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Slow Media Load Times


JR70386

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marcelveldt

 

paging @@marcelveldt :D

 

Sorry your instruction looks simple, but I'm not too bright ;) If you could elaborate on what I'm adding I could test for you . . .

 

 

Is ^this what you are looking for or something else

 

 

Also, not to pit you and @@im85288's skins against each other, but here are some things I noticed changing between the two

 

Titan

  • ​Processes a lot and for a long time (even before the latest beta) and doesn't seem to process much faster each time. If you enter, exit, and re-enter your TV Show collection multiple times it gets pretty fast. As soon as you head into movies, back to home, and back to tv shows it feels like the first time as far as processing time
  • Having watched and new indicators helps out a lot I think. Show indicators can be flipped off, so when just "hanging out" inside the TV Show collection the navigation gets very smooth. Into a show, into a season, back to all shows, all stays pretty fast (unless you go back to home and into movies, but I already said that). Since my wife watches a lot of TV Shows, this gets very manageable after all 70 shows are pretty much cached as long as we stay in TV Shows
  • "Latest Movies" only pulls the latest movies (both watched and unwatched) - again not to pit you against 1080XF but it always pulls the latest unwatched videos ;)

 

1080XF - Metro

  • ​Processes a lot on first entries into movies / tv shows
  • After some browsing going into TV Shows or Movies processes much faster
  • Going into and out of Seasons and Episodes and All Shows gets quite fast
  • The overall lack of indicators (watched) is a little problematic. With all the indicators turned on from the server, watching a show causes a pretty good delay before getting back to episodes. The "in-skin" watched indicators end up feeling a little faster / backgrounded / smoother like in Nox and Titan
  • I'm pretty certain there's a "New" indicator (a star) even when you have MB Server indicators turned off - but I can't find anywhere in the skin settings to add a "watched" indicator. Also the new or unatched indicator doesn't show on Series view, and we end up using that a lot to identify new shows were added (when the indicator is anything other than "watched" -- usually a number). I know we could hide all watched, but that has low WAF for me since she likes to go back and watch her favorite old shows as well as new ones

 

Thank you for the extended feedback, we can definitely work with this.

Both 1080XF and Titan use the new skin helper thread in the addon to provide the lists with shortcuts etc.

You're right about the watched indicators btw, my own personal experience is when they're turned off in the addon and used from skin things are just a bit more fluid but I might be wrong about it.

 

Latest movies in Titan for native kodi library shows new unwatched movies. I wasn't aware this feature existed in the MB3 addon too. @im85288 can you tell me more about this ?

 

The main conclusion from your feedback is that firing up the "all movies" or "all tv shows" from the homemenu just takes too long. It should btw make no difference between 1080 or Titan as they both do the same call to kodi/mbaddon. What I'm wondering is:

- when you open all movies from video-addons --> mediabrowser, is that faster than launching from home ?

 

Thanks again for providing test results. Hopefully one day soon we could create an acceptable solution for low powered devices. I'm not that deeply involved into the addon development as the other devs but I can for sure think along at the skin side. So maybe with combined strength we have the magic idea :-)

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marcelveldt

One thing I have noticed and this is going to sound a bit weird but stay with me on this.

 

If I open a collection from the main home screen menu, i.e "Kids Moves" it takes lets say 5 seconds

but if I open the video addons and go to the xbmb3c addon and then select "Kids Movies" from the collection list there it only takes 2 seconds

 

It feels like if you have the Video View controller already open (i.e. the addon list) and then select a collection it has to do less setup work and the collection is shown faster.

 

Sorry if I have not explained this very well.

 

In short, opening a collection from the xmb3c addon list is faster than opening it from the home screen. why? I have no clue.

Yes, I have a feeling about this too... I'm starting to think that the "fast movies" caching isn't applied to whatever call we do to the MB-addon.

This is the skinhelper thread that creates all those window properties for the skins. It is based on the "getdetails" function which I never touched and have no clue what it exactly does...

In 1080XF and Titan we use the mediabrowser.std.movies or something props to open the right lists... What if these still use the old non-cached system ?

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dark_slayer

Hmmm, it probably needs some more work then... BTW, ignore fast test 2, I forgot to remove that one.

