[blicked]

Hiyah.. Is it normal for iTunes to stutter when transferring files from a Compact Flash card via a PC Card?

I have a TiBook 800Mhz, 1GB RAM, OSX 10.3.7, and it's a 512 MB CF card.

Thanks!

[osxrules]

I wouldn't think so but why are you transferring via itunes? If you mean that you are playing files in itunes from a card I still don't think you would have stuttering but it might depend on the audio you have.

USB 1 is 12Mbps=1.5MBytes/second max

AIFF bitrates aren't that high (1.4Mbps=175KBytes/sec).

However, if you are doing stuff in the background like downloading from the internet, basically anything that needs disk access or cpu, it might stutter.

If you are importing from the card while playing it, it might be more likely to stutter as you are doing more things at once. MP3 encoding uses a fair bit of processing power.

Check that your device doesn't have bad drivers. I had an old floppy drive that took minutes to transfer data.

[blicked]

Ermm.. No, I'm transferring images from the CF to my HD, but I'm playing files from iTunes (which are on my HD) at the same time. 8 (

[osxrules]

Sorry, I see what you are saying now. With your system spec I don't think it should stutter. When I've done some data copying with quicktime in the background, it actually stops dead for a couple of seconds but usually it's fine and I only have a 700 g3 ibook.

It could be the drivers though. If they are bad then the system will struggle to transfer the files. I had a bad floppy driver once and it was painfully slow and I couldn't do much while it transferred.

It could also be if you have a usb 2 card reader. I was assuming usb 1 before. Firewire and usb have high bandwidths so they might suck up a lot of your data throughput and that could make itunes stutter.

Check out your activity monitor while you copy stuff and view all the processes to see if anything is using CPU. Then check the disk activity section. If your disk activity is sky high, itunes will have difficulty reading files while it's going on.