Turn off indexing

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
nathannn
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Turn off indexing

Post by nathannn » Wed Sep 04, 2013 5:15 am

an option to turn this off is needed since it actually does the opposite of its itended purpose, it slows browsing down almost to the point of crashing live.
The Push / Novation Launch Pad / Novation Launch Pad Pro / Novation Launch Key
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ze2be
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Location: Europe

Re: Turn off indexing

Post by ze2be » Wed Sep 04, 2013 5:27 am

Agree.

miekwave
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by miekwave » Tue Sep 10, 2013 1:52 am

nathannn wrote:an option to turn this off is needed since it actually does the opposite of its itended purpose, it slows browsing down almost to the point of crashing live.
Yes. I've been working with Ableton support for months on this very issue. My index db file was almost 2GB.

madlab
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by madlab » Tue Sep 10, 2013 6:14 am

+ 1
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chapelier fou
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by chapelier fou » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:36 am

+ 1
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Deimateos
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by Deimateos » Mon Oct 14, 2013 12:35 am

I'm surprised more people aren't more vocal about this issue. It's easily the worst browser feature in any DAW I use. Come on Ableton, Steinberg built a better version of an indexing browser TWO Cubases ago (Cubase 5's Media Bay) without constantly hogging the Disk and CPU! It would index once and updates easily by un-checking and re-checking whatever folder got changed.

It's almost as if Ableton hired the worst programmers they could find for the browser and those programmers never once tested the browser on anything less than the fastest SSD drives. Live 9's bloated browser is pretty much unusable on my 7200RPM laptop drive (i5 Sandy Bridge and 8GB DDR3 @1600Mhz.

Today I opened an idea project that has one synth, one drum track, three sends and 6 empty audio tracks(No Max4Live). I took almost three minutes and Live nearly crashed out. Meanwhile, my copy of FL Studio 11 Signature Edition loads up in seconds and 40+ Track projects take maybe 20-30 seconds to recall. This is unacceptable.

As far as browsers go, Ableton likes breaking the stereotype of German efficiency just a little too much.

Stop adding bells and whistles and make your DAW that I paid for work properly! :evil:

lookbeat
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 17, 2013 3:50 pm

Re: Turn off indexing

Post by lookbeat » Thu Oct 17, 2013 3:53 pm

I think they need to improve the indexer engine, like changing the hash algorithms and give a option to change the database location. Another good feature I believe is to freeze indexer for some folders since time in times I got a high disk usage and waste of time waiting live to scan static sample folders.

cheers

Pedro
-------------------------------------------
http://www.soundcloud.com/lookbeat

bakku
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by bakku » Wed Feb 12, 2014 1:43 pm

+1

oblique strategies
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by oblique strategies » Sun Feb 16, 2014 12:01 am

Definitely needs improvement. :(

tone61
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by tone61 » Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:46 am

+1

ze2be
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Location: Europe

Re: Turn off indexing

Post by ze2be » Sun Feb 16, 2014 11:47 am

The Live (9) browser is so slow now I dont even use it for importing audio files. I use a Windows program called Total Commander. Highly recomended! You get two browser windows each with tabs inside one window so you can easily re-structure things fast. It will remember your folder/tab setups from previous uses. When copying files it can do it in the background so you can still use the browser while it does so. You can not do that with Windows folders. It also has a simple to use yet great backup system, and the whole program is highly configurable. I work for hours from time to time archiving files. The white background in Windows can really tire my eyes as the hours go by. But with Total Commander I made the background and text like Winamp, because its the nicest color temprature ive worked with for a browser: dark blue almost black background, and light blue text. You can also fully customize what functions you would like to have visible. I removed everything I dont use, and the gui is very simplistic and clutter free now.

I drag and drop audio files directly from Total Commander to Live. You can also use your normal Win/Mac folders ofcource, but Total Commander is much better.

Looking forward to try the Bitwig browser. Just a few more weeks now until release..

bakku
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Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:11 am

Re: Turn off indexing

Post by bakku » Fri May 30, 2014 3:21 pm

needs improvement

Ittai
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by Ittai » Thu Nov 06, 2014 11:23 am

was this issue not resolved yet?
This is becoming a real problem for me. the indexing circle near the places headline keeps turning and live takes five(!) minutes to load!
macbookpro i7 2.4Ghz, live 9, MOTU traveler mk3, FCB 1010, Korg Kaoss pad
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miekwave
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Re: Turn off indexing

Post by miekwave » Thu Nov 06, 2014 10:41 pm

After to talking to support about ways to bypass or optimize index, I was provided with this answer.

*** Warning: ATTEMPTING THIS MAY CRASH YOUR SYSTEM, DO NOT ATTEMPT UNLESS YOU KNOW 100% What you are doing **

Hi Miek,

Thank you for getting back to us.

Completely bypassing the Live Index is not possible I am afraid to say, but you can alter the priority of the Live Index via an options.txt entry.

The following Knowledge Base article explains you how to use the options.txt file:

https://www.ableton.com/en/articles/opt ... file-live/

The debug option for de-prioritization of the Live Index is

-IndexerPriority=<keyword>

with keyword being one of the following values:

Normal
BelowNormal1
BelowNormal2
BelowNormal3
Idle

Be very careful with "Idle", this may lead to program starvation or hanging programs, but it might resolve the issue with loading times on your machine. The default setting is BelowNormal2.

Please note that those options.txt commands are for testing purposes, and therefore they are unsupported. If any issues come up, we recommend removing the options.txt file again.

We hope this helps, please let us know how things are going and if you have any further questions.

Best regards,


David
Ableton Support

wayfinder
Posts: 176
Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2009 4:01 pm

Re: Turn off indexing

Post by wayfinder » Sat Sep 14, 2019 10:07 am

Thank you for this! I've been having a lot of trouble with Live freezing for up to 5 minutes sometimes, becoming completely unresponsive. This will happen when Live regains focus after a while, or when I'm loading or saving. I've started smoking again because of the enforced 5 minute breaks, not a joke.

Then today I saw someone in another topic mention Indexer.txt and turns out the little rascal has been taking his time configuring its places: according to the log, it usually takes about 6 seconds. But sometimes, and I've not been able to pinpoint when exactly but it roughly lines up with when the Indexer has had more than a few hours of not scanning anything, it'll take ~300 seconds. There's my cigarette breaks. Not sure if I can cross-reference it with when my drives were hibernating or active, anybody know if that info is stored anywhere?

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