This is either an issue of the server locking up due to memory issues or the "trick" I tried just doesn't work. What it basically does is loading a slim version of "all movies" in the background and when you press the "all movies fast test" tile it will show that backgoundloaded list with the movies. Like I said on my fast dev laptop this works extermely fast but I haven't tested it on a low power device. I will give my raspberry Pi a try tomorrow, I bought one last week so I can do some more testing with speed optimizations for my skin and the addon.

 

Ok, after a day of rest my Nexus Player is performing much better. I still think it may have been thermal throttling before

 

Now that I'm 100% clear on the test here are some results

 

Titan

 

Regular All Movies

  • ​Around 135s first load
  • Next three loads around 70s
  • Several (4x) loads after that came in around 22s

Regular TV Shows

  • First load about 30s
  • After several loads it comes down to 5s

Today (and still currently) swapping back and forth between Movies and TV Shows isn't really effecting performance

 

All Movies FAST TEST

  • Freakin instant every time :D

That's pretty sweet, some comments on fast test below (I know this was proof of concept so I'm not sure if you already know this or not)

  • Resume percentages for in progress movies are shown (in-skin, I have all server indicators turned off)
  • Watched indicators that show up in the movie library are not present
  • None of the media info is present like in typical all movies
  • Your add-on skinned show info screen works within this collection :)

 

Current stats

  • 1766 movie titles
  • 70 TV series

Attached the log as well

kodi.log

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dark_slayer

Remember it's just a POC (proof of concept) so it only shows one view (big panel) and not all info is there.

It's just to see if it helps to load the list in the background for low powered devices...

 

Freakin sweet, I always use the big panel view anyway (except for individual episode views in a Season, where I use landscape instead)

 

This may be POC, but I'm turning off updates and daily driving this bad boy on the Nexus Player for a little while. @@xnappo I'd recommend giving this a shot on your pi

 

I'd have really thought the Nexus with it's little atom quad core would kill at this without any optimization, but it comes in around the same as the fire tv did in my experience

 

Also, I see that you already modified "Recently Added Movies" to include all of the latest unwatched titles ;)

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marcelveldt

Freakin sweet, I always use the big panel view anyway (except for individual episode views in a Season, where I use landscape instead)

 

This may be POC, but I'm turning off updates and daily driving this bad boy on the Nexus Player for a little while. @@xnappo I'd recommend giving this a shot on your pi

 

I'd have really thought the Nexus with it's little atom quad core would kill at this without any optimization, but it comes in around the same as the fire tv did in my experience

 

Also, I see that you already modified "Recently Added Movies" to include all of the latest unwatched titles ;)

This is some good news. Let's see where we can get from this. I'll fire up my pi tonight and test a little more.

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marcelveldt

@@dark_slayer I just uploaded a new beta version of the Titan skin to the repo (version 3.2.43). This version includes a lot of speed improvements, especially for lowpower devices.

I also did some more work to the "fast movies test"... So, if you're willing to give it another try ?

You have to re-add the tile to your home, I did some changes to it that aren't backwards compatible.

 

Everyone reading this who wants to give this a try:

 

Please note the following about the "fast movies test":

- it will load the movies list (hidden) directly on the homescreen, so instead of loading on click it's already loaded at startup and should give you the instant navigation.

- because of above the movies list isn't refreshed untill you restart the device (or issue a reloadskin command)

- also note that your device may be a bit laggy on startup while loading the movies list in memory

- it is meant as a workaround for low powered devices with large collections, a lot of default stuff simply won't work like contextmenu etc.

 

Just add the shortcut "all movies fast test" to your homescreen, available under movies section in the menu editor.

 

@e123enitan maybe you want to try this too on your setup ?

Edited by marcelveldt
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xnappo

The details for every ID are already available via the background data.  Not sure if you are using that marcel?

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marcelveldt

Will it build the list even if you don't add the link to the home screen?

I don't really want the overhead of building this list at start up if I am not going to use it.

No, it will only do that if you've added the shortcut to the homescreen, there's a conditional include for that.

So if the shortcut is not there or you removed it again that part of the skin isn't included at all...

