Tagalicious 1.2b3

[simX]

Tagalicious 1.2b3 ready for consumption. Expires after April 4. URL:
http://files.thelittleappfactory.com/tagalicious/Tagalicious_1.2b3.zip

Changes:

• fixed a small bug where multi-line tags in the details pane could
get part of the last line cut off
• added Russian localization
• fixed truncated lyrics in certain situations
• two menu items had Cmd-7 as their shortcut; this is fixed
• fixed crash when trying to use the [Track --> Artist] menu item

Note: if you happen to be using the beta of Mac OS X 10.7, this beta
(as well as 1.2b2) will not work. I'm trying to rectify that issue...

-- Simone

[Sean Purdon]

(I'm replying to the old thread here, as I tested what you asked on the new beta, where appropriate) 

1. Embossed song count in details pane header: I'll think about how
to make it look less button-y, but not sure how to make it more
obvious that it's just informational. If I remove the capsule around
it, it's really non-obvious that multiple songs are represented, which
is why I tried to grab the user's attention more.

Yeah, I can understand that.  I don't really have much idea how to change it - I'm not a UI person - but it just looks a bit odd to me.

7. CPU usage: have you tried the current release version of
Tagalicious, 1.1.2? Does it have the same problem? I suspect your
computer is getting bogged down because it's reading from disk so fast
that it's trying to retrieve tags for tens (hundreds?) of songs at a
time. Maybe the solution to this problem is setting a limit on THAT,
too. (Currently, I leave it up to the system to decide whether to
judge how many simultaneous lookups it can handle.)

Nope, I haven't tried the release version, as I don't have a license.  I think you're probably right about the disk speed, however.  It wouldn't take too long to read data from hundreds of tracks at once, and my computer is hardly fast compared to modern technology (it's a '10 entry level MBP apart from the SSD upgrade, which means I'm still on the very dated Core 2).

One thing of note is that in the new beta (1.2b3), CPU usage is sitting much lower (~60-80%).  However, I am testing at home now, with much faster internet.  Is there some sort of busy wait in the database lookup thread that could be maxing out the CPU while waiting for a response from the server?  I'm probably way off, but my thought is that if there's a loop waiting for, say, initial server contact, this normally negligible time could be magnified by the large amount of threads that are generated when the disk drive is significantly faster than the internet.

I am now also getting a reproducible crash (this is *not* just since the new beta, I had it in the old beta but it was a once-off so I discounted it).  Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure what is causing it.  I have ~1300 songs that are untagged now.  If I try to check them all for tags at once, the app will hang (beach ball, plus ~0% cpu usage).  If I check for tags on, say, 200-300 at a time, I don't have an issue.

The reason this is puzzling is that my initial tag check was for ~4.5k songs, and that did not crash the app.  The only change I've made since then is telling it to search for lyrics/art for unidentified songs using known tags.

8. Internet problems: please test in a location with more stable
internet, and report if you continue to have problems. May be related
to #6 -- Tagalicious may be initiating way too many simultaneous
lookups.

No problems noted with stable internet (although it's still going close to maxing out my connection, at ~450KB/s download - that's a *lot* of simultaneous connections).

 

9. Selecting old blank tags: there *is* a faint gray outline when you 

hover over the tag row. Does it not appear for you?

It does appear, yep, but I was hoping for some sort of indication that it is selectable without hovering over. That's probably self-explanatory to most people, though.

10. "Check All for Tags" button being enabled for already-updated
songs: I can't reproduce this. Whenever I select any group of songs
that contains only updated songs, the "Send to iTunes" button is
visible but disabled. If you have any *untagged* songs selected along
with it, the "Check for Tags" button is enabled, but the "Send to
iTunes" button should still be disabled. I know the activated buttons
don't directly correspond to which songs are shown in the details
pane, but I figured it'd be best to be as liberal as possible with the
buttons so that people can just select a bunch of songs and not have
to weed out the already-updated songs before they can tag a bunch of
songs at once. Does this make sense, or is it way too confusing?

Try selecting more than 10 tracks at once; both buttons seem to be ignoring what you tell them and appearing active when you have more than 10 tracks selected.

11. Can you reproduce the "lost the connection to iTunes library"
bug? Does this consistently happen after you put your computer to
sleep and wake it up again?

