Easy way to speed up Fanart browsing

[gabrielcab]

Originally Posted by routerunner

That is because the directory is being in use or SageTV service puts privileges on it. What I normally do in the morning is to run the script with the sage service off first...

It worked, so far I see everything faster, not as in with your video, but faster overall. Thank you very much!

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by gabrielcab

It worked, so far I see everything faster, not as in with your video, but faster overall. Thank you very much!

I'm really happy that you're seeing some benefit .

If you want to achieve the next level of performances (as per the video so to speak) you need to perform some extra tweaks and probably change your current workflow. I have to go now, but happy to discuss this with you next week...

Anyone else want to share their experience? Suggestions? Please do so

Eddy

[rnadeau]

Would this solution speed up the browsing on a sage server/c,ient that is teh main syatem that is plugged into my tv. Would this speed up the browsing on a sage computer client or placeshifter client?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by rnadeau

Would this solution speed up the browsing on a sage server/c,ient that is teh main syatem that is plugged into my tv. Would this speed up the browsing on a sage computer client or placeshifter client?

I think it will be beneficial in every case as what it does it caches your fanart cache (not the fanart repository) into a RAM disk which is faster than any HDD/SDD. So, yes, you'll see some benefit, however the real gain is on extenders.

EDIT:
BTW, in my signature there is a YouTube link to a video that shows my HD300 in action...

[rnadeau]

So would setting it up the way you have written the instructions work for all of them? The server, client and placeshifter? or do I need to do something different on each one for setting up?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by rnadeau

So would setting it up the way you have written the instructions work for all of them? The server, client and placeshifter? or do I need to do something different on each one for setting up?

I think the OSFMount and Junction instructions are valid and necessary to all of them, the batch script as it is for the server side (extender will benefit directly as well) and some tweak to the script are necessary for the client and placeshifter.

[rnadeau]

Is the batch file setup so that any new movies I add to the system that has fanart saved from the internet will be copied to the hard drive in the proper location?

[gabrielcab]

Originally Posted by routerunner

I think the OSFMount and Junction instructions are valid and necessary to all of them, the batch script as it is for the server side (extender will benefit directly as well) and some tweak to the script are necessary for the client and placeshifter.

That video es amazing, do you have all your videos in separated folders or all your videos are inside in a single folder?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by gabrielcab

That video es amazing, do you have all your videos in separated folders or all your videos are inside in a single folder?

All the videos are in separate standard DVD and BR folders as appropriate and located into two separate HP Micro servers each capable of 12Tb max storage. The metadata are all stored into the Wiz.bin.

[gabrielcab]

Originally Posted by routerunner

All the videos are in separate standard DVD and BR folders as appropriate and located into two separate HP Micro servers each capable of 12Tb max storage. The metadata are all stored into the Wiz.bin.

Maybe this question is too noobish, but how do you store the metadata in the wiz.bin?

[deanm]

I had played around with your script a few weeks ago but only seen little improvement. Further testing is needed on my part as I'm using Diamond and did notice it works different to Phoenix. However I have sence noticed you have modified the script to work with Diamond. So will be playing around again today.

Originally Posted by routerunner

- Whether you have the scaling of your fanart enabled or not (mine are all disabled as I produce the right size at the source ignoring BMT, so posters are 256x360 and backgrounds 1024x576 looking good on a 110" screen)

I'm impressed with your video so part of my plan today is check the fanart dimensions. Can I ask what process do you use to change the fanart to the dimensions above?

I also shut my SageTv server down every night and was wondering how you manage this for when ever you reboot/shutdown your server? I don't want the fanart re-cached every time I reboot/shutdown. So was think of writing a script to copy the ram disk back to a HDD when shutdown and then copy back on start up. What's your thoughts?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by gabrielcab

Maybe this question is too noobish, but how do you store the metadata in the wiz.bin?

Metadata are automatically stored in the Wiz.bin by BMT, where you have the options to create the separate properties file with a batch operation.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by deanm

I'm impressed with your video so part of my plan today is check the fanart dimensions. Can I ask what process do you use to change the fanart to the dimensions above?

