Possible to make scrolling through a big library faster?

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thomash72 Offline
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Post: #1
I have a huge music collection, and scrolling down from A to Z in Transparency! takes a long time. It scrolls really fast a couple of seconds, then it halts, continues on really fast, halts etc... It looks to me like it may be trying to load the fanart prematurely, and this may be slowing down the scrolling ? I get the exact same slow scrolling if I try the supposedly faster right slidebar scrolling. Is there anyway I could improve this, maybe by setting a delay time for when Transparency! tries to load the fanart ?
I am running Xbmc Live 9.11 on a Asrock ION 330.
Any proposals on this is highly appreciated - thanks!
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azgul Offline
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Post: #2
Can't you select the scrollbar and scroll like that? That works pretty nicely for me at least. Or page down. (might scroll just as fast, not sure to be honest)

You can select the scroll bar by pressing "right" when you are in the library mode Smile (I guess this is how you should be doing if you're using a remote)
(This post was last modified: 2009-12-29 13:24 by azgul.)
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trdmlc Offline
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Post: #3
I use page up/down and it moves very fast...sometimes too fast.

And I have over 500 artists in my library.
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thomash72 Offline
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Post: #4
I get the same semi-slow scrolling results both with the scrollbar and page down. I guess it's because I am running on an ION processor (Asrock ION 330). The processor on this machine is quite slow. I suspect that the scrolling is slowed down by the processor just enough to let the fanart loading start every now and then --> resulting in pauses when scrolling...
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azgul Offline
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Post: #5
thomash72 Wrote:I get the same semi-slow scrolling results both with the scrollbar and page down. I guess it's because I am running on an ION processor (Asrock ION 330). The processor on this machine is quite slow. I suspect that the scrolling is slowed down by the processor just enough to let the fanart loading start every now and then --> resulting in pauses when scrolling...
I'll let you know once I get home - got an Ion 330HT-BD waiting for me Big Grin
It works fine on my both my desktop and laptop though. But I guess i7/regular dual core makes quite the difference.
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jw76 Offline
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Post: #6
trdmlc Wrote:I use page up/down and it moves very fast...sometimes too fast.

And I have over 500 artists in my library.

500 is still artists a relativity small library. People with upwards of 5-10k artists may see other issues . I have ~15k artists in 2.5tb of flac/mp3, and notice a considerable lag in my install.
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trdmlc Offline
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Post: #7
jw76 Wrote:500 is still artists a relativity small library. People with upwards of 5-10k artists may see other issues . I have ~15k artists in 2.5tb of flac/mp3, and notice a considerable lag in my install.

That IS impressive. Eek My collection is only about 150GB of mp3. The 500 doesn't include compilation artist that might appear only once throughout the collection, though. Only those that I've actually created folders for with the structure 'Artist\Album\song.mp3'. I'm not sure in library mode how many artists actually show up. I'm guessing a couple thousand. I can see how having a much larger collection would cause issues.
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ronie Offline
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Post: #8
thomash72 Wrote:I have a huge music collection, and scrolling down from A to Z in Transparency! takes a long time. It scrolls really fast a couple of seconds, then it halts, continues on really fast, halts etc... It looks to me like it may be trying to load the fanart prematurely, and this may be slowing down the scrolling ? I get the exact same slow scrolling if I try the supposedly faster right slidebar scrolling. Is there anyway I could improve this, maybe by setting a delay time for when Transparency! tries to load the fanart ?
I am running Xbmc Live 9.11 on a Asrock ION 330.
Any proposals on this is highly appreciated - thanks!

all fanart is loaded in a background thread, meaning it won't slow down browsing through your collection.
artist/album thumbs are not always loaded in the background (depends on the viewmode you're using). so if your artist/album thumbs are big (in terms of filesize) you may experience some delay.


when browsing your collection by artist, you should be able to scroll fast in these views:
thumbnail / media info / fanart

and these views will be slower (no background loading for thumbs):
coverflow / full list / list

Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not PM or e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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thomash72 Offline
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Location: Norway
Post: #9
I browse by Artist, and use the fanart view:
I have performed more testing and it turns out that it is the 'Animated Background - Multi Image' which is causing the poor performance. I have obscure artists with one 1-2 songs in my collection, and I don't have any fanart for these, so the default Background Multi Image' kicks in and destroys scrolling performance. If I turn off the Background - Multi Image, performance is OK again. The Background Multi image is set to diplay high quality images of my favorite artists, so I am not very keen on turning it off...
I guess it is not possible to somehow delay starting the Background multi image loading in order to improve scolling performance ?
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ronie Offline
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Post: #10
thanks for clearing up this matter. it's indeed not possible to delay the multi images.

but maybe you'll see some improvement if you disable them during scrolling...
in MyMusicNav.xml change this line:
Code:
<visible>Skin.HasSetting(Enable_Custom_Back_Music) + IsEmpty(ListItem.Property(Fanart_Image)) + IsEmpty(Fanart.Image)</visible>
to:
Code:
<visible>[b]!Container.Scrolling + [/b]Skin.HasSetting(Enable_Custom_Back_Music) + IsEmpty(ListItem.Property(Fanart_Image)) + IsEmpty(Fanart.Image)</visible>

Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not PM or e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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