Share thumbnails from smb share

I think I have a solution to the speed and synching for my windows systems.

Theres a software called allway sync that I use to create backups of my hdd's and in there I could set all my xbmc machines set to sync the thiumbnail folders on each local machine upon changes. This essentially should keep them in line instantly when I add or update the library. Its a long shot but Im gonna set it up and find out.

Edit: works perfect. Not sure how much of a strain this will put on my server since its constantly monitoring the tumbnail folder but I guess Ill monitor it over time and see if its impacting it too much.

Hi all
I am trying to find a solution for this issue by utilizing an addon to sync the data. Here's the thread. It's not even close to working yet, but its a start. Any input would be appreciated.


Cheers
Declan

(2012-04-03 18:29)mason Wrote:  I use a similar setup, sharing a massive library (3000 movies, 10.000 tv eps) over a NFS share on my linux server, the slowdown is defiantly noticeable but still acceptable.

An idea that spins my mind, is to sync the thumbnailcache to each client via rsync on startup, this way you would only sync diffs which should be finished in a second. just some bash script which you run on startup and shutdown. You might still have some gap with clients that you swich off and on inbetween updates but this depends on your setup.

will give it a shot next time I find some time. (excludes non linux clients of course)

my setup is almost identical... our home-server has the mySQL video/music db & a copy of the cache. first i collect all the new thumb onto the server ( rsync xbmc to homeNAS ) then propagate it back out to all the nodes ( homeNAS > xbmc )... all the nodes are ubuntu/xbmc-live/mint. there's rSync for iOS too, but i'll accept slowness pf substitution on my phone, rather then put 5gb of thumbs. rSync also works with smb shares. i don't (need to) know how

I just had a (hopefully) brilliant idea for this... but it will be dependent on the different sources you want to use, and probably isn't any good if you're trying to do this with a machine which isn't some flavor of PC. What about setting up your Thumbnail folder in a dropbox folder? Thumbnails would then autosync between machines, and act as if they were local at all times.

The issue with a dropbox approach is, as you already stated, it is limited to PCs, and maybe MACs ( I haven't used dropbox on a Mac). I'm not sure you can use Dropbox to sync to a particular path on, for example, an iPad or other device that isn't PC based.

What could have merit is the shared library (shared everything) + rsync approach. Every xbmc frontend points to a shared library, including thumbnails etc... On startup, xbmc (via addon), mirrors the thumbnails primary share, and perhaps even sources etc... To the frontend device. Only modified files are copied.

One small issue is that the first sync, or sync of a new large library, would take a long time. Though you could get around this by running the sync in the background, blocking access to library mode, but allowing access through File mode. Users would still have access to watch movies while the sync completes.

Just a thought (probably already mostly illustrated above)...

Dropbox definitely works on Macs, but I'm guessing it doesn't auto sync with iPad's (because it doesn't auto-sync on Android), and I'm sure it doesn't work on AppleTV, etc. Still I've got it up and running on my home network and it works amazingly well between all the different computers at my house. It's also less painful than an rsync because it's syncing when the files change... not on XBMC startup and there's less to configure. Still that solution would support a lot more devices.

With Dropbox you have to be aware of the thumb folder size, mine's over 5GB (use DDS) so the free account wouldn't work.

I don't know of it runs automatically or not, but for iOS: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/03/01/...o-dropbox/

bit confused? i thought mysql server was the answer to this question from googling around on it myself over the last few days?

i did until this thread think that you could do this:

have lets say a master pc with xbmc installed where you manually import new movies and fan art / thumbs.. it will be the very same pc you remux on for example the home workstation if you will

then have the 'thumbnails' folder on that pc (be it win7 or linux) copy to your main NAS/SERVER share (perhaps auto but to be safe maybe when your happy you manually copy it yourself)

then because you have setup your live nodes (living room xbmc, bedroom xbmc, kitchen xbmc, bathroom xbmc, tree house xbmc ) to all talk to the MySQL server AKA your NAS/SERVER they would pull down the thumbs / fanart / folder structure the whole job lot. Surley they would still show all the content there downloaded to the client/node even if the remote hosts actual files weren't there? or is that the key (and frankly derp reason) that this doesn't work as of 11? i.e it doesn't store locally the thumbnail folder even when synced mysql? if not then is all the mysql bit does is point to a share?.. no that cant be right.. erg confused

please clarify i must be missing something, it doesn't seem hard so far.

(2012-05-07 18:27)live4ever Wrote:  With Dropbox you have to be aware of the thumb folder size, mine's over 5GB (use DDS) so the free account wouldn't work.

You've either got an enormous library, or you've never bothered to clean out your thumbs folder. With 110 movies and 250 episodes mine is sitting at 188MB. Note, you only need to sync the Music and Video folders in the Thumbnail directory because everything else will be re-cached when needed, so that might be taking up a lot of your space.

(2012-05-07 21:55)phill1978 Wrote:  bit confused? i thought mysql server was the answer to this question from googling around on it myself over the last few days?

You are a little confused. What using MySQL does is allow you to sync your library/watched/bookmarks between multiple PCs over the network. It allows you to stop in one room and resume in another. A file added to the library on one machine will show up in another instantly.

HOWEVER, what it won't do is sync your library's thumbnails. They aren't stored in database at all and are locally cached. You can store your thumbnail folder on a networked server, but unfortunately this is slow as hell for machines that aren't local to the thumbnail folder. That's why we're discussing methods for syncing the folder locally between machines. Fanart is the biggest culprit because it can take a full second (or more) to transfer a 1-2MB file between the networked location and your remote PC. The problem is there's no good built-in way to do this in XBMC currently. The recommended "solution" is to manually sync your Thumbnail folder between machines every so often so that you can still store it locally.