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marcelveldt

The details for every ID are already available via the background data.  Not sure if you are using that marcel?

No need for yet, it's just one big panel with posters now. When you've set info as action in the addon settings you'll get to the infoscreen.

I'm not really convinced that this is a real solution, in the background it's going through exact the same process as when you enter the movies section.

I'm feeling more for a paging construction. Did you take a look at the extendedinfo script ? Does the same thing at the script-side with no special things needed in the skin.

My idea is as follows: have an additional parameter for the addon that defines that the content should be paged or not. If paged-parameter is set the first page will be loaded from the cache so for example only the first 10 items have to be pulled from cache and processed into a listitem, when you navigate/scroll through the container it will get next page etc.

In the backgroundthreads of the addon the cache will be updated with the actual info from MB server.

 

The skin would be able to pass on the parameter that paging should be used and how many items are on 1 page depending on the layout of the container in the skin.

What do you feel about this idea? I want to give this a try in coding stuff but I'm not an advanced python coder like you guys are.

 

I feel that we must find a way to optimize performance on lowspec hardware because really a lot of users want to use that cheap boxes as their kodi box.

 

Another idea that just popped into my head yesterday: Why not build a little synchronize tool ? You can set Kodi to read the nfo files created by the MB-server so all content is there, except for the watched states. Why not create a little background sync tool for that. Or am I missing something completely here ? :)

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dark_slayer

Another idea that just popped into my head yesterday: Why not build a little synchronize tool ? You can set Kodi to read the nfo files created by the MB-server so all content is there, except for the watched states. Why not create a little background sync tool for that. Or am I missing something completely here ? :)

Lol, I just posted about what I think is the same concept recently

 

Except I had a more mainline aspiration for it which is to have kodi dump it's library status change after playback to the nfos. Currently it can use NFO local only metadata but it creates art and textures and it's own entire local library for everything with no intention of playing nice and updating that small line in the NFO with its own resume point, play count, or anything else (stuck in the island mentality)

 

On the flipside, if you expanded an existing tool like library watch dog instead (or made a companion tool, since a watch dog or update tool is still a requirement for the kind of auto updating you guys have gotten us used to :D ) THEN you'd still need to mod MB Server enough to snoop nfos for modifications (which it currently doesn't do automatically)

 

 

Neither task sounds gargantuan to me, and I agree that it's quite the simple short term stop gap for a device like the pi. At the same time, I'm by far the least expert of anyone to be dreaming up concepts -- well I can create theories right up there with anyone but I'm about as useful at putting them into practice as a pet rock would be ;)

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xnappo

No need for yet, it's just one big panel with posters now. When you've set info as action in the addon settings you'll get to the infoscreen.

I'm not really convinced that this is a real solution, in the background it's going through exact the same process as when you enter the movies section.

I'm feeling more for a paging construction. Did you take a look at the extendedinfo script ? Does the same thing at the script-side with no special things needed in the skin.

My idea is as follows: have an additional parameter for the addon that defines that the content should be paged or not. If paged-parameter is set the first page will be loaded from the cache so for example only the first 10 items have to be pulled from cache and processed into a listitem, when you navigate/scroll through the container it will get next page etc.

In the backgroundthreads of the addon the cache will be updated with the actual info from MB server.

 

The skin would be able to pass on the parameter that paging should be used and how many items are on 1 page depending on the layout of the container in the skin.

What do you feel about this idea? I want to give this a try in coding stuff but I'm not an advanced python coder like you guys are.

 

I feel that we must find a way to optimize performance on lowspec hardware because really a lot of users want to use that cheap boxes as their kodi box.

 

Another idea that just popped into my head yesterday: Why not build a little synchronize tool ? You can set Kodi to read the nfo files created by the MB-server so all content is there, except for the watched states. Why not create a little background sync tool for that. Or am I missing something completely here ? :)

I looked into this a while ago, and could find no way to actually get the next page within the existing skin architecture.  The only thing I found was a handshake where the addon constantly monitored the selected item, and if an item was hovered over it would cause a refresh.  But this was really jarring.

 

I haven't looked yet at the extendedinfo script, but I am guessing it is a 20 hour project.  I don't have time right now..