Sleeping doesn't seem to reproduce it, unfortunately.  It's possible that I completely ran out of battery and went into hibernation when the error occurred, although I honestly can't remember, and I don't see why hibernation would behave any differently to sleep :/

Oh, and for what it's worth, I don't think trying to mimic iTunes (by including play buttons etc in the app) is a good idea.  Introducing some sort of custom tag editor might be okay - after all, this app is about tagging - but any more than that is just going to involve re-implementing apple's software in a less efficient and possibly less intuitive way.

[Marlin Clark]

Got a chance to go through a few untagged songs today. Worked very
well for me. I'll report back if I run into any problems.

[simX]

Sean:

> Nope, I haven't tried the release version, as I don't have a license. I think you're probably right about the disk speed, however. It wouldn't take too long to read data from hundreds of tracks at once, and my computer is hardly fast compared to modern technology (it's a '10 entry level MBP apart from the SSD upgrade, which means I'm still on the very dated Core 2).

I can get you a Mac App Store code or serial number for the release
version (which will eventually work for 1.2) so you can test it out,
if you wouldn't mind.

> One thing of note is that in the new beta (1.2b3), CPU usage is sitting much lower (~60-80%). However, I am testing at home now, with much faster internet. Is there some sort of busy wait in the database lookup thread that could be maxing out the CPU while waiting for a response from the server? I'm probably way off, but my thought is that if there's a loop waiting for, say, initial server contact, this normally negligible time could be magnified by the large amount of threads that are generated when the disk drive is significantly faster than the internet.

Tagalicious does wait for responses from the servers and times out
after 60 seconds. I did realize, however, that if that happens there
probably will be a buildup of operations trying to access the
internet, which might explain why the CPU usage is overwhelming with
spotty internet, and acceptable when you have stable internet. I've
(potentially) fixed this in 1.2b4, see if you can try to reproduce the
problems you were having with the spotty internets.

> I am now also getting a reproducible crash (this is *not* just since the new beta, I had it in the old beta but it was a once-off so I discounted it). Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure what is causing it. I have ~1300 songs that are untagged now. If I try to check them all for tags at once, the app will hang (beach ball, plus ~0% cpu usage). If I check for tags on, say, 200-300 at a time, I don't have an issue.
>
> The reason this is puzzling is that my initial tag check was for ~4.5k songs, and that did not crash the app. The only change I've made since then is telling it to search for lyrics/art for unidentified songs using known tags.

Is this a crash or just a hang? If it's just a hang (i.e.:
Tagalicious locks up, but after 30 seconds or a minute, it starts
working again), I'm aware of this issue; it's intermittent. I'll try
and fix this for the next update after 1.2.

> No problems noted with stable internet (although it's still going close to maxing out my connection, at ~450KB/s download - that's a *lot* of simultaneous connections).

~450 KB/sec? Wow, that *is* a lot of simultaneous connections, lol.
I've limited Tagalicious 1.2b4 to 40 simultaneous requests, see if
that fixes the bandwidth issue.

> Try selecting more than 10 tracks at once; both buttons seem to be ignoring what you tell them and appearing active when you have more than 10 tracks selected.

Ahhh yes I can reproduce this. This is a known issue for now, I'll
try and fix it for a future update.

> Oh, and for what it's worth, I don't think trying to mimic iTunes (by including play buttons etc in the app) is a good idea. Introducing some sort of custom tag editor might be okay - after all, this app is about tagging - but any more than that is just going to involve re-implementing apple's software in a less efficient and possibly less intuitive way.

Yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards for now.


Marlin:

Great to hear that you haven't had any problems. Please keep
testing! :)

-- Simone

[Sean Purdon]

Hey Simone, sorry for the slow reply

I'm happy to test the Mac App Store version for you if you provide a code.  I'll also test 1.2b4 to see if I can reproduce the performance issues I was getting.

I think what you're saying about spotty internet and high CPU usage makes sense; unfortunately, I won't get a chance to test this in the near future, as I won't be in the one spot that I know has dodgy net for a few weeks :(

The lockup/crash may well have been a hang; I normally don't give apps anywhere near 1 minute to recover from hangs, but I'll definitely do so next itme and let you know if it does.

Cheers,

sean