[Thekay]

Have had this enabled through advancedsettings for a week now but not noticed any difference. So i took a look in my xbmc.log and found something intresting, and nothing about dds conversion (i should see that right?) except the part where my advancedsettings.xml is loaded
Can anyone please help me and tell me what those errors in the end are?
Here's the log: http://pastebin.com/kmSMNbPV

Hugs!
//DK

[Hitcher]

Have you looked in the thumbnail folders to see if there are any DDS files?

[Thekay]

Have you looked in the thumbnail folders to see if there are any DDS files?

Yes there is dds files, but there is also alot of jpg and png files with the same names. Maybe this doesn't matter? I also thought that there would be something in the log when the dds files are created.

[mwkurt]

Would using the DDS compression have any effect when using the mysql database and a networked setup where all clients are sharing a thumbnail database by using symlinks?

Thanks,
MArk

[jingai]

Would using the DDS compression have any effect when using the mysql database and a networked setup where all clients are sharing a thumbnail database by using symlinks?

I just did this. Yes, it does work, and it is a noticeable improvement.

Bear in mind though that I have a gigabit network setup. If your connection is slower, remember that the DDS files themselves are significantly larger than their TBN counterparts, so you may notice less of an improvement (or even a degradation).

-jingai

[mwkurt]

jingai,

Thanks for the info! I too have a GB setup and will try this later today.

Thanks,
Mark

[Palmtree]

What would be the easiest way to convert all my fanart when each file is in a seperate sub folder?

I use Ember Media Manager to organize everything, which makes life a lot easier for me, but now all I can think to do is set up another library w/o Ember, then run the batch on all the fanart, and then drag and drop each .dds file into the appropriate sub folder.

Sorry if this has been discussed, but when a thread is this big I only check out the first 5 and last 5 pages or so...

[Vincent81]

Hello,
You can Try XBNE 9.7.0.0, he knows generate cached images in DDS format ...
Go in option and choise format DXT1..DXT5,No Comp :

[furii]

i've been following this thead nearly since the beginning but haven't used the option in a while. i feel like i remember reading that xbmc will load user generated dds images even if <useddsfanart> is not in the advancedsettings.xml. is this correct?

basically what i'd like is to generate the dds files myself via script but have xbmc use them.

edit: scratch that. according to the wiki "Even if you haven't set the advanced setting, XBMC will still load .dds versions of the textures if they're available, so on slower systems you may wish to generate .dds versions offline and place them in the texture cache directly." so that's great.

i have another question now though. let's say i have moviename.dds and moviename-fanart.dds files in a movie's folder. will xbmc copy that dds file to the texture cache when i add the movie to the library?

[AddictedToMetal]

Wow. Just wow. So cool how one little setting makes such a huge difference.

[avus m3]

I haven't tried this with my MySQL setup yet but from reading everyones responses why is not the default behavior of xbmc?

[turbobuickguy]

Are the instructions posted here still valid for XBMCLive RC2? (I have a clean install on a Zotac HD-ID11)

I have tried following them, and when I get to "sudo sh cudatoolkit_2.3_linux_32_ubuntu9.04.run" I receive an error. "Syntax error:redirection unexpected" to be exact. I am executing this command from my /home/user/download directory, using my user account.

Solving this, is probably something incredibly simple, but I am very unfamiliar with linux to be honest... although I can follow directions well enough to get me into trouble . What I did notice, is that the version of linux showing in my putty window is 10.04, I don't know if that means that the 9.04 version of cuda tools can be used or not, or if I get a newer version, if all the remaining steps here will get me the results I want (converting, and using DDS Fan Art). Any help to get me pointed in the right direction is greatly appreciated!!

Well that is a project that took me almost a whole day. Hopefully I can help you out!

First what you will need:
nVidia Texture Tools
CUDA Tools
g++ and gcc versions 4.4 and 4.3
libjpeg and dev files
cmake

Code:

sudo apt-get install g++ g++-4.3 gcc-4.3 libjpeg62-dev cmake
cd ~
wget http://nvidia-texture-tools.googlecode.com/files/nvidia-texture-tools-2.0.7-1.tar.gz
wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/2_3/toolkit/cudatoolkit_2.3_linux_32_ubuntu9.04.run
tar -xvzf nvidia-texture-tools-2.0.7-1.tar.gz

(the cuda extension for nvcompress won't compile on 4.4 for some reason, which is what comes with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic. If you are running 9.04 you're fine.)
CUDA isn't strictly needed, nvcompress will still work pretty quickly with the -fast option, but CUDA still seems fastest. If you don't want to use CUDA, don't install the cuda tools because the texture tools won't compile without some extra work with g++ 4.3.

