Ahhhhh okay that makes more sense now! You were talking about navigating between folders the whole time? My bad, I guess I totally misunderstood your earlier comments. Here’s the thing, I *never navigate any of the folders. I actually keep that section of Mediabay closed. I have tagged and categorized literally ALL my vstpresets, samples, loops, track presets, midi files, pattern banks, etc… so when ever I need to find any of that data I just type in a relevant custom tag/keyword(s) in the search bar or use the categories of the attribute inspector.
*The only time I ever do go into the folders section of Mediabay (AKA the “Define Locations” panel) is when I have a new sample library that needs to be scanned in, which is a one time set-it-and-forget-it thing for me… and come to think of it, navigating through those folders can be very slow at times on the rare occasions when I do use that section of Mediabay.
Not to vie for title of Mr Obvious, but 2GB RAM is a bit meager. That would definitely present performance problems with a fully loaded 64-bit (takes more memory) Cubase and plug-ins. If your memory is running low, things like scanning / indexing a file directory would be very slow.
Ok, but if you never change folders, doesn’t that mean that you always have any file (of any type) you could ever use in Cubase in your search results? Because using the Defined Locations menu leads to the same problem. So you must be WAY beyond 20.000 files in your preferences, where you choose the number of files to be shown. And all of them are shown to you in no time when you open MB? And how’s that possible, when each and every time one opens only the preset list from within a plug-in, it takes several seconds for all presets/drumkits/whatever to appear?
Not sure I understand what you’re getting at here, but yes I don’t change my folders around. No need to really. Yes any file (of any type) is pretty much just a keyword away in the search bar… and again, the search results are instantaneous for me.
What problem? The problem of navigating folders in the “Defined Location” section sometimes being slow? Like I said, the only time I use the “Defined Locations” menu is when I have a new sample library that needs to be scanned in, which is a one time set-it-and-forget-it thing for me. Otherwise, its not relevant to my Mediabay workflow.
Yes I definitely have WAY more than 20,000 files (all organized and tagged) in Mediabay
Hm, not for me. Just tested: Within a previously scanned folder with 1841 samples MB takes 2-3 seconds from hitting return to displaying the files which have ‘tom’ in their name. Same with the word ‘Kick’.
Yes, I just wanted to be really sure that you never ever change folders or Defined Locations. So you’re always on a root folder then and when you haven’t entered any search criteria it displays a million files?
But what value did you enter in preferences as the maximum number of search results to be displayed then?
Interesting use of screen space in your picture.
Yes, I mean the presets of Cubase’s own instruments and FX. Now that’s interesting because then you have an even faster MB than they have in this promo video I mentioned above. Even there the preset list takes a second to complete.
It’s an internal 2 TB hard disk (700 GB free) by WD with 7200 rpm.
Even if MB was faster, there’s the next problem: no drag & drop to 3rd parties and… don’t want to go OT.
Astonishing and weird. I have no idea what to make out of this. I guess people like FShkreli and me are doomed to either live with it, ignore MB or switch DAWs.
Thats weird. I don’t know why you’re hard drive performance is seemingly different than mine…
check out this thread for my one (extra) click workaround
As I understand it, your problem and FShkreli’s problems are a little different though. FShkreli is experiencing real sluggish performance when navigating through the folders (the Define Locations panel), and you are more concerned about a 2-3 second lag in your search results?
Hm, what makes you think that it’s the hard drive? It’s a dedicated drive for samples, there is no OS on it and it performs great for anything else. If I had to guess it’s not the hard drive at all.
As I said in this thread, the XML translator is Win only. This topic is so hot, let’s not go into detail here.
Not quite, I (maybe FShkreli too?) have sluggish performance with every search action in MB. Not matter if I switch to a different folder in the left ‘tree’ window or switch to a different ‘Defined Location’ (why the hell are these not displayed in alphabetical order? ) or enter a search word in the Logical search function or select attributes with the Attribute function – MB always takes several seconds (2-8) to show the results, be it in the big MB window or in the preset list opened from within a plug-in. And I have scanned everything. It seems as if MB is always scanning a folder again with every search action. No comparison to Kontakt’s database. This one takes five seconds at startup, but then it’s really there and search is lightning-fast.