Sure. I trying to keep as short as possible

• Manual BMT for metadata, but I keep only the background and discard the posters.
• I use this website for high quality cover art.
• Gimp: Cut, colour/white balance and scale down (Interpolation: Sinc [Lanczos3]) the cover art to exactly 364x512 pixels. Save (on your local machine with the same name as the final folder) as JPG, 90%, Optimize, Progressive, 0% Smoothing, Subsampling 1x1,1x1,1x1, DCT: Floating-Point.
• Gimp: Cut, colour/white balance and scale down (Interpolation: Sinc [Lanczos3]) the background art to exactly 1024x576 pixels. Save (straight into your fanart repository renaming as "folder.jpg" so that you can perform batch operations if you wish in the future) as JPG, 40-50% max, Optimize, Progressive, 0.50% Smoothing, Subsampling 1x1,1x1,1x1, DCT: Floating-Point.
• Irfanview: Batch operation from my local high quality cover art repository into Fanart repository, renaming to "folder.jpg", resizing to 320x256, disabling chroma subsampling (very important), quality 30%.

Of course all the above are the passages, hovewer all the math/reasons behind this will require a separate thread

I also shut my SageTv server down every night and was wondering how you manage this for when ever you reboot/shutdown your server? I don't want the fanart re-cached every time I reboot/shutdown. So was think of writing a script to copy the ram disk back to a HDD when shutdown and then copy back on start up. What's your thoughts?

I don't bother really. I don't generate the cache for the posters so my cache is pretty small hence I don't need to store elsewhere for the night. Just be aware that if you're planning to backup your cache like that it will create a big disk fragmentation in a very short time

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by rnadeau

Is the batch file setup so that any new movies I add to the system that has fanart saved from the internet will be copied to the hard drive in the proper location?

I think you're referring to the first batch file, isn't it? I suggest to look at v3 & v4 as I did further investigation at that time and found out that there were no benefit on copying the original Fanart repository into the RAM disk, but only trouble.

I hope it helps...

[routerunner]

I would like to say that the batch files in this thread reflect more or less my personal use case and they are not intended to cover all the possible use cases. They are only a general guideline on how to use the OSFMount and Junctions as general way to cache/improve file access on you SageTV server.

As you understand I can't maintain different files for different use cases, I did it yes, but it was a one off, however I'll do my best to help and try to answer to your questions...

Eddy

[Hunter69]

Will this process work for "gemstone"?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Hunter69

Will this process work for "gemstone"?

I don't use Gemstone so I can't help you on that, sorry...however if gemstone caches the thumbnails somewhere in the HDD, then this mechanism will help you to improve the overall speed as the read and write is done into two separate drive (HDD for read / RamDisk for write), but most importantly if you run the OS from SSD you will keep the fragmentation wear, down to ZERO!

EDIT: In attachment my current script, hope it helps...

Eddy

[Hunter69]

Originally Posted by routerunner

I don't use Gemstone so I can't help you on that, sorry...however if gemstone caches the thumbnails somewhere in the HDD, then this mechanism will help you to improve the overall speed as the read and write is done into two separate drive (HDD for read / RamDisk for write), but most importantly if you run the OS from SSD you will keep the fragmentation wear, down to ZERO!

EDIT: In attachment my current script, hope it helps...

Eddy

So from my reading gemstone originated from diamond. I asked the question in the gemstone forum. Now that the forum is back up, I need to go home and fix my extender after I tried updating phoenix and it failed.

Thanks for the quick response

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Hunter69

So from my reading gemstone originated from diamond. I asked the question in the gemstone forum. Now that the forum is back up, I need to go home and fix my extender after I tried updating phoenix and it failed.

Thanks for the quick response

I seem to remember that Gemstone developers did quite an impressive job on cache optimization and therefore this mechanism shouldn't be necessary anymore, therefore you might want to explore adding software disk cache solutions like "SuperCache" or "FancyCache" for the ultimate gear.

In the end what in my opinion really matters is how big your posters and backgrounds are, the file format being used and how they get scaled. Please bear in mind that my solution assumes using the "Sage Fanart Plugin" by JREKiwi and disabling all the plugin's scaling options as I provide optimal size/quality files already, and that plays a big difference.

Eddy

[sflamm]

Fuzzy,

What are you using for you read-only disk cache?

Thanks in advance.