(2012-05-08, 16:27)jamie1984 Wrote: Apologies if this is posted in the wrong place but I have been lucky enough to receive my board ahead of the estimated delivery date.

In order for me to help out the devs and provide some useful information, please advise me of the best way to test XBMC on RPi? There seems to be a few options on distributions - OpenELEC (have to compile) or Raspbmc (is it available?)

At the moment I have downloaded an image from rpi developers site - https://rpi-developers.com/projects/xbmc/

It's a bit unstable as expected so short of donating my board to a dev, how can I help?

Thanks.

(2012-05-09, 15:20)CrashX Wrote: If you don"t mind, can you answer the the following questions on your XBMC experience:


1) How is the UI ? Is it responsive ? How is CPU load going back and forth between menu ? To see cpu usage, you need to enable debugging under system settings.

2) How is media playback ? Flash ? Apple Trailers ? 1080p ? Any drops in frames ? Cpu usage ? You can see this information by pressing "o" during playback.

3) Have you tried any plugins ? Icefilms, NaviX, Youtube, etc

4) How is the video,music library feature on it ? Scanning content ? Going through different views ?



Here is couple of advanced settings that I use to make my Apple TV 2 XBMC experience a bit better:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <cachemembuffersize>30242880</cachemembuffersize>
  </network>
  <fanartheight>560</fanartheight>
  <thumbsize>256</thumbsize>
  <gui>
    <algorithmdirtyregions>3</algorithmdirtyregions>
    <nofliptimeout>0</nofliptimeout>
  </gui>
  <bginfoloadermaxthreads>2</bginfoloadermaxthreads>
</advancedsettings>

(2012-05-09, 16:54)s7mx1 Wrote: 1) Bit slow. CPU load is over 90% on home screen at idle and interesting drops to 40% at file manager as reported by top

2) H264 video files plays very nicely up to 720p. For 1080p h264 videos it pauses every 5 seconds or so. The cpu load when playing H264 720p video is about 60% and it goes over 90% when playing 1080p video. The fast forward and fast backwards does not yet work. Skip works fine but you got some grey screen initially when you do the skip.

3) Plugins are really slow as I mentioned which is likely due to high CPU load whilst idle. It took about 10 seconds for the plugin to execute

4) Have not tried.

Will try the advantaged setting tonight.

(2012-05-09, 15:20)CrashX Wrote: If you don"t mind, can you answer the the following questions on your XBMC experience:


1) How is the UI ? Is it responsive ? How is CPU load going back and forth between menu ? To see cpu usage, you need to enable debugging under system settings.

2) How is media playback ? Flash ? Apple Trailers ? 1080p ? Any drops in frames ? Cpu usage ? You can see this information by pressing "o" during playback.

3) Have you tried any plugins ? Icefilms, NaviX, Youtube, etc

4) How is the video,music library feature on it ? Scanning content ? Going through different views ?



Here is couple of advanced settings that I use to make my Apple TV 2 XBMC experience a bit better:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <cachemembuffersize>30242880</cachemembuffersize>
  </network>
  <fanartheight>560</fanartheight>
  <thumbsize>256</thumbsize>
  <gui>
    <algorithmdirtyregions>3</algorithmdirtyregions>
    <nofliptimeout>0</nofliptimeout>
  </gui>
  <bginfoloadermaxthreads>2</bginfoloadermaxthreads>
</advancedsettings>

(2012-05-09, 18:06)Ned Scott Wrote: I would first try <algorithmdirtyregions>1</algorithmdirtyregions> on the Pi. The ATV2 had some issues with modes 1 and 2, so three is used as a safe bet, but isn't the best mode (reduces CPU when the screen is idle, rather than reducing CPU while GPU is active, etc).

(2012-05-09, 17:05)humla Wrote:

(2012-05-09, 16:54)s7mx1 Wrote: 1) Bit slow. CPU load is over 90% on home screen at idle and interesting drops to 40% at file manager as reported by top

2) H264 video files plays very nicely up to 720p. For 1080p h264 videos it pauses every 5 seconds or so. The cpu load when playing H264 720p video is about 60% and it goes over 90% when playing 1080p video. The fast forward and fast backwards does not yet work. Skip works fine but you got some grey screen initially when you do the skip.

3) Plugins are really slow as I mentioned which is likely due to high CPU load whilst idle. It took about 10 seconds for the plugin to execute

4) Have not tried.

Will try the advantaged setting tonight.