To install the CUDA tools, in terminal go to the directory where you downloaded the CUDA file I linked and run

Code:

sudo sh cudatoolkit_2.3_linux_32_ubuntu9.04.run

Now you have to add the cuda libraries to your shared libraries by editing a file. I use nano for my text editor, feel free to use whatever you like.

Code:

sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf

and add this line to the end

Code:

include /usr/local/cuda/lib/

After you save the file, run

Code:

sudo ldconfig -v

to update the libraries.

Assuming you want CUDA acceleration, after you have installed g++ and ran the CUDA tools installer, move to the nvidia-texture-tools directory (wherever you unzipped it to) and run

Code:

./configure

You should see in the list of things that come up that JPEG is found and CUDA is found. Something like this:

Code:

-- Configuring nvidia-texture-tools 2.0.7-1
-- Setting optimal options
--   Processor: i686
--   Compiler Flags:  -march=i686
-- Looking for OpenGL - found
-- Looking for GLUT - found
-- Looking for DirectX - not found
-- Looking for GLEW - not found
-- Looking for Cg - not found
-- Looking for CUDA - found
-- Looking for Maya - not found
-- Looking for JPEG - found
-- Looking for PNG - not found
-- Looking for TIFF - not found
-- Looking for OpenEXR - not found
-- Use thread library: -lpthread
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /home/xbox/Downloads/nvidia-texture-tools/build

-e Your configure completed 033[92msuccessfully033[0m, now type 033[1mmake033[0m

If that works well, and you are on Ubuntu Karmic then you need to set up g++ to compile using version 4.3.

Code:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.4 44 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.4 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-4.4
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.3 43 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.3 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-4.3

You can confirm that this finished right by running

Code:

sudo update-alternatives --display gcc

Now set the system to run version 4.3 instead of 4.4.

MAKE SURE TO CHANGE THIS BACK WHEN YOU ARE DONE.

Code:

sudo update-alternatives --config gcc

You should see something like this:

Code:

There are 2 choices for the alternative gcc (providing /usr/bin/gcc).

  Selection    Path              Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/gcc-4.4   44        auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/gcc-4.3   43        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/gcc-4.4   44        manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

In this case you would type 1 and hit enter. Just put whatever number you have to switch to version 4.3.

After this is done, in the nvidia-texture-tools folder, type

Code:

sudo make

and, assuming everything compiled ok (I got some warnings in the compile process but it did finish and everything seems to work fine) type

Code:

sudo make install

and it should install the files properly.

At this point you can change your default compiler back to version 4.4 by running the same command as above and set back to auto (option 0 in the example).

Try to run nvcompress (you should be able to do this anywhere in the command line now) and if you get the typical list of options than you are good to go. Initially I had some issues with nvcompress not seeing the needed shared libraries. You'll know if you have this same problem if, when you try to run nvcompress, you get an error saying it can't find some shared library. If this is the case, follow the next instructions.

Move to the /usr/local/bin directory and check if nvcompress is really not seeing libraries.

Code:

cd /usr/local/bin
ldd nvcompress

You should see a list of libraries that nvcompress depends on. If you have any entries that say Not Found at the end than some libraries aren't being seen. I was missing one (libcudart.so.2) at the end of all these steps, but I fixed this by copying the file to a library I knew was working.

Code:

sudo cp /usr/local/cuda/lib/libcudart.so.2 /usr/local/lib/libcudart.so.2
sudo ldconfig -v

You only need to do something like this if nvcompress gives an error that it can't find a shared library.

Hopefully this should be thorough enough and I didn't forget anything. Pretty much all of this info I found digging around on Google. If anyone runs into any problems that I didn't cover here I can try to help, but I'm not much of a linux guru.

[ashlar]

Two questions on this:

1) to update an existing library to use this I need to completely clean and rescan?

2) need to configure a new Asrock ion 3D. In this case if I add the relevant advancedsetting entry before scanning the library I should be covered, right?

[Jimmer]

You don't need to rescan. Just enable it in advancedsettings.xml

All you need to do is browse through your existing library. First time you do this it will cache your art as a dds file. Next time you browse over something, it will use the dds version. On the downside you will have to browse your whole media collection to bring up your art for each film and make the dds version. It does not automatically created dds art for you... On the upside, you only have to do it once!

Jim

[ashlar]

Thanks Jimmer for your very quick and clear reply. Much appreciated.