I experience these problems with or without my SL-1 connected.

Hello Auronis,

Where are your video files coming from? Internal or external?

I would try rebuilding your databaseV2 file(s) first and foremost.

1. Completely shut down SSL.
2. Open your Macintosh HD drive.
3. Click on your 'Music' folder (you might need to click on the house icon to see your music folder).
4. Open the 'ScratchLIVE' folder.
5. Rename the 'databaseV2' file to something other than its original name. I usually rename it 'corruptdatabaseV2'.

If your using an external drive open the _ScratchLIVE_ folder on your external and rename the databaseV2 file in there as well.

6. Re-open SSL.

If done correctly you will see your tags getting re-written at the bottom of the page.
This should only occur the first time you open SSL after renaming the database file(s).

Note: Rebuilding the databaseV2 file will revert all of the 'date added' dates to today's date and will delete any files out of SSL that aren't currently in a crate or playlist.

Let us know your findings and we'll go from there.

I have rebuilt the databases several times. I had this same issue with 2.0 even without Video-SL. Slow slow startup times and hanging/nearly crashing when adding even 1 song or 1 folder with ~10 tracks.

I've also rescanned ID3 tags, removed and/or reconnected missing files. The issue is intermittent but happen about 70% of the time. Is there a "secret" usb port configuration I should be using with a 17" MBP?

Any other ideas?

Thank you

This occurs with videos on external, or internal drives. Also can occur without any video files.

I have 2 of the same drive, usb 2.0 5400rpm, I switch between the two and keep them cloned copies of each other so it doesn't seem to be 1 drive that's lagging behind on me.

I've considered 7200 rpm, or firewire, or non-bus-powered drives but not sure if it will make a difference.

Does this happen if you unplug both external drives and only import files from your internal?

No but that is not quite an accurate comparison as I keep 99% of my serato files on external drives. My internal drive does not have enough space to compare with the same amount of files as I load from my external drive.

If not then the issue is going to be the communication between your external and your computer.

If you haven't already do this:

Go into the 'energy saver' settings of your 'system properties', click on 'show details, uncheck 'put hard disc to sleep when possible' as well as move both sliders to 'never'.

Now click on the 'Settings for' option at the top, choose 'Battery', and do the same in that section.

Also go into the 'Desktop and Screen Saver' settings and make sure your screen saver is set to never come on.

If that doesn't work please list the exact specs of your external drive and we'll go from there.

Here's the drive:

www.newegg.com

I now have unchecked "Put hard disks to sleep whenever possible" for Battery and Power Adapter. But whenever I'm running Serato, I'm on a power adapter.

I moved the sliders over to "Never" for "Computer Sleep" and "Display Sleep" again for Battery and Power Adapter.

Screen saver is now disabled. I have 3 gigs the next 3 nights, I'll let you know if I see any differences. Thank you

Also here are specs:

www.amazon.com

After making these adjustments I've seen zero improvement. Last night I started from a fresh boot and Serato took nearly 10 minutes to load my crates. No other programs open.

Hm.. try this:

Shut down SSL (Serato Scratch LIVE) if you have it open.
Open up the _Serato_ folder inside your 'Music' folder (Mac/Vista) or 'My Music' folder (XP).
Re-name the 'History' folder so it reads 'HistoryOLD'.
Now re-open SSL.

Any luck?

Disabled Video-SL for my gig last night. Extremely slow startup time. Serato crashed in the middle of my set. 10 minutes of silence and boos while I had to wait for it to re-open and load my crates, again.

After being a supporter for 6 years this is really starting to hurt.

I'll try the new history folder tonight and let you know how it goes, this gig will require Video-SL as well. Got an ipod on channel 4 of the mixer for tonight...

Deleting history did not help. My startup times are still lengthy. I have many crates and subcrates well organized but since 2.0 and 2.2 this has been an issue. 1.9.2 was typically able to load much faster. What else can I do?

The last 2 times I have tried closing SL I have had problems. First SL was hanging indefinitely (I waited 35 minutes) while closing and I had to force close. Second, I clicked "Yes" on exit and received "Serato has closed unexpectedly" from OSX.

Ok.. well what we do know is this is a communication issue between your external and computer so... lets try rebuilding your entire _Serato_ folder on the external and reimporting your music.
This is only for a test to try and narrow down what the culprit is.

So.. first shut down SSL.
Now open your external and rename the entire _Serato_ folder so it reads _Serato_1.
Now re-open SSL and SSL shouldn't be reading anything from your external.
If your having SSL read your iTunes library uncheck that option for now as well.
Now just shut down SSL and restart it to verify that its opening and closing as it should.

