Music Library EXTREMELY slow

Folks,

I am starting to rip CDs onto a drive devoted to music. I have loaded a TON of music files so far, about 315GB. I ripped a few with Media Player, others I uploaded files off of a external hard drive a friend borrowed to me. When trying to play music from the Music Library, MC seems like it is trying to catalog everything first, hence it basically locks up MC. Should I just let MC do its thing until it catalogs everything or is there a setting in MC or the registry which will allow me to speed the process up? Inquiring minds wnt to know...

Hi there
Music centre is not the best system for either cataloguing or playing music files.

I ripped mine with Winamp to FLAC (14,187 tracks 250 GB - around 800 CD's).

I've been juggling these around into a few different folders - I've got I folder per category and within the category 1 folder per CD.

I'm making a MySQL DB so I can juggle the tracks around -- but I want to keep links to the original CD's the tracks came from.

You can play with Winamp or VLC without having to create playlists etc.

I'm also creating a Music server so I can play anywhere in my house without needing the main computer left on.

Once I've built the MySQL DB I'll post the SQL / table data definitions so you can use that as a model.

MySQL will retrieve data incredibly quickly - even for complex queries so I could for example create a quick playlist saying "Cello music 1700- 1850, recorded between 1990 and 2006, composer Dvorak, Brahms, Beethoven, Cellist xxxxxx. Orchestra yyyy". Then just play the playlist.

Cheers
jimbo