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iDAF Seems "Slow"

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This is a broad statement, but basically means you feel like the application is not responding quickly enough in performing some tasks. Here are some typical examples, reasons and possible solutions:

1.Scans of files take a long time.  Possible reasons are that you are inventorying a large number of files, you are scanning files on a network drive and have either a low-speed connection (10mbs) or high LAN traffic, or you are running an older PC lacking in CPU speed or RAM memory. One way to reduce the scan time is to scan for selected groups of files using custom cart masks to reduce results to only the audio files you wish to review rather than all files found.

2.When I sort or group carts, it takes a long time.  Typically, this happens when you have a fairly large inventory - in excess of 15,000 carts, including cuts. All cart information is in-memory when sorting or grouping, so a memory-starved PC will take significantly longer to sort or group carts than a PC with plenty of available RAM memory. Processor speed also plays a role. The best solution without adding RAM to your PC is to close other unused applications, which frees up RAM memory for use by iDAF.

3.Saving a displayed inventory to a standard DCS/Maestro inventory data file takes a long time.  In this case, part of the reason may be that the inventory contains a large number of multi-cut carts. When iDAF is preparing to save the inventory information, multi-cut cart AUX mark and length information is retrieved from the Next-To-Play cut, which means opening another file header to retrieve this information. If the Next-To-Play cut value has not been initialized, iDAF looks for a valid cut and retrieves that information. In extreme cases, where as much as half of the inventory is multi-cut carts, iDAF will be reading additional file information hundreds, maybe even thousands of times. This additional checking slows the process down. The two main factors in speeding up this process are your computer’s processor speed and amount of RAM available.

4.There's a long delay when selecting a UNC path. If you are running iDAF on Windows 98 or Windows NT4, extremely long delays may occur when you are building a scan list and attempt to select a UNC path as one of the items. This is a known problem with no known resolution other than to consider mapping a drive letter to the UNC path.