[Willfriedwald]

Long Term iTunes Issue: Large Library Needs Speed, Speed & more Speed!
My iTunes library has to be one of the biggest - 70,000 tracks - however, I imagine that there are a lot of iTunes users with rapidly expanding libraries.
Earlier this year, I invested in a G5, pretty much exclusively to run iTunes. (I do other stuff with it, but iT is my primary application.) I bought the G5 because my iMac G3 became painfully slow when trying to deal with a huge library (even thought it was smaller then).
However, lately the G5 has also been slowing down and giving me a lot of spinning beachball. What can I do to speed it up?
The Apple sales people advised me to get the single processor powermac - as opposed to the less-expensive G5 iMac and the more expensive dual processor. I have been told that the speed of the processor (CPU) is NOT the issue, it's the speed of the input/output.
Or perhaps it's even iTunes - maybe Apple didn't design iTunes to work with mega-libraries of this size? But I can't imagine switching to another program, not that I remotely know of another program out there that can compete (especially since I have everything in the AAC format).
(Incidentally, I have four GB of RAM - all that the system can hold - and have the whole library on an internal S-ATA drive - that's everything I can think of to make the G5 run efficiently. And I am also running Tiger 14.1. Tiger is burning bright!)
Will
PS: am also posting this in the Apple discussions forum - to see what they come up with. Thanks!

[Frisco]

It's always a good idea to rebuild your itunes library every so often, especially with large libraries:
These are the steps:
Launch iTunes and go to the Library (first item in the Source menu)
From the File menu, select Export Library
Save as a .xml file on your Desktop.
Quit iTunes.
Go to the ~/Music/iTunes folder and remove but DO NOT DELETE the file iTunes 4 Music Library.
Relaunch iTunes.
Your Source List will be empty - but don't worry.
From the File Menu, select Import
Choose the .xml file you exported earlier, and click OK
Your playlists will now be back, with all of their metadata. You can trash the iTunes 4 Music Library file that you earlier moved, or you can rename it and save it in your Documents folder as a backup.

[Willfriedwald]

thanks for that - I usually rebuild the whole library every couple of months.... the way I do it is to create a new empty library (using the iTunes library manager script from Doug Adams applescripts for iTunes...) then I use the CTRL-O "add to library" command and select the whole drive where the iT library is stored... I need to periodically rebuild just so the library can keep track of new and deleted files....
thanks for the tip!
Anyone else?
W

[pdrayton]

Deleting the artwork will save a lot of space.
iTunes Library Manager is quite fun. I used it to create a Master Library on a 1.5TB external drive in Apple Lossless format and then have an AAC version of the library on the external as well as on a Mac mini.
What codec did you use for your songs? Do you have a backup of the library on an external drive?

[Graeme_Smith]

Wow, you have a huge library! I only have 530 songs in my little library. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

In reply to:

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What codec did you use for your songs?

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He said he uses AAC.
I've noticed that if you have really high resolution album art it slows down iTunes a bit (if you scan it at high quality). You could also try closing the album art drawer if its open.

[Willfriedwald]

thanks - believe it or not I don't have any artwork in there - have never been that visually-oriented.
have about 300 GB / 70K tracks total - it's all in the AAC format (is that what you're asking). The main library is on a 400 GB internal S-ATA drive and it's backed up to a 500 GB ext FW 800 drive.
Dealing with space is another issue! I will probably get into buying external S-ATA drives as a next step for storage. Right now I have to solve the speed problem. iTunes is having a hard time dealing with 300 GB / 70K tracks worth of stuff and I need to find a way to speed up the I/O.
Thanks!
w

[pdrayton]

Well... iPhoto certainly got sped-up with updates. It's possible iTunes could see the same thing.
My library is only 8,200 songs... so I'm not anywhere close to slowing down iTunes.
I did two master libraries on the external, one in AAC and the other in Apple Lossless, so that I could have a lossless version from which to burn CDs or to convert existing songs to some other codec that comes down the pike. But, with that many songs, even a 1.5TB external would be maxed out in Apple Lossless format.

[Graeme_Smith]

In reply to:

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I don't have any artwork in there

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Well, nothing you can do there than

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Where does it exactly slow down and how much (seconds)? Changing songs, during a song (i.e. rebuffering), ...? Another choice would be to give iTunes more priority (aka "nice"). If they weren't so darn small, I'd suggest maybe getting one of those WD Raptors. Maybe make an external SATA RAID with 6-8 Raptors. Not extremely cost effective but nice. Another thing to do would be to watch Activity Monitor to try and see what gets "slammed" (i.e. hard drive, CPU, RAM, ...) when these slowdown occur.