Edited by xnappo
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marcelveldt

I looked into this a while ago, and could find no way to actually get the next page within the existing skin architecture.  The only thing I found was a handshake where the addon constantly monitored the selected item, and if an item was hovered over it would cause a refresh.  But this was really jarring.

 

I haven't looked yet at the extendedinfo script, but I am guessing it is a 20 hour project.  I don't have time right now..

I'll give it a try next week. Maybe I can create a test if this is doable within reasonable amount of time. I looked into the extendedinfo script source and indeed it's having some intelligence in there to see if one has reached the end of the list to load the next page...  I'll let you know my findings

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I was trying the latest MB Andoid app on the FireTV and noticed it loads the libray quite quickly.

It also seems to load only once.

 

May be something to look at in how that app loads.

 

For some reason, using Media Browser with Kodi on Fire TV (Titan skin), the library loads, and then loads a second time....

Probably something toggled wrong here but it is loading twice now everytime, everywhere... yikes!

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marcelveldt

I was trying the latest MB Andoid app on the FireTV and noticed it loads the libray quite quickly.

It also seems to load only once.

 

May be something to look at in how that app loads.

 

For some reason, using Media Browser with Kodi on Fire TV (Titan skin), the library loads, and then loads a second time....

Probably something toggled wrong here but it is loading twice now everytime, everywhere... yikes!

Does this only happen within Titan skin or also with the other skins ?

 

Also, maybe something to check: Does this happen when you enter movies from home and also when you enter your movies from video addons --> mediabrowser ?

 

About the android app: this can't be compared to the kodi addon, it's completely different. Problem lies into the slow processing of python code within kodi.

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Will run it through some scenarios tomorrow including other skin (Confluence).

 

Basically when I first enter into Kodi it loads library, pops up main menu and then loads library again.

Also, when browsing through movies, I play one for a few minutes then exit and when backing out to browsing screen, it loads library x2 again.

 

Don't know if it could be FireTV remote control clicking twice or?.... it does that occasionally.

I'll dig deeper and was just wondering if anyone else was experiencing this.

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marcelveldt

not sure I understand this one, on the home page the items are loading twice? The caching system only works on the content pages, ie views of movies/series/seasons/episodes

 

This is expected, the movie play percentage has changed, it needs to load the new data.

Maybe when the widgets on home are loaded?
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not sure I understand this one, on the home page the items are loading twice? The caching system only works on the content pages, ie views of movies/series/seasons/episodes

 

This is expected, the movie play percentage has changed, it needs to load the new data.

Yeah, happens sporadically when first entering the Home page... as I said it could be possible FTV remote is sending 2 commands (it is touchy) causing it to load twice. I don't believe I have anu widgets loaded.

 

I do understand once movie watched percentage changes it must reload to be current. And backing out after looking at movie info screen (not watching movie), works fine with no reload.

 

My system seems a little unstable at the moment and I might uninstall Kodi (since 14.1 is out), and reinstall everything.

 

I tried to install the MB beta repo but once installed it doesn't give me any options other than Uninstall... it won't let me get to downloads.

 

Keep good work, and thanks.

Edited by JDizzy
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marcelveldt

Yeah, happens sporadically when first entering the Home page... as I said it could be possible FTV remote is sending 2 commands (it is touchy) causing it to load twice. I don't believe I have anu widgets loaded.

 

I do understand once movie watched percentage changes it must reload to be current. And backing out after looking at movie info screen (not watching movie), works fine with no reload.

 

My system seems a little unstable at the moment and I might uninstall Kodi (since 14.1 is out), and reinstall everything.

 

I tried to install the MB beta repo but once installed it doesn't give me any options other than Uninstall... it won't let me get to downloads.

 

Keep good work, and thanks.

Titan skin has widgets enabled by default. Just press the up (or down) button on a tile to show the widgets.

If you don't want/like widgets I suggest you to turn them off in the skin settings (either disable widgets globally or turn them off on a per-tile base), it will give you a small speed boost.

 

For the MB3 beta repo... are you sure you've installed the correct zipfile. Note that this beta repo has changed a while back.

See --> http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/12087-kodi-beta-version-discussion-thread/page-1

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