Maximizing performance on the Pi for XBMC/Kodi
#31
(2014-10-20, 05:31)wrxtasy Wrote: The other thing I found after running Milhouse's Texture Cache Maintenance utility is that with proper media metadata folder structure (after local file scanning) all my media textures were already being pre-cached by XBMC in the Textures13.db.
Very few were missing - likely due to a comprehensive external metadata scraper.

Yes, if you scan using the Pi then the texture cache of the Pi should be populated with the new artwork. However if you are using MySQL then only the scanning client will have its texture cache populated during the scan while all the other clients will need to cache the new artwork as they display it, which can lead to delays and even problems if remote artwork is no longer available by the time one or more of the clients attempts to eventually display it for the first time.

So the benefit of the script depends largely on the environment - it's much more beneficial in a MySQL setup where you can pre-load the texture cache of all the non-scanner clients following a scan, but even in SQLite setups it's useful for interrogating the texture cache to confirm it's in good shape, amongst other things.
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
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#32
Some addons include unnecessary startup services that slow down Kodi. Many of them aren't necessary and you can disable them.

My addon "Autoruns" lists all addons that are initialized with kodi and we could disable the startup service.

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The services must be disabled based on user utilization. e.g. if you use addon library, you shouldn't disable the addon. Some addons are necessary (e.g. script.common.plugin.cache

repo: http://bit.ly/repofight_13
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#33
Excellent work fight night.

It has always annoyed me that all these extra addons get added to Skins when downloaded and enabled, but unless you actually switch on the options and configure certain addons once inside the Skins a lot them are never used. If I enable an option for the addon inside the skin - download it then.

What even happened to a minimal install, or is this the way XBMC was designed to operate ?
Maybe its the individual Skinner's programming ?

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#34
skins simply shouldn't add addons they support but not require as dependency so that it's up to the users if they want to use them or not. If a skin of your preference is doing such things, tell them to drop these dependencies in their addon.xml
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#35
(2014-10-21, 09:27)da-anda Wrote: skins simply shouldn't add addons they support but not require as dependency so that it's up to the users if they want to use them or not. If a skin of your preference is doing such things, tell them to drop these dependencies in their addon.xml

talked with ronie about this some tiome as i agree so much on this.
There are skins that import >10 other add-ons to the most silly ones. Will discuss it again and make it a hard repo rule to limit the amount of dependencies. The ones that are outside ours are of course free to do what they want.
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#36
Good move in the right direction.

It becomes particularly important on low powered devices like the RPi.
We don't want all this add-on baggage just the minimal required to run the skin as fast as possible.

A good question would be to make a rule on Skin install that asks the user:

Would you like to install just the minimal required add-ons for this skin ?

Simple.

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#37
(2014-10-21, 10:34)wrxtasy Wrote: Good move in the right direction.

It becomes particularly important on low powered devices like the RPi.
We don't want all this add-on baggage just the minimal required to run the skin as fast as possible.

A good question would be to make a rule on Skin install that asks the user:

Would you like to install just the minimal required add-ons for this skin ?

Simple.

imo it doesn't matter if it's low power or not Smile Just don't want excess stuff i don't need on my install. It just needs to install the bare minimum to operate. The rest is up to the users if he want it or not.
The "would you like to install?" is something we have some brainstorm thread in our team section, just need a dev who is interested in actually implementing these ideas.
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#38
If I install a skin that installs a bunch of add-ons, and then I switch back to Confluence that doesn't use/require any of these newly installed add-ons, would it be possible to automatically disable the add-ons used by the old skin that are not used by the current skin? Should I ever switch back to the first skin, then re-enable those add-ons it uses/requires etc.

Similarly, if I uninstall a skin that previously installed several dependencies, could these dependencies be uninstalled along with skin (assuming the dependencies are not used by any other skin etc.)?
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
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#39
Hmmm... Most of those addons are for providing recent, random, recommended etc items, search... If this code would be in XBMC it would run faster and scripts would not break. For some reason, this is not prefered way. Or maybe none of the devs wants to fiddle with such a basic stuff.
My skins:

Amber
Quartz

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#40
pecinko - it's not about these scripts but rather stuff like TvTunes, TVShowNextAired, VideoExtras, ... - these are by no means required for a fully working skin and should be optional
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#41
(2014-10-22, 09:07)da-anda Wrote: pecinko - it's not about these scripts but rather stuff like TvTunes, TVShowNextAired, VideoExtras, ... - these are by no means required for a fully working skin and should be optional

OK but still. Here's a fair question. This seems like an fairly easy thing to do:

Home page:

Image

Next screen:

Image

So you click on Movies on home page and it takes you to a bunch of filters. Of course, you can choose to go directly to Movies and skip those filters altogether as 99% of skins are doing already.

Benefits:
- quicker access to media for those with larger libraries
- simpler, 2 step interface Again,skinner could still make it 1 step and go directly to Movies from Home; I'm talking about situation when you want to filter videos. Someone might object we already have this as filters are located in Confluence submenus. Not quite the same thing I would say, but you still can have filters in home submenus with this proposal
- skinner could use those filters to auto populate home shelf items without a script

Drawbacks:
- dev time invested in making filters

So, may I ask, can we have this, what does the team think about it? We would at least avoid bunch of home shelf scripts if we put some thought in making this filters. If the team happen to like it, any of the devs interested?
My skins:

Amber
Quartz

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#42
I'd say this is getting way to off topic here. Mind reposting your proposal in the feature request or dev section?
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#43
The Wiki states:

"You can also try to use a combination of SD and fast USB drive for your XBMC/Kodi install, but recent improvements to the software make it so that even just using a good SD card is about as fast as using a fast USB drive."

Is that true? I was using the SD/USB combo, since it was advised here. What are the mentioned "recent" improvements? Just ordered yesterday a new B+ to try out the OpenELEC Helix test builds. Should i just use a normal SD card install for maximum performance?
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#44
(2014-12-01, 18:04)theowiesengrund Wrote: Is that true? I was using the SD/USB combo, since it was advised here. What are the mentioned "recent" improvements? Just ordered yesterday a new B+ to try out the OpenELEC Helix test builds. Should i just use a normal SD card install for maximum performance?

I think it's more a case of better understanding of what is important for good sdcard performance means you can choose an sdcard that is as fast as USB.

Forget about class 10. That is not important (it's purely a measure of continuous write speed - useful for video cameras, not useful for kodi).

You want fast random access 4K read and writes. You can measure that with something like CrystalMark.
One of the fastest sdcards you can get is the NOOBS card.
CrystalMark score here

I've found switching to card like that is as fast as my previous USB install and was a lot cheaper and is simpler to set up.
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#45
..........
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