Queued songs in encoder stalled

[jama]

Max is a great program, but there are some very annoying things that can happen that I have found nothing on this forum to assist with.
For example, the CD paranoia ripper when set to full paranoia can take up to 24 hours and even then just stalls. Why not a popup saying this is what is going on, do you want to continue? This happens even when retry is set to a lower number. For now, sticking with Overlap Checking solves the problem, but my rips sometimes have errors in them at the beginning and end of the file. I'm using a G4 1.67Ghz Laptop.

But that's not what have been annoyed enough to post about, it's this problem of the Queued songs in encoder that get stalled. There seems to be no way to start and stop the encoder, and yet sometimes it just stays in Queued mode and nothing happens. Why is this and what can be done about it?

Thanks,

Jarome

[krmathis]

You are using the latest development build, right? Trunk, rev. 1332

[jama]

You are using the latest development build, right? Trunk, rev. 1332

Of course.

I left Max for a while and went back to it today and the encoder was empty! No Queued files. But they were never encoded.
I still have all the Max-005910c0-8X2MSJo3.caf files in the temp folder, but have no idea how I can use them.

This is really annoying and unprofessional, at least put an encoder pause and stop button if your going to have queued files!

[Fuga]

What OS version?
What chip/drive/Ram?

[jama]

What OS version?
What chip/drive/Ram?

This was mentioned above, built in drive whatever that is, 1.5G ram

[jama]

Actually since the drive has nothing to do with this, I don't even know why I answered this!
The problem is a stalled encoder that does not encode the files in it's queue.

All I want to know is how to start the encoder when it stops, does no one know the answer to this simple glitch?

[sbooth]

Are there any messages printed to the console for the stalled songs? What format are you converting to/from?

[jama]

I quit Max before looking at the log, so I don't know if there were any messages. Next time it happens I will post here, but frankly, I am not particularly enthused about encoding my CD's now with it.
I am converting from CD to MP3 onto an external firewire drive.

[sbooth]

Are there messages in the console log? Not Max's log, but the system's console accessible via /Applications/Utilities/Console.app.

[cwa]

FWIW, I have the same problem.
The logs show:

03/03/08 15:45:28 Max[23422] MusicBrainz query failed. Error: (1)
03/03/08 15:46:08 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:46:55 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:47:38 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:48:21 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:49:01 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:49:49 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:50:27 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:51:05 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:51:42 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:52:10 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147
03/03/08 15:52:52 Max[23422] *** Assertion failure in validateAndCreateDirectory(), /tmp/Max-0.7.1/Utilities/UtilityFunctions.m:147

All 11 songs are queued. Forever.

[cwa]

Looking at the source, I found a work-around for line 147

141 result = [manager fileExistsAtPath:path isDirectory:&isDir];
142 if(NO == result) {
143 result = [manager createDirectoryAtPath:path attributes:nil];
144 NSCAssert(YES == result, NSLocalizedStringFromTable(@"Unable to create directory.", @"Exceptions", @""));
145 }
146 else {
147 NSCAssert(YES == isDir, NSLocalizedStringFromTable(@"Unable to create directory.", @"Exceptions", @""));
148 }
149 }
150

My root Music directory was indeed not a real directory. It was a symlink (to a real directory). I made it a directory, and now Max behaves normally.

[jama]

Yes, this is the solution to the problem, Max is looking for an external drive and doesnt see one so it freaks out.
Would be nice if the developer could solve some of these problems, or at least explain why Max does weird things.
I know it's free, but Well written software will tell you things like "the drive you selected is not accessable, do you want to change output directories?
Rather than just stall the encoding process with no way to start it again, so you have to start over from scratch.
There are many such annoyances with Max unfortunatley.

[rcm89]

...So 9 months on, it's still a bug in 0.8.1. I can encode to the local HD, but not to a writeable SMB-mounted filesystem.