I want to thank you guys for keeping this topic alive. In general, no matter which method I use for getting to my sample libraries within MediaBay, I experience very sluggish performance. Sometimes, after clicking on a [scanned] folder in the folder tree at the left, it can take up to 30 seconds to display the samples. Other times, I have to re-scan the folder. Its frustrating to me because, as you can see, I regularly defrag my hard drives and my computer is pretty fast. The VST Presets also take about 10 seconds to load. I’ve updated Cubase, uninstalled, installed once again and I still have poor performance in MediaBay. The ‘Defined Locations’ menu I use for my favorite libraries.
Also, I don’t use the “seach” feature within MediaBay – I have over 1.5 million samples; obviously, I have no idea what most of them are even titled.
I have no idea what it could be… thats really weird.
Fair enough…
Actually FShkreli never specifically mentioned the search feature in Mediabay in his previous posts in this thread.
Well I don’t know what tell you… I don’t know why your search results take 2 or more seconds while my search results are instantaneous.
Ugh. Personally, I can’t stand navigating through the folders in Kontakt… so tedious! Its so much easier for me to find the samples or loop in Mediabay and just drag n drop them/it into Kontakt.
Dam that really sucks. Like I said, you’re missing out on IMO one of the greatest features Cubase has to offer. Hopefully someone at Steinberg or maybe someone else reading this thread can help get things straightened out.
1.5 million samples?! haha and I thought I had a lot!
Thats the beauty of Mediabay though, organization of that data by categorizing and tagging with your own unique custom searchable tags. Granted, its a LOT of work initially, but when its done it makes your life (and workflow) sooo much easier I can’t even imagine going back to having to find samples the old way from a folder tree…
Oh, no no, I’m using Kontakt’s database, not its browser so much. And I only have Kontakt Instruments in it, no single samples. That’s something I would like to use MB for. But then there is no d&d for me… oh, I’m going in circles. But thanks for the efforts to find solutions.
My Mediabay performance has sped up a lot after I went through options and unchecked the attribute fields (Result Columns) that I don’t use which means most of them.
No, Mediabay doesn’t touch the hard drive at all (unless it’s rescanning it). It’s the RAM/CPU issue, and reducing the number of columns (like Date Created, Song Name etc ) seems to help a bit.
I just found a way to speed up Mediabay to a ninja speed (compared to what it was).
You need to go through all your logical/physical drives in the “Define Locations” window on the left and right click on each of them, then choose “Create Volume Database”. The thing is by default all your stuff is stored within one huge file (mediabay3.db) where the info of all your wav files, vstpresets etc is thrown together in a big clumsy array. When you create several volume databases instead of one you probably unload cpu usage.
Update: Not only Mediabay was affected by this, the performance of EVERYTHING in cubase has sped up. Adding instrument tracks, loading projects, etc. I’m like in heaven right now.
I just created a volume database for each hard drive. The situation changed to some extent. Searching for samples in MB is still as slow as before. But opening the preset list from within a Cubase plug-in is as fast as it should be. The list appears instantly. Thanks for the idea, rilion. Now that I think about it, only the factory content that comes with Cubase (which was put onto the system drive) is really fast now. Presets for FX, GAO, Loopmash, HSSE etc. appear very fast. All the rest, which is the vast majority of all my library, is on a different drive and still horribly slow. Though, as I said, this drive itself is not slower by specification. It’s a WD 2 TB 7400 rpm, SATA.
Stiller, if the samples library size is measured in terabytes, then there’s nothing Steinberg or anyone else could do for you. Modern computers are still limited in capabilities. Hovewer, If I had such a problem, I would try to re-partition the hard drive so that it has multiple partitions (at least 4), then split my samples library between these 4 and create a volume database for each partition. In theory this should speed up the searching time because the processor won’t have to deal with a single database bigger than it can handle.
Also, Cubase’s databases are bigger than Live’s because of all the fields like tempo, plugin category, comment, rating, etc.
) or enter a search word in the Logical search function or select attributes with the Attribute function – MB always takes several seconds (2-8) to show the results, be it in the big MB window or in the preset list opened from within a plug-in. And I have scanned everything. It seems as if MB is always scanning a folder again with every search action. No comparison to Kontakt’s database. This one takes five seconds at startup, but then it’s really there and search is lightning-fast.