[Dougie085]

So...is it easier for the CPU to convert it to dds on the fly then it is for it to just render the image? Seems like the way to do it properly is to just convert the images to DDS to start with.... or is this not possible?

[jmarshall]

I'll write up a definitive document on the wiki later tonight.

EDIT: Here you go:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=ThumbnailCache

Any questions about this, let me know and I'll write the answers there to save me repeating myself

Cheers,
Jonathan

[sdsnyr94]

ok, so I went the route of mounting the Thumbnails folder to a network share using nfs. There is definitely an improvement, not as much as I hoped though.

I thought the DDS files were uncompressed using the GPU... so why would it make a difference with the single core compared to dual core?


As far as getting a larger USB drive, I may be forced to do that or use a HDD once the PVR goes into stable code... I'm figuring XBMC's footprint will be a little larger at that point.

[Tbtf]

Hey jon one quick question, is there any way to know that xbmc is converting the images to .DDS via the XBMC GUI? It seems as it has done some images because the movie navagain is quick for the first 7 movies but is slow for the rest, im assuming it hasnt converted those. I also was not able to find the .DDS images in my XBMCFREAK install, when I FTP into the htpc. I will check again later tonight

[MaRINoL]

Hello. I'm having a slight issue with DDS and the converted images. I recall reading about this somewhere yesterday but cannot seem to find it again. Essentially, upon converting the backdrops, all art is "corrupt" and is nothing but lines. Is anyone familiar with this and able to point me in the right direction?

[BoBeRzE]

Hello MaRINoL,

i think you have the same problem like me and a few other peoples. Please check Ticket 9269.

add <restrictcapsmask>4</restrictcapsmask> to your advancedsettings.xml. This should solve you problem.

@jonathan

have you news about the Ticket?

bye,
BoBeRzE

[MaRINoL]

Thanks for the link and NFO. I'll give it a shot. Just to be clear, I examined a couple of the .pngs associated with the ticket and my issue is far worse. All converted fan art is just distorted lines with no discernible image.

[MaRINoL]

Dude, that did it. Thank you so very much! I'm building this for my brother's birthday as a surprise and was at a total loss for what to do.

[BoBeRzE]

No Problem

You are welcome!

[xbmc17]

I added the DDS setting to my advancedsettings.xml, scrolled through my music, and noticed I now had some .DDS files on my hard disk!

I then tested this with my movies since I only have about 20. I tested under Transparency!, with fanart on. After scrolling through them, I don't notice much of a change? I'm using a Revo 3610.

I checked the logs and I see this:
00:56:25 T:2594163568 M:2126475264 DEBUG: DoWork - took 415 ms to load special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/Video/Fanart/151b9178.tbn
00:56:28 T:2910346096 M:2122539008 DEBUG: DoWork - took 1676 ms to load special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/Video/Fanart/982e0054.tbn
00:56:30 T:2527021936 M:2122166272 DEBUG: DoWork - took 1786 ms to load special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/Video/Fanart/f4f7a6d0.tbn

Doesn't that mean I'm still loading .tbn files rather than .dds? Anyone know why?

[twitch]

xbmc17: I don't know if this is the case with you but on my Zotac with the 230 processor it's taking around 6 minutes for XBMC to render a dds file. Maybe it's possible that it just hasn't gotten around to rendering the files for those movies yet?

When XBMC loads a dds file for me in the xbmc.log it doesn't show it loading the .dds file, it really just shows it receive the command from the remote then the graphics loading isn't displayed.

So flip through your collection and tail the xbmc.log file and look for movies it isn't displaying any info for the image loading, those are likely your dds files, and they should render on the screen pretty much instantly. The performance increase for me is staggering.


------------
My question now

jmarshall at one point said that xbmc didn't make use of CUDA to do the rendering is that still the case or will xbmc start making use of it once it has been installed on the system?

If not it seems a person is far better off installing cuda then using one of the previously posted scripts to convert all your .jpg and .tbn files manually rather than wait for xbmc to do it slowly. Like I said on my zotac the process is taking around 6 min per file.

[chanders]

I had nvcompress working perfectly with CUDA acceleration after following the guide earlier in this thread. It worked perfectly for a while but somewhere along the way, nvcompress no longer uses CUDA so now I get the eror

CUDA acceleration DISABLED

I have rebooted and even recompiled nvcompress again yet I cant get it to use CUDA. Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.

[IceNine]

My question now

jmarshall at one point said that xbmc didn't make use of CUDA to do the rendering is that still the case or will xbmc start making use of it once it has been installed on the system?

If not it seems a person is far better off installing cuda then using one of the previously posted scripts to convert all your .jpg and .tbn files manually rather than wait for xbmc to do it slowly. Like I said on my zotac the process is taking around 6 min per file.

That seems like an awful long time for conversion. In my tests early on in this thread, using nvcompress with the -fast option, it was almost as fast as using CUDA on my ION 330. I don't think the performance difference is that big between our processors. There may be other things going on in the background of XBMC that is making it seem like it's taking longer (like the conversion may be queued behind some other tasks, and the 6 minutes isn't actually all conversion time), I'm not really sure.

Also, I don't know that XBMC will ever support CUDA because the libraries they are using for the DDS conversion are not from nVidia. I suppose it's possible someday because I do think that nVidia has the CUDA libraries available, but not being a coder I have no idea how hard they would be to implement.

[IceNine]

I had nvcompress working perfectly with CUDA acceleration after following the guide earlier in this thread. It worked perfectly for a while but somewhere along the way, nvcompress no longer uses CUDA so now I get the eror

CUDA acceleration DISABLED

I have rebooted and even recompiled nvcompress again yet I cant get it to use CUDA. Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Are you using nvcompress directly from the command line or through a separate script? I know it seems like it's a dumb question, but CUDA can be disabled with the -nocuda option, which if you are using a script you didn't write yourself could have in it. Otherwise, when you recompiled it did it say that CUDA was enabled when you ran ./configure? I had a hell of a time just getting it to work right when I first was playing around with it.

[daroga]

Hi guys!

New to XBMC. Finally got my DVDs converted so playing around with getting the MC looking pretty.

I have my media all scrapped via Media Companion, which gives tbn's, nfo's, and jpg's for thumbnails and fanart, etc. I want to make the fanart load faster, but I want to check if I understand what I should be doing.

I'm running the nightly build from Aug 15 currently on Windows 7 64 bit.
I have an AMD single core CPU and an integrated ATI video card (3200HD) on a Dell Zino.
All my media itself is on an external, USB2 HDD.

Now, is DDS converting something my machine can do (does it only work with Nvidia cards?)? Does XBMC automatically convert things for you when USEDDSFANART is set to true in Advanced Settings? If it does convert that, where do I look for evidence of that? I've had XBMC running for a while, and even browsed around my library letting images load, and I don't see a single DDS file anywhere. The script I found on these board to convert them said my JPGs were an invalid format...?

Anyway, thanks for the help. I appreciate it!