If so, now re-import ALL of your music from your external drive into the 'all' section of SSL.
Once done, shut down SSL and restart it to see how fast it opens and closes.

Let me know your findings.

Note: If you want to revert to your old library shut down SSL, delete the newly created _Serato_ folder on your external and rename the _Serato_1 folder back to its original name.

Running so slowly. My _Serato_ folder is 327mb and databases V2 44mb, are these within reason?

SSL does not read my itunes library, I do not use itunes, it's god awful like everything on this mac.

Renamed to _Serato_1, SSL loads fast, no crates.

Readding 450gb of music and video.

Well, that helped a lot. Please tell me I do not have to re-add each crate individually.

Please.

New _Serato_ folder is 45mb, databases V2 is 45mb.

Still takes a minute to load, but not 10-15.

Crashed trying to analyze a few hundred videos, took almost 5 min to launch again. ugh.

Removed a handful of videos that seemed to crash on analyzing and seemed to get past that. What can I do about my crates?

Hanging while trying to close again...

Sounds like you have a few issues going on.
Crashing while analyzing sounds like your files are corrupt.
Deleting them was the right thing to do.

As for the hang.. my guess is the database got corrupt again.
Please follow my instructions above regarding rebuilding your database.

Once you get SSL opening and closing properly you can start adding your crates back into SSL.

You do this by opening the _Serato_1 folder on your external, opening the Subcrates folder, copying a crate file (I would just do one at a time for testing purposes), and dropping it into the Subcrates folder inside the current _Serato_ folder on your external.
Make sure SSL is shut down when you do this.
Once done, re-open SSL and see if your still having issues.
If not, shut down SSL again and copy another crate into the Subcrates folder inside your _Serato_ folder.

Let me know how you get along.

Deleted _Serato_ folder (which includes databases V2)
Re-added music and video to "All"
Serato is opening and closing quicker, opening in about 2-3 min. max.
Now to re-add crates....

834 subcrates, I'm having trouble copying them from _Serato_1 to _Serato_

Can these files be corrupted?

Even if they were corrupt you shouldn't be having issues copying them?

Try copying the entire Subcrates folder from your _Serato_1 folder into your _Serato_ folder.

I'm not sure, I tried to make a backup copy of _Serato_1 in the same directory, it began the copy, made the folder _Serato_1 copy, and halfway through the copy stopped and said that the directory _Serato_1 copy already exists.

I was able to make a copy to my desktop

I have music in a folder on the root of my external drive titled "ScratchLIVE"

When I restart Serato, after deleting the _Serato_ folder, it renames my folder of music from "ScratchLIVE" to "_Serato"

"_Serato_"

After closing ssl, renaming my music folder back to ScratchLIVE, and making an empty directory titled "_Serato_" I am now opening and closing quickly, with no tracks.

Serato made a folder inside "_Serato_" called Subcrates. Both are empty. I'm re-adding my library to the "All" folder as you described above.

Loading anywhere from 45 seconds to 1:30 right now. Going to re-add crates.

Do I need to copy over the "Crates" folder from my old _Serato_ as well as the "Subcrates" folder?

Copied both folders (Crates and Subcrates) into my new _Serato_ folder. Took about 4 minutes to load up, all my crates were alphabetized and every subcrate was open. Closed quickly.

2nd try took 2:30 to load up. SSL crashed while trying to relocate lost files....

Please call us when your in front of your setup and with internet connection so we can do some troubleshooting over the phone.
This thread is doing my head in! lol

I think serato simply can't handle too many crates. I bought a brand new 7200rpm 2tb 32mb cache fw800 gtech drive and have the same loadings times, I can even see the drive isn't being constantly accessed when I'm waiting for serato to launch, the drive is waiting for serato to figure out what to do with too many crates.

Serato (2.2) crashed again last night in the middle of a set, very disappointed. My startup times are still terrible in 1.9.2 and 2.2. I'm going to start my entire library from scratch and dumb down my crate organization for serato. If 2.2 crashes again during a set I'll try 1.9.2 for stability. If that crashes. I'll be purchasing a different program to use because this is unacceptable.

Crashing or freezing should really only be caused by corrupt files in your library.
This will happen regardless of what version your using.
I know you believe you've analyzed all your files and have gotten rid of any corrupt files but just to be absolutely sure please do this:

Please open SSL.
Click the 'files' tab.
Click the 'rescan id3 tag' tab.
Let it finish scanning and then unplug your Rane hardware and press 'analyze files'.
If it starts analyzing files let it do its thing.
Once its done analyzing look through your 'all' section and delete any corrupt files found.

