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Subject:Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Posted by: knowbody
Date:2/9/2005 8:34:07 AM

I'm hoping someone at Sony can give me some advice about the maximum practical size of a database. What factors would effect it? CPU and Ram? I have I GB of Ram and CPU of 2 Ghz. (Pentium 4). What size of database is recommended? I have around 100,000 loops. Would one database be too slow? Would it be faster to have 2 or 4 smaller databases and just open and close them according to the type of project.? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris (Hunt)

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:2/10/2005 11:23:44 AM

I would say using smaller libraries rather than one big huge one would improve performance, though I'm not sure by how much depending on the size of the library and config of the system.

Try cutting it down to four libraries (~25,000 loops each) to see if you notice anything different.

Iacobus
-------
RodelWorks - Original Music for the Unafraid
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Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: knowbody
Date:2/11/2005 1:13:08 AM

Thanks Iacabus. I haven't actually made a complete library since reloading the loops. I was hoping for some comments from a Sony person before I did so. Sonybody out there?

Chris

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: jwf
Date:2/11/2005 2:42:13 PM

The database can certainly have 100,000 loops in it (our reference library has ~70000). However, you'll find certain types of queries much faster than others when you get that big.

For example, querying will be slow for text based searches, esp. in the "quick text search" which searches across all string based properties (as opposed to a specific advanced search pane filter on just Copyright for example). You can speed this up by specifically adding wildcards to the end of your search text if you can do so. e.g. search for brass* instead of brass as long as you know what you are looking for starts with brass. It helps the database indices kick in better.

However, searching by tags is very fast even with lots of loops and lots of tags.

With this many you won't want to "view all matching" search results. Staring at a list of more than 1000 items isn't that useful anyway (think of having all 100,000 loops in the same folder). Same reason google doesn't return all 10,000 matching hits when you search. You may want to tune the search results limit from 1000 also.

I would suggest scanning perhaps half of them and seeing how that feels. 50,000 files should take 3 to 6 hours depending upon your PC. Just start the scan overnight and be sure to backup the library before playing around with it greatly.

After your scan is done, you'll probably want to turn off the media reference library as that will save you some resources (this is in the media manager options dialog).

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: jwf
Date:2/11/2005 2:48:11 PM

I should add that we'll soon be updating the Sony Sound Series Loops and Samples reference library. The update has a lot more tags and was hand tuned extensively so you may want to wait until this is available for your big scan (but I would still create a 50,000 item one and just play around and see how the performance is for you).

This would only be of value if some of those 100,000 loops you have are from our libraries. If so, scanning with the reference library installed and active allows us to recognize our loops on your drive and automatically apply some tags for you.

Newer sound series libraries have the tags saved as metadata directly in the files so simply scanning them picks up the tag information even without the reference library. The reference library is our solution for all the loops we shipped before we created the Media Manager (sort of retroactively tagging them essentially).

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: SonySCS
Date:2/11/2005 4:00:51 PM


Install the Reference Library (66,000 loops listed) and see how you like it for searches, closing, loading. You'd probably want to keep your searches short, but there are always times when you start a search that's way too big.

-Suzan

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: knowbody
Date:2/11/2005 4:50:28 PM

Thanks for all the replies - a good percentage of the loops are Sony's and many are old dating ack to Pandora's Toolbox era. Looking forward to the updated refernce library. One thing I have been wondering is how to get Acid to display the next set of results. Google doesn't show all the results but it gives links to further results. It seems with the Media Manager that if I limit the search results displayed I get the same results every time. I can display all the results or the first set of results - but how about those inbetween?

Chris

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: jwf
Date:2/12/2005 11:44:50 AM

It isn't currently possible to "page" through the search results. We were thinking that beyond a thousand or so, is it really useful to browse through that many items vs. doing a more refined search? (e.g. how many times do you go beyond the first page or two of google results rather than adding more criteria to your search and resubmitting it?).

We might revisit this for a future version.

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: knowbody
Date:2/12/2005 4:41:57 PM

Thanks, I think something is needed. There's somewhat of a catch 22 operating here. In order to narrow a search I need to include more search criteria, but this presupposes the criteria exists. How to get the criteria? I tried searching the Sony Reference Library using just the text input box and it was painfully slow - one minute a search. No faster than an unindexed Windows Search. Which would produce a faster search - a faster CPU or more RAM? It looks like building up a database slowly adding a group and then tagging is the way to go. It's a pity that separate database can't be combined..

Chris

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: jwf
Date:2/13/2005 9:06:12 AM

Importing one media library into another is something we are looking at. However, for now this process could work:

1. Create a new empty temp library
2. Scan a bunch of files
3. Tag them as needed
4. Save tags back to the files
5. Goto step 1 until all files are done
6. Create your master library and scan in all your files since they are all tagged now.

Subject:RE: Once more unto the media manager dear friends
Reply by: knowbody
Date:2/14/2005 7:24:51 AM

Thanks for the tip, it makes sense.

Cheers,

Chris

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