[Noodle]

Hi Forum,

I setup mysql for share library cross multiple XBMC successfully, and following the HOW-TO guide, I also setup thumbnail as:

<pathsubstitution>
<substitute>
<from>special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/</from>
<to>PROTOCOL://YOUR_NETWORK_SHARE/xbmc/userdata/Thumbnails/</to>
</substitute>
</pathsubstitution>

in advancedsettings.xml. Everything works perfect.

But I have one question. If I share thumbnail folder cross multiple XBMC, how about thumbnail for Pictures? I didn't see anything on share Picture library cross multiple XBMC. But Picture thumbnail also create into same thumbnail folder. So if I import same picture folder (nfs share), they keep create thumbnail and overwrite each other. How can I fix this? Or anyway to share Picture library as well?

Thanks

Noodle

[jmarshall]

I'd suggest you share only the Video and Music subfolders of the Thumbnails folder. That way, once the video thumbs move to the texture cache you can remove that (this will occur in the May merge window) and once music thumbs move to the texture cache you can remove that as well (possibly the May window, depending on how busy I am).

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Noodle]

Thanks, how can I share Video and Musc thumbnails only by advanced settings.xml?

Noodle

[tripkip]

I'd suggest you share only the Video and Music subfolders of the Thumbnails folder. That way, once the video thumbs move to the texture cache you can remove that (this will occur in the May merge window) and once music thumbs move to the texture cache you can remove that as well (possibly the May window, depending on how busy I am).

Cheers,
Jonathan

Great news, thanks Jonathan.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this would make path substitution obsolete right?

[Ned Scott]

Great news, thanks Jonathan.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this would make path substitution obsolete right?

For videos, yes. You might still want it for music ( special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/Music/ ).

[tripkip]

Great news, thanks Jonathan.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this would make path substitution obsolete right?

For videos, yes. You might still want it for music ( special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/Music/ ).

That is awesome! I've seen these changes Jonathan was talking about in the May milestone. So we can expect this in the next alpha in a couple of days
Is there anything special to set it up or just skip step 5 ("Sync thumbails and fanart") from the wiki "Sync multiple libraries"?
Where are the actual thumbnails stored then, in a MySQL table?

[jmarshall]

The thumb URLs are stored in the sqlite or mysql tables. The actual images are stored on each client.

They're stored in the standard place, plus the translation from real URL -> cached URL is stored in the texture database. Thus, if you wish to save bandwidth, you can just copy your thumbnail folder directly from client to client (previously this wasn't really possible, as thumb URLs were based on movie/episode/tvshow path, which might be different from client to client).

Given they're stored in a different way, the first time they load they'll need to be re-cached from the web (or from local should you have local thumbs next to your media) so expect it to take a little while. Once cached it'll be nice and snappy - indeed, it should be significantly faster due to not having to load them over the network.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[kreeturez]

Have been using these changes on a MySQL shared-library setup (in Alpha 2 for Windows on 3 PCs; and Nightly 12-06-04 for iOS on an iPad) for the last day or so and have to comment on how well this works.
Performance using the old Path Substitution method for distributing thumbs wasn't great (serious delays in loading large lists) - this new method not only requires no setup whatsoever (you'll need to remove the step from the wiki soon ;-) but also runs very smoothly and fast. Mighty impressed; congrats to you and the team for outstanding work. As usual.

[jmarshall]

Thanks - glad it's working seamlessly for you

[zebraitis]

Thanks - glad it's working seamlessly for you

Jonathan - I just wanted to say thanks and great job on the responsiveness in the library.

I updated to the June monthly, and the MySQL based DB seems much faster.


Question #1: I don't know if it is possible, but is there anyway that the loading of the library could be more "context specific"?

It seems to load top-down... so in a large library, if you jump down to "Z" to look for a zombie movie you need to wait for the library to load down there. OR... if you make an update near the end of the 2000+ movie library, it seems to run through the whole DB, top-down to make that change.

I'm not sure if it could be done to somehow to update the page of films that I am viewing, rather than start way at the beginning.



Question #2: Do you have an estimate when music DB will be done? Path substitution is OK, but not as "clean" as the way that Videros are done.



Finally, I want to share something I found to manage the MySQL DB in XBMC. It's a free tool called "HeidiSQL" http://www.heidisql.com/

It allows you to edit the MySQL database, so it does directly what Ember (EMM) and XWMM did before MySQL.

Free, powerful, but (sadly) not the easiest to use... However, changes happen immediatly and once you get the hang of it, pretty cool tool.

(Now that I can edit the MySQL DB directly, I'm going to have to become a lot more familar with the fields in the DB.)

v.

[jmarshall]

No estimate for music - it's quite a bit more work unfortunately as there's several complications such as embedded images, and the fact that album art can only really be cached after we read all the tags of songs inside a particular folder. I doubt it'll make the June window, which means it'll be July.

For question 1, the thumbloader thread currently runs from top to bottom, yes. There's several ideas to improve this, some of which have been implemented and some which are still outstanding (eg caching the listing once done).

I'm working on getting music done first and foremost. You can monitor my progress in the music_thumbs_to_cache branch on my github should you wish (I'll push my changes there periodically - note, not cleaned up, so don't use as a reference for how to produce nice commit series just yet, other than from the "start with lots of small commits + fixups on top" perspective!)

Cheers,
Jonathan

[User 34959]

This is not a rant, whine, bug report or anything like that, just a comment:

I tried the nightlies again to see if performance has improved after the commits when compared to Eden with pathsubs. Thumbs definitely load faster but navigating and browsing the movie views is still terrible juddery in Confluence, pretty much in view. Didn't try other skins. What's weird that the lag is noticeably worse in Mac mini than it's in the Macbook even though the Mini has more ponies. I cannot even use DDS fanart with Eden on Mini because it's makes fanart loading so juddery whereas with Macbook DDS is smooth as silk.

Other one is running Snow Leopard and other one Lion, but the version of the OS doesn't have anything to do with this, i've tried.

[kreeturez]

This is not a rant, whine, bug report or anything like that, just a comment:

I tried the nightlies again to see if performance has improved after the commits when compared to Eden with pathsubs. Thumbs definitely load faster but navigating and browsing the movie views is still terrible juddery in Confluence, pretty much in view. Didn't try other skins. What's weird that the lag is noticeably worse in Mac mini than it's in the Macbook even though the Mini has more ponies. I cannot even use DDS fanart with Eden on Mini because it's makes fanart loading so juddery whereas with Macbook DDS is smooth as silk.

Other one is running Snow Leopard and other one Lion, but the version of the OS doesn't have anything to do with this, i've tried.

Have you tried the MySQL tweaks? (See here...)

Strange that one box is more affected than the other...

[zebraitis]

No estimate for music... I doubt it'll make the June window, which means it'll be July...

You can monitor my progress in the music_thumbs_to_cache branch on my github should you wish (I'll push my changes there periodically - note, not cleaned up, so don't use as a reference for how to produce nice commit series just yet, other than from the "start with lots of small commits + fixups on top" perspective!)

Cheers,
Jonathan

Jonathan,

Thanks for the reply. Having updated to Eden, MySQL, and rebuilding my 38 TB server solution (18TB main, 20TB backup) to sleep S3 successfully, and bulding WOL into 4 XBMC systems to be as "green" as I can... I think that I'll stay away from github & nightlies. The wife can only take so much!

Please, if you can, make sure that you share the news in the monthly once Music DB gets done.

Again, thanks!

[onlyyou]

incredible news !
one question, once i have updated to Froyo Alpha 2, do i have to rebuild my mysql database or even make a new one ? Or only recrape movies ? Thanks !