I would stay away from using 2.2 live for now. Its a brand new version and there may be some unknown bugs. 1.9.2, 2.0, or 2.1.1 is what I would suggest using for now.


I feel your pain but I'm confident we can figure this out. Hang in there buddy:)

I would call but I'm on CST time and I don't think a phone conversation is going to make much of a difference.

I went back to an empty _Serato_ folder and began rebuilding my crates manually. I've got 15 crates total and have started to find the problem. Rather than number of crates, the number of tracks I have in my library seems to really kill the speed and stability of Serato.

Currently with (1,799 + 10,738 + 1,153 + 5,318 + 9,059) files, including samples, instrumentals, loops, acapellas, music videos, and video effects. The Serato GUI feels snappy, my tracks and crates load in under 30 seconds, and I can close without crashing.

Once I add my older music library, roughly another 20,000 tracks. Everything goes downhill. Startup times tank again, the interface feels laggy, scrolling through my library, searching, etc. all is dragged down. To test this I added this library to 1 crate in Serato and noted all the slowing issues that came back. I went back and deleted those tracks from the library and Serato began running much smoother again.

Is there a limit to how many files Serato can handle? I'll try reanalyzing but as you can see based on the size of my library I'll have to get back to you in a few days.

Not sure what else to do. Serato can't handle too many files without getting bogged down. 1.9.2 doesn't have dicer support. 2.0 and 2.1.1 also gave me the same issues I've discussed here only with more frequent crashings. Guess I'll try some other software, thanks anyways

Appears to be a reoccurring problem:

serato.com

also here: serato.com

and here: serato.com

and here: serato.com

Hey man... sorry for the delayed response. I just got back from vacation:)
Hopefully you've got some headway on this.
This is definitely an issue with others but I'm still not sure what would be causing this.
I know there is a user on here who swears that issues such as this can be fixed by making sure every file in your library is the same file type and encoded in the same fashion.
For example, convert every file to a 320mp3.

I know this can be an arduous process but others have done so and have said it did alleviate their issues.

I do still think it would be worth our while to connect over a WebEx meeting so I can go into your computer and try some things for myself.

I've reanalyzed about 30,000 files, still hanging when trying to close, cpu sits at 100% usage but nothing is reading or writing to my external drive. I could possibly schedule a WebEx meeting as this unreliability is literally killing my business.

I am here from 8am to 5pm Pacific time Mon.-Fri.

I would contact me no later than 4pm though.

Let me know:)

Don't mind the delays Zach, but converting every file to the same type is definitely not possible.

My day job work schedule for the next 3 weeks is M-F 8-4 CST, I'll have to get back to you in a few weeks when I'm available during your hours.

Edit: you're 2 hours behind me, I might be able to login and chat Friday at 4pm my time, 2pm your time

Ok.. just let me know:)

Friday will work, either before 12pm CST or after 4pm CST.

I also have a bug when I try to make copies of _Serato_ folders, it gets about 95% completed with the copy and then I receive an error message "The operation cannot be completed because an item with the name "_Serato_" already exists."

This occurs regardless if there was no prior directory or if I'm trying to copy and replace, or if I try a different folder name.

We'll figure it all out when we speak on the phone:)

Still hanging intermittently when closing, got called into work today. I'll try again for next Friday. Thanks Zach.

Cool.. I'm here for ya:)

Still hanging intermittently when closing, got called into work today. I'll try again for next Friday. Thanks Zach.

Did a 3 hour video set last night, 2 hours in my dicers stopped working, my midisport UNO (connected to a DJM800) also stopped working, and serato crashed when I tried to close it. I can't explain how much this instability fries my nerves =\

Did you try closing SSL once your Dicers and midisport stopped working or did you simply unplug/replug the Dicers and Uno in to get those to work again.
Crashing on shut down is going to be due to a corrupt databaseV2 file.

Open your Files tab.
How many hard drive icons do you see in the far left of the Files window?
Please list them.

If you then click on them do you see any _Serato_ or .ScratchLIVE folders in the next column over?

Hi again Zach,

I've been extremely busy gigging and apologize for not getting back to you. I'm still having issues with Serato when it comes to starting the program, loading my crates, and adding new files (especially).

The initial launch time is still slow after upgrading to 2.3.0, and when trying to drag 1 folder from Finder into SL to create a new crate SL still hangs for 5 minutes with the rainbow spinning beach ball (there are only 10 music files in the folder). SL will eventually create the crate after hanging, my only other idea is maybe this is an issue with the drive being FAT formatted?

