Gemstone and Phoenix Core 2.3.59 - please read

[jusjoken]

Stuckless recently released a new Phoenix Core version 2.3.59 which changes the caching process used by Gemstone (and other plugins) to use jpg format files rather than png format files. There is a substantial disk space benefit to this change and in testing on my system my cache went from 1.38GB to 235MB

Once you update to 2.3.59 of the Phoenix Core your cache will immediatly begin using the new caching process. No new Gemstone release is required and Gemstone will just start to cache and use the new cached items.

**** At a minimum we recommend you Clear the File System Cache from within Gemstone otherwise the older unused png cached fanart will just take up disk space.

Recommended Process....

1. Start at the Main Menu in Gemstone
2. Press Options
3. Select Utility Functions
4. Select Image Options
5. OPTIONAL - see below for Advanced Scaling notes
6. Clear Memory Cache - confirm Yes
7. Clear File System Cache - confirm Yes

Optional Steps for Prebuilding the new cache for all media items.

1. Select Prebuild Cache
2. * make sure the appropriate Cache Options are set to Yes (Poster,Banner,Background etc)
3. Select Build Cache *** this process can take some time so be prepared to wait!
4. * wait until the process is completed
5. Close the dialog

Done! note: Gemstone caches all fanart on the fly so a prebuild is not required. However, if you take the time to run this process once now it will make Gemstone operate quicker as it will not have to cache each new fanart item as it is being displayed.

* OPTIONAL - Advanced Scaling Options
Gemstone caches fanart based on the UI width. The UI Width setting comes from the client or server depending on the type of client you are using. You can see the default setting Gemstone will use during caching by going into Advanced Scaling Options in the Image Options menu. You can adjust the width to any value you want. This is a handy setting especially for those that may run their server from within a Virtual Machine and go onto the server client to build the cache. If the server client is running in a small windowed session with a width of say 640 then the UI Width used and displayed as the default will be 640. All the extender clients will then also get cached scaled fanart at this 640 width. So you may want to override this setting in this senerio to something like 1280 to get better quality fanart. Any time you change this value you should Clear the caches and do a new Prebuild.

k

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

**** At a minimum we recommend you Clear the File System Cache from within Gemstone otherwise the older unused png cached fanart will just take up disk space.

Recommended Process....

1. Start at the Main Menu in Gemstone
2. Press Options
3. Select Utility Functions
4. Select Image Options
5. OPTIONAL - see below for Advanced Scaling notes
6. Clear Memory Cache - confirm Yes
7. Clear File System Cache - confirm Yes

I have been using SageTV for about five years now and still get lost, strayed and/or confused. How do I get "within" Gemstone to the "Main Menu"? (I do have it installed... at least, I think so.)

[rnadeau]

Either press options button on your remote or use the mouse and right click on the main screen. The options will pop out of the right side, then follow the above directions.

[RonBoyd]

Of course. I have done that a million times... way too early, I suppose.

[appelm]

Originally Posted by appelm

I think I updated as explained but now my posters are low quality with jagged edges. Much faster! But not too pretty. What can I do to fix it? I'm specifically looking at center flow and to less degree list flow.

Originally Posted by jusjoken

Are you using Phoenix or Gemstone... if Gemstone then this should be posted in the Gemstone forum.

If using Gemstone (you mentioned Center and List Flows)... then check out the UI Width setting as described in the Gemstone post regarding this change.

If using Phoenix UI then I am not certain if there is such a setting... so hopefully someone else can respond that does use the Phoenix UI.

k

Yes using Gemstone. My UI width is set to 1280. I'm seeing this on my hd300.

[appelm]

Originally Posted by appelm

Yes using Gemstone. My UI width is set to 1280. I'm seeing this on my hd300.

I guess I was a little confused. First i should have been using 1920 not 1280. then I adjusted the UI width on the server to 1920 not just the client. After clearing the cache I have nice looking posters again.

[Polypro]

I don't know exactly what caused this, but I seem to recall it starting after the Phoenix Core update:

I use live Widgets, and before, when you scrolled over the upcoming or recent recordings, an image would be shown of the show. Now I just get a clear box. I've done the clear cache options, and rebuilt, etc... Any ideas?

P

[jorton]

I noticed this too and will log it as an issue.