(2012-05-09, 15:20)CrashX Wrote: If you don"t mind, can you answer the the following questions on your XBMC experience:


1) How is the UI ? Is it responsive ? How is CPU load going back and forth between menu ? To see cpu usage, you need to enable debugging under system settings.

2) How is media playback ? Flash ? Apple Trailers ? 1080p ? Any drops in frames ? Cpu usage ? You can see this information by pressing "o" during playback.

3) Have you tried any plugins ? Icefilms, NaviX, Youtube, etc

4) How is the video,music library feature on it ? Scanning content ? Going through different views ?



Here is couple of advanced settings that I use to make my Apple TV 2 XBMC experience a bit better:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <cachemembuffersize>30242880</cachemembuffersize>
  </network>
  <fanartheight>560</fanartheight>
  <thumbsize>256</thumbsize>
  <gui>
    <algorithmdirtyregions>3</algorithmdirtyregions>
    <nofliptimeout>0</nofliptimeout>
  </gui>
  <bginfoloadermaxthreads>2</bginfoloadermaxthreads>
</advancedsettings>

What skin are you using?
I have heard using the new confluence-lite skin improves the responsiveness. Can u pls try that as well.
What about any other ultra light skins.

(2012-05-09, 15:20)CrashX Wrote: If you don"t mind, can you answer the the following questions on your XBMC experience:


1) How is the UI ? Is it responsive ? How is CPU load going back and forth between menu ? To see cpu usage, you need to enable debugging under system settings.

2) How is media playback ? Flash ? Apple Trailers ? 1080p ? Any drops in frames ? Cpu usage ? You can see this information by pressing "o" during playback.

3) Have you tried any plugins ? Icefilms, NaviX, Youtube, etc

4) How is the video,music library feature on it ? Scanning content ? Going through different views ?



Here is couple of advanced settings that I use to make my Apple TV 2 XBMC experience a bit better:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <cachemembuffersize>30242880</cachemembuffersize>
  </network>
  <fanartheight>560</fanartheight>
  <thumbsize>256</thumbsize>
  <gui>
    <algorithmdirtyregions>3</algorithmdirtyregions>
    <nofliptimeout>0</nofliptimeout>
  </gui>
  <bginfoloadermaxthreads>2</bginfoloadermaxthreads>
</advancedsettings>

(2012-05-09, 20:48)humla Wrote: maybe try PM3.

(2012-05-09, 16:54)s7mx1 Wrote: 1) Bit slow. CPU load is over 90% on home screen at idle and interesting drops to 40% at file manager as reported by top

2) H264 video files plays very nicely up to 720p. For 1080p h264 videos it pauses every 5 seconds or so. The cpu load when playing H264 720p video is about 60% and it goes over 90% when playing 1080p video. The fast forward and fast backwards does not yet work. Skip works fine but you got some grey screen initially when you do the skip.

3) Plugins are really slow as I mentioned which is likely due to high CPU load whilst idle. It took about 10 seconds for the plugin to execute

4) Have not tried.

Will try the advantaged setting tonight.

(2012-05-09, 23:54)Jezz_X Wrote:

(2012-05-09, 16:54)s7mx1 Wrote: 1) Bit slow. CPU load is over 90% on home screen at idle and interesting drops to 40% at file manager as reported by top

2) H264 video files plays very nicely up to 720p. For 1080p h264 videos it pauses every 5 seconds or so. The cpu load when playing H264 720p video is about 60% and it goes over 90% when playing 1080p video. The fast forward and fast backwards does not yet work. Skip works fine but you got some grey screen initially when you do the skip.

3) Plugins are really slow as I mentioned which is likely due to high CPU load whilst idle. It took about 10 seconds for the plugin to execute

4) Have not tried.

Will try the advantaged setting tonight.

I can pretty much agree with this and has been my experience as well on all points. I have managed to get the ui a little better by basically removng all the cover art, fanart, background video and viz but it still lags a little on scrolling. It could be because I'm only using a class 4 SD card but I purchased a class 6 one the other day only to find out that it doesn't work ( quite a big list here http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Problem_SD_Cards as a found out too late )
Another thing needed is to turn off the background generation of video thumbnails and meta data in video settings it really slows it down too.
Also maybe a network library might be of advantage here but I've not bothered to set that up
Also TheUni has been working on a better internal thumbnail loader for jpg images that may help as well in the long run for loading the covers

(2012-05-10, 00:05)davilla Wrote: Remember, it took iOS the better part of 4-6 months to pickup speed, this platform I expect will be similar.

(2012-05-10, 00:05)davilla Wrote: Remember, it took iOS the better part of 4-6 months to pickup speed, this platform I expect will be similar.