01-07-2011, 06:45 PM

Hello,

I've had a Mac for only a few weeks. There are some things I love (The Dock, look & feel, stacks, Mac App Store, XCode, Spotlight, Quick Look) and some things I dislike (inability to bypass the trash, inability to delete only selected files from the trash, inability to sort folders first in Finder). But there's one big issue because of which I literally cannot sleep and which might force me to consider selling the Mac.

It all goes like this:

We have three Windows 7 PCs networked together (ethernet) at home. I'm used to watching videos and listen to music stored on network drives. This is no problem - I've just done some tests (sitting at the third computer and playing content from the first, using WinAmp for audio and MediaPlayer Classic for video): 800MB WMV file opens and plays in two seconds, 1500MB HD avi file does the same in three seconds, 10+MB MP3 files launch instantly. I can jump to any spot in all the mentioned files INSTANTLY with no noticeable delay. All this on a Windows PC derided in Apple ads.

Now comes my new Mac connected to the same network and using iTunes with QuickTime:

iTunes opens a 2MB MP3 file for 45 seconds, displaying the spinning ball and not responding during that time.

QuickTime Player X (with Perian) does the following when opening a standard 700MB avi file: the app launches instantly but only to display a black window with a "Loading movie" message. After about two minutes the playback starts but it's extremely choppy and un-watchable.

Could anyone please tell me where the problem(s) can be?

EDIT: I've also noticed that when I want to copy a larger file (20+MB) from a PC to the Mac, the mac displays a "preparing to copy" dialog box and it takes ages before the actual copying takes place.

01-07-2011, 10:25 PM

Try using VLC - you can control streaming buffer size
VideoLAN - VLC media player - Open Source Multimedia Framework and Player

You could also try using the spacebar in finder to view the movies. For some reason that seems to work well.

See here for folders first
how to make folders listed first

You can use the terminal to bypass the trash, as well as delete selected files. Or you could use delete now
Delete Now ~ Slashback Software

The prepare to copy does seem to take a long time for larger files - don't really know what to tell you there.

01-08-2011, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by IvanLasston

The prepare to copy does seem to take a long time for larger files - don't really know what to tell you there.

Does that take a long time even on Mac-only networks or does it only apply to Mac-PC networks?

01-08-2011, 10:21 AM

This is an entirely subjective observation -- and may or may not be typical -- but I have a Mac only network, and don't have any issues with streaming music playlists and videos, some of which are HD, via iTunes sharing.

01-08-2011, 11:31 AM

Aye - but we aren't talking about iTunes sharing here. We are talking about arbitrary videos and one program I found that has buffer control is VLC. If you are streaming via itunes - such as through an Apple TV - there is some magic that happens for you (Which may be an argument for Macs in general)

I just tried it - and it doesn't take nearly as long as it used to for either Mac to Mac or Mac to PC. It may have been a wireless thing - as I have changed over to a 5GHz N network now whereas before I was using 2.4Ghz.

I got a couple of programs that help move data around. I used Flow for moving a 650GB sparsebundle backup. Interarchy seems to do something similar
Flow - Mac OS X FTP and SFTP Client
Interarchy - Mac OS X FTP, SFTP and Cloud File Transfer App
I got each one in a bundle. It seems to help with moving around big files.

01-08-2011, 12:00 PM

No, we're not talking about iTunes sharing specifically, but I felt it important, when sharing my Mac-to-Mac experience, to point out the method I use so that chomper wouldn't take my story to mean Mac-to-Mac always works perfectly under any circumstance (which may, indeed, be the case -- I don't know).

01-08-2011, 03:55 PM

Guys, silly me for blaming my Mac, there was a problem with my network. Copying files from my PCs to the Mac is now fast and QuickTime now plays movies from networked drives without problems, although the "startup" times are a bit slower than those of my Windows movie players. So two things are solved. The only thing that bugs me now is iTunes, adding files to the library is atrociously slow due to the "Determining Gapless Playback" feature. Impossible to add my 200+GB MP3 collection. Well, maybe if I left iTunes scanning for a couple of weeks...

01-08-2011, 04:44 PM

This program, according to sources on Google, is supposed to help. It won't stop the determining for Gapless Playback, but it'll ensure that the files enter without error - supposedly.

MP3 Scan + Repair Download | Christian Zuckschwerdt

Originally Posted by antonello (a commenter on the site)

Everytime I launched iTunes or imported new songs iTunes worked about 10 hours determining informations for gapless reproduction. In that time it was frozen.
After Scan + Repair it works perfectly!
Thanx a lot