HD100 - slow menus in imported video screens

[ChuckSchick]

Greets all,

I'm using latest RC of sage, latest SageMC release, and latest non-beta firmware on my 100's. I have a rather large collection of divx/xvid movie rips split into different import shares. In the "family movies" section I might have 150 movies with thumbnail cover art.

Navigating the video directories is terribly slow. It's constant waiting for cover art to refresh. Note that I am using entries in the sagemc properties to split the video files into menus divided by their import directories. i.e. "Family Movies" menu entry only shows files from "Family Movies" network share.

Has anyone figured out a way to improve performance here? Most of my cover art jpegs are in the 50k range. Has anyone tried reducing the thumbnail image sizes for better speed? Is there some mysterious "cache" setting that will help?

* moved to tthe SageMC forum *

[ChuckSchick]

Actually, I did some testing with thumbnail size which improved the situation.

I've posted the results in the "Extender" board as this really is an issue only with the extenders rather than SageMC. My "client" PC running the same software has no issues with speed in video import directories.

[ChuckSchick]

I was getting frustrated with how slow navigation in video import directories was with my extenders compared to my client pc. I suspected that the size of my video thumbnails might be to blame. This turned out to be the case. I realized a 100% speed increase after resizing my thumbnailed DVD cover art.

Test times are the time it would take me to navigate to "Caddyshack" starting with a newly booted extender at my "movies" menu and waiting for every cover art image to load along the way. This directory held 324 avi files with same number of .properties and .jpg

Original Situation

Average Cover Art Size: 43 kb
Typical Image: 200 x 450 pixels
Avg. Time to get to Caddyshack: 55 Seconds

After Thumbnail image size reduction

Average Cover Art Size: 6.4 kb
Typical Image: 105 x 150 pixels
Avg. Time to get to Caddyshack: 30 Seconds

I used Picasa3 for the image reductions using "150 pixels" and "85%" quality settings. I necessarily had to reset all of the file timestamps for Sage to refresh the thumbnails. Obvious image quality reduction must be weighed against the increased usability.

Cheers.

* merged *

[nox71]

Hi you said "Note that I am using entries in the sagemc properties to split the video files into menus divided by their import directories. i.e. "Family Movies" menu entry only shows files from "Family Movies" network share." can you tell me which entries are you using to do that ?

Thanks

[ChuckSchick]

Sure.. It's all right here...

http://tools.assembla.com/sageplugins/wiki/MenuItemLets

excerpt...

Go to a named folder of video library (sagetv v6) ¶

This MenuItemLet will always go to a specific folder of the video library and names the menu item 'kids videos'

\\mediaserver\media\Video\Kids

The format of this menuitemlet depends on whether you are using Separate or Combined video library folders (see the Video Library options.

If Separate, you have to specify the full file path as showin in the Video Library. Note that all backslashes have to be doubled, and that this must match exactly the folder name shown in the video library (including upper/lowercase characters)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE sageMenu PUBLIC "-//NIELM//DTD SAGEMENU XML 1.3//EN" "http://sageplugins.sourceforge.net/nielm_modules/dynamic_menu/sagemenu_1_3.dtd">
<sageMenu version="1.3">
    <internalScreenMenuItem title="Kids Videos"
        icon="STVs\dynamic_menu_icons\mm_video.png"
        screen="Browser - Videos">
        <evalExpression>AddStaticContext("newVideoBrowserStyle","xFolder")</evalExpression>
        <evalExpression>AddGlobalContext("CurrentVideoBrowserFolder", new_java_io_File("\\\\mediaserver\\media\\Video\\Kids"))</evalExpression>
    </internalScreenMenuItem>
</sageMenu>

If Combined, you only have to specify the sub-folder path, again as showin in the Video Library. Again, this must match exactly the folder name shown in the video library (including upper/lowercase characters)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE sageMenu PUBLIC "-//NIELM//DTD SAGEMENU XML 1.3//EN" "http://sageplugins.sourceforge.net/nielm_modules/dynamic_menu/sagemenu_1_3.dtd">
<sageMenu version="1.3">
    <internalScreenMenuItem title="Kids Videos"
        icon="STVs\dynamic_menu_icons\mm_video.png"
        screen="Browser - Videos">
        <evalExpression>AddStaticContext("newVideoBrowserStyle","xFolder")</evalExpression>
        <evalExpression>AddGlobalContext("CurrentVideoBrowserFolder", "Kids/")</evalExpression>
    </internalScreenMenuItem>
</sageMenu>