J

[Polypro]

Thanks boss!

P

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by Polypro

I don't know exactly what caused this, but I seem to recall it starting after the Phoenix Core update:

I use live Widgets, and before, when you scrolled over the upcoming or recent recordings, an image would be shown of the show. Now I just get a clear box. I've done the clear cache options, and rebuilt, etc... Any ideas?

P

As JOrton states and covers in issue 114, this issue is related to the fanart api change as the png caching handled the conversion and caching of these already tiny zap2it sourced images much better than the current jpg process does.

However, gemstone is not handling these correctly anyway in that we really should not be caching these airing related images for 2 reasons... they are already VERY small AND they could change for the same show but a future airing (another forum issue was raised that is related for this item).

So we will work on fixing this issue for the next release.

k

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

**** At a minimum we recommend you Clear the File System Cache from within Gemstone otherwise the older unused png cached fanart will just take up disk space.

Recommended Process....

1. Start at the Main Menu in Gemstone
2. Press Options
3. Select Utility Functions
4. Select Image Options
5. OPTIONAL - see below for Advanced Scaling notes
6. Clear Memory Cache - confirm Yes
7. Clear File System Cache - confirm Yes

How do I verify that this has been performed correctly? Because before and after (and before I do the pre-build cache steps), the disk usage is still at about 1.2 GB...

I have a single folder on my WHS for Phoenix Fanart and I'm assuming that's where all this stuff is "cached" (e.g. downloaded to)?

[jorton]

The folder that contains the downloaded fanart is not the same as the cache directory, that is more of a download location.

The cache directory on a client will be something like,

C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\userdata\Phoenix\cache\imagetrans\GemstoneImages

This is the location that the Phoenix API "optimized" (shrunk/recompressed) fanart is stored and accessed by Gemstone rather than loading oversized full rez fanart from your server over the network etc...

On the server you will have a similar folder that is shared by the extenders and the server UI.

When testing my cached image folder dropped from 2GB to about 600MB with no noticeable difference in fanart quality.

J

[darcilicious]

C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\userdata\Phoenix\cache\imagetrans\GemstoneImages

Okay, that was the piece of info I was missing. Thanks!

Also, I'm a little confused by this jpg vs png thing -- when I check downloaded fanart, it's all already in jpg format -- including images over a year ago. Am I missing something else regarding this?

[jorton]

Originally the Phoenix API was downloading JPG Fanart to the main download folder in whatever format JPG was available. Then the JPG Fanart for each movie or show would be recompressed/converted ("cached" locally to the folder above) as PNG image files that were a lot larger than the original JPG source files. You can't really get more res or quality from up converting an image so the added size from converting to a larger PNG file is sort of just a waste of space. This change really just set the caching step to use generated JPG files instead of PNG files that saved a huge amount of file space locally, this is good for WHS users or people with small SSD drives.

Also we cache based on UI to optimize the Fanart for the size of the display, so this is why we recompress/resize the original JPG fanart to a new JPG when caching,

Gemstone caches fanart based on the UI width. The UI Width setting comes from the client or server depending on the type of client you are using. You can see the default setting Gemstone will use during caching by going into Advanced Scaling Options in the Image Options menu. You can adjust the width to any value you want. This is a handy setting especially for those that may run their server from within a Virtual Machine and go onto the server client to build the cache. If the server client is running in a small windowed session with a width of say 640 then the UI Width used and displayed as the default will be 640. All the extender clients will then also get cached scaled fanart at this 640 width. So you may want to override this setting in this senerio to something like 1280 to get better quality fanart. Any time you change this value you should Clear the caches and do a new Prebuild.

[darcilicious]

Gotcha, thanks again.

Re: fanart size, I followed the instructions to explicitly set the width, so I should be good there.

Now though, there are bits and pieces of fanart (background on some, banner on others) missing here and there. Is the best approach to fix each of those manually or ??

(I did fix one manually, all the artwork seemed to be "there" already, just nothing was selected as the default...)

[jorton]

I usually have the odd one missing here and there. I just go through them and reset the default and they will re cache and show up.

J

[reggie14]

I was having trouble with some fanart appearing, so I cleared the memory and file system cache as discussed in this thread. Then I tried to rebