Question

Windows Media Player Buffering

Asked by: CaptainCyril

I use to use WinAMP and stopped using it because I noticed heavy constant reads from the hard disk. I switched to Media Player 7 back then and I noticed that it reads the song once and does not read till the next song.

I am now using WMP11 and noticed that it reads from the hard disk every second. I checked that in "IO Read Bytes" from the Task Manager.

Can you please tell me if there is a setting I can change for it to read an mp3 song once like it treats a CD Audio Track?

Many thanks in Advance

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Asked On
2009-09-23 at 00:25:23ID24754061
Tags

Buffer Player Media mp3

Topics

Windows Media Player Software MP3 Player

,

Windows Media Player

,

General Multi-Media Software

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
18

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Answers

 

by: MeretePosted on 2009-09-24 at 00:57:43ID: 25410905

Um that doesnt make sense really, if your mp3 on the hard disc it reads fromn the hard disc,
>>Can you please tell me if there is a setting I can change for it to read an mp3 song once like it treats a CD Audio Track?<< nope even if you create a playlist it still reads off the hard disc
not possible to point WMP to a CD rom when mp3 are on the hard disc.
What's the issue?
At a guess winamp and WMP will access the internet if you have allowed both to look up the tracks played  and report anomyous use.
disabling this internet feature will stop >> heavy constant reads from the hard disk.
If you have noise or some isues here defrag the hard drive.
Coudld you explain what the problkem is?
regards Merete


 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-09-24 at 01:08:06ID: 25410942

I am a software developer and I run my software which use the hard disk on drive D. I have my mp3 files on drive E which is on the same physical drive.

WinAMP uses the hard disk aggressively while playing. I chose WMP thinking that it would read the mp3 song in whole and plug it in memory and then play it from memory. Now I am using WMP11 and noticed that every second WMP reads fromt the hard disk.

I want WMP to read the song in whole before it's played and WMP should not access the hard disk until the next song. If there is no solution, I would rather put my mp3 on a non-mechanical device and play from there.

 

by: MeretePosted on 2009-09-24 at 01:51:24ID: 25411160

Hi CaptainCyril
possible cause
 the media player is on one partition from windows c drive?
 and the music files is on a different partition again.
I understand what you mean but wmp does not function like when you play a streamed file and have the option to download it fully then play
try using an open source media player
VLC does not have all the bling like winamp and WMP
doesnt use the internet either it plays all forms of video and audio
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Songbird
http://www.getsongbird.com/

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-09-24 at 01:59:39ID: 25411195

I don't care about visual stuff. All I care about is to have a mean to play/stop and previous/next a song while taking the least memory and one shot read hard disk per song.

I will try the VLC.

Thanks, Merete!

 

by: MeretePosted on 2009-09-24 at 02:42:13ID: 25411416

:)
that's why I like these open source It plays them with a lot less resources
 in VLC go to View clcik on playlist
drag and drop all your mp3 on
You might like Foobar it very good
http://www.foobar2000.org/components
http://www.foobar2000.org/

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-09-24 at 06:39:10ID: 25413191

Here is what I found about VLC

1) It chops the sound when switching between applications. WLM does not do that.
2) It handles reading mp3 the same way as WLM.

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-09-28 at 01:26:50ID: 25437517

Downloading getsongbird today and will test it.

 

by: MeretePosted on 2009-09-28 at 02:22:10ID: 25437747

I dont understand what you're after CaptainCyril
I don't think Songbird will meet your requirements of playing an mp3 an keeping that in memory only
I checked VLC against WMP and the io read bytes were half
This has me puzzled>>Can you please tell me if there is a setting I can change for it << being a media player> will read an mp3 song once like it treats a CD Audio Track?
 refs to>All I care about is to have a means to play/stop and previous/next a song while taking the least memory and one shot read hard disk per song.<< one shot read hard disc?

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-09-28 at 02:36:29ID: 25437803

In Media Player there was a setting which lets WMP loads the whole track into memory and play it from there instead of constantly reading it every second. I could not find this setting in WMP11.

I wish there was the same setting for mp3 files.

Songbirds uses about 60MB of my laptop's 512 MB memory and not more than 3% CPU. Media Player uses around 10-15 MB and around 10% CPU.

 

by: MeretePosted on 2009-09-28 at 03:10:44ID: 25437938

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-09-28 at 03:12:33ID: 25437949

Oh no! :-)

When the player plays a song, it should read the whole song into memory so that the hard disk is better serving other applications. Why should the player read so many x bytes every second? That's what I mean.

 

by: MeretePosted on 2009-09-28 at 15:09:57ID: 25443920

It is important to distinguish between a file format and a codec
A codec performs the encoding and decoding of the raw audio data while the data itself is stored in a file with a specific audio file format.
The .cda files are representations of CD audio tracks and do not contain the actual pulse code modulation (PCM) information. Cda files can be played only from a CD-ROM.
The current standard for CD audio requires a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a sample size of 16 bits (2 bytes per sample). As a result, you need to store 2 x 44,100= 88,200 bytes of data every second to record in mono. Recording in stereo would require twice that much storage. That extrapolates to about 10 MB of data for every minute of stereo sound! It is for this reason that compression schemes such as MP3 are so important.
Unfortunately, your computer can't store files in CDA format, so you still have to convert CDA files to another format to store on your hard disk.
Audio file format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_file_format
WMP vs Winamp vs iTunes vs MediaMonkey
http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/music/players.html

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-10-02 at 14:38:49ID: 25482558

I could not find what I wanted but anyway I will choose an answer.

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-10-02 at 14:40:43ID: 31632323

It was not a solution. However, I don't think there is one. So I awarded Merete the grade.

 

by: MeretePosted on 2009-10-02 at 16:27:41ID: 25483054

Awe thankyou but that's not really an answer for you.
If we could encode an mp3 into a .dat then you'd solve the relation to using a media player verses a mounted image
AFAIK, DAT files are mpeg videos files used in VCD/CD format with video and audio/ so that not really possible
unless you used a converter to a  created a .dat with no video and just used the audio
I dont know of any such tool
Cheers

 

by: CaptainCyrilPosted on 2009-10-03 at 03:54:56ID: 25484738

Never mind. I will put the audio files on a non-mechanical device. I have 8GB on my Nokia Music Express :-)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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