2010 MBP, 8gb ram, 128gb internal ssd, 2TB/fw800 external g drive (crates/music/video), OSX 10.6.8., SL 2.3.0

If you take your external out of the equation (unplug it entirely) and just import music from your internal drive do you experience the same issue?

Does this long import time only happen when VSL is enabled?

Since we were last working on this, I have reformatted my external drive to HFS+ and replaced faulty memory in my laptop. However, the issues of slowly loading crates and painfully, slowly adding new files still exist. Very similar to what is discussed here:

serato.com

Importing music from only the internal drive is okay, without the external drive connected. However, with the external drive connected, dragging/dropping folders to create new crates from the internet OR external drive causes the machine to hang again.

Have you tried importing music from another external drive without having this problem drive plugged in?

If so, and it works fine, I would suggest uploading your entire _Serato_ folder located on your problem drive to this thread.
You will need to compress the folder before you'll be able to upload it.
I'll then have the Serato mods take a look at it.

Yes, I had this issue with a Seagate FreeAgent drive which was 5400 rpm USB. When I purchased a 7200 rpm FW800 drive I was hoping that would help but it did not.

If I start with a fresh _Serato_ folder and no crates, I can add files without hanging up to a certain point. After so many songs are imported it will start to hang again when trying to add another file/folder/crate/etc.

Ya.. upload your entire _Serato_ folder that lives on your external drive.
Serato will need to look at it.

Ok I've uploaded 2 versions. The first, is my usual set of files and crates that I use and have these problems with. The second, is a test I did by trying to use fewer crates and figure out if that was causing the issues when adding new files. The second started hanging like the first after I had added a few thousand tracks.

Cool.. I will get Serato to take a look at these.

We'll be back to you shortly:)

Hey Auronis,

Sorry for the slow reply. I can reproduce this slow loading here myself. It's no good :( There is an upper memory limit that is imposed on the application unfortunately which means that above a certain limit, you will notice performance issues. This is because the library is loaded to RAM and since the application can only use a certain amount, once your library gets too big it will slow down and potentially crash. We are looking at improving this for the future but it requires quite a large rewrite of the way our database is handled so it will take a while for this to be sorted out.

In the mean time, the only thing I can recommend is to try and cut down your library size and the number of crates and subcrates you have. Some other things to consider would also be:

- Make sure all Subcrates and Crates are collapsed before quitting and restarting.
- Check there are no corrupt files in your library and remove these.
- Make sure that your computer is optimized as per the guide here:

serato.com

Just to double check that this is the issue as well, can you let me know if the CPU and memory spike at all on startup when trying to load all your tracks and crates? I also saw that you mentioned this issue only starts when you load an older library of about 20,000 songs. If you make a fresh _Serato_ folder and import this library from scratch, are there any problems? It would be a good test to see if it is just something corrupted in here that is causing your issue.

Let me know how you get on.

Sam.

Hi Sam,

After 8 months of suspecting this issue it is nice to finally have a confirmation from Serato. There is, in fact, a limitation to the size of the library. As you said, the application is limited to only so much RAM, perhaps because it is 32-bit?

Serato generally uses around 1-1.5gb of RAM and my machine always has another 2-3gb of available RAM when I'm having these problems.

I have tried less crates and subcrates, but I've narrowed down the issue to the number of files having the greatest impact on performance, rather than the number of crates. That being said, can you recommend an estimate of the number of files I should stay within before running into these problems?

To answer your question, yes the CPU usage spikes (100%+) on startup, as well as when the program hangs for ~10 minutes trying to add any new files/folders/crates. I can send you a screenshot if you like.

This issue exists with either of the _Serato_ examples I uploaded. If I start with a fresh _Serato_ folder, everything works fine until I've added a certain amount of files. Once there's too many files, regardless of crates, the startup delays come back as well as the delays when trying to add files. So again I ask if there is a certain number of files I should aim for?

Thanks Sam

I couldn't say a number for sure sorry, it would be a case of slowly importing groups of files though and steadily watching the CPU and memory usage until you can see this rising. This will indicate the upper limit imposed by the memory usage.

We are working on supporting larger libraries better currently though, it's just a big task and will take some time to develop properly :)

I would try and reproduce this here for you but I don't have that many files sorry! I'll try get a test library and get some more information though.

Cheers,

Sam.

Sam.

Interesting, I have about 50,000+ videos & mp3 in my library, all on external drive and I don't have this issue, but I am now on Win 7 64bit but not long ago ran win xp 32bit since the release of VSL with no issues

Thanks for the help Sam, maybe you can get me an early beta to test your larger library support? :)

@ DJ Sound Technique
I'm around 80,000+ between audio and video files, going to try and trim down or isolate certain files that are causing this issue.