empeg FAQ | RioCar.Org | Hijack | BigDisk Builder | jEmplode | emphatic
Repairs: Repairs

Topic Options
#205646 - 19/02/2004 09:28 Play Counts
zexpe
journeyman

Registered: 21/08/2002
Posts: 63
Loc: Edinburgh, UK
Hi all,

I know that in the v2 final release software the problem of play counts not updating was supossed to be resolved, but I'm sure that sometimes (not laways) a song's play count isn't being incremented. Maybe it's just for songs on my second hard disc - I'm not sure. Also I often notice this effect when I've added a whole new album to my empeg (which should end up on my second hard disc). I'd play through the entire album X times, but the play counts for all of the songs would all be X-N, so sometimes the play counts weren't being incremented, and when this happened it is true for every song on the playlist (not just the new album if I play something else afterwards). This has nothing to do with the problem of the empeg losing its current play list position that occurs when the power is lost too quickly as I haven't seen that effect occur in very long time.

I'm running the v2 final release software, hijack v340, and I use jEmplode (various versions depending upon which bug I'm trying to avoid) to manage my collection.

Sorry I can't be more specific right now, or mess around with uninstalling, or upgrading hijack, as I'm too busy. I just thought I let the group know of this problem, and see if others have also noticed similar issues.

Thanks,
Ross

Top
#205647 - 03/11/2004 11:41 Re: Play Counts (dynamic data update problems) [Re: zexpe]
zexpe
journeyman

Registered: 21/08/2002
Posts: 63
Loc: Edinburgh, UK
Does anybody else have this problem? I've still got it and it's even more interesting now...

OK, so the problem is, quite simply, that for some songs the play counts aren't being updated. The songs affected are apparently completely random.

Now I've just installed emphatic v2 to my empeg and initialised all of the song ratings to 5... but looking through the db with jEmplode a random sample of songs scattered around the db haven't been initialised to 5 - they're still stuck on zero. These same songs suspiciously also have zero play counts, despite other songs in the same playlist having play counts greater than zero! This is true for all songs with skip_count = 0, and the total number of songs affected is about 600 out of 3000 in total. Again, they just seem to be randomly affected tracks within albums where every other track is functioning perfectly. I've checked the FIDs of the mp3s, but that doesn't seem to be a factor as the affected FIDs cover a large range from 336 to 69776.

So it seems that for some songs the dynamic data isn't being updated. Any ideas?

Some background information, I'm running v2 final software, exclusively using jEmplode to deal with the database (various versions - mostly 69 now), and am running the latest versions of Hijack (413), and emphatic (2.04). I used to have my music split over a 10Gb and a 30Gb hard disc, but 6 months ago I migrated all of the music across to a new 40 Gb hard disc. This problem essentially existed both then and now. Also I used a fresh dynamic data partition to store the play counts on the new hard disc, so they were all reset to zero.

Ross

Top
#205648 - 03/11/2004 11:52 Re: Play Counts (dynamic data update problems) [Re: zexpe]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
...affected FIDs cover a large range from 336 to 69776...

That's a lot of FIDs. Do you have a lot of small files?

I know that your error distribution seems random, but I am wondering if the player software somehow reacts badly when trying to update dynamic data of a FID that is too high or references an invalid block in the dynamic partition.

An interesting test might be to reset your counts to zero (perhaps you can copy the data temporarily using dd to a file on a different partition) and try playing a series of low numbered FIDs. Check to see if it is updating. Then play one very high numbered FID and then a sequence of low ones again. This would check to see if a high FID is blocking future dynamic data updates.
_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

Top
#205649 - 03/11/2004 16:33 Re: Play Counts (dynamic data update problems) [Re: pgrzelak]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Yeah, what Paul said. I think you may find a correlation between high FIDs and dynamic data that doesn't update.
_________________________
- Tony C
my empeg stuff

Top
#205650 - 04/11/2004 18:38 Re: Play Counts (dynamic data update problems) [Re: pgrzelak]
zexpe
journeyman

Registered: 21/08/2002
Posts: 63
Loc: Edinburgh, UK
Quote:

That's a lot of FIDs. Do you have a lot of small files?



Nope. I have about 3000 or so mp3s, and not too many playlists. Note, those were decimal FID numbers I gave, not hexadecimal ones (as they are stored in the file system).

Quote:

An interesting test might be to reset your counts to zero (perhaps you can copy the data temporarily using dd to a file on a different partition) and try playing a series of low numbered FIDs. Check to see if it is updating. Then play one very high numbered FID and then a sequence of low ones again. This would check to see if a high FID is blocking future dynamic data updates.


Nice idea, but is it really necessary to reset the counts to zero first? I had a go playing a series of low (<1000) FIDs and then mixed in a a few high (>60000) FIDs tracks into the playlist, and checked to see whether the play counts had updated correctly. Every song had been updated correctly, both the high-FID tracks and the low-FID tracks that followed the high ones. I'd be surprised if that was really the problem. I wonder if it's an intermittent hard disc problem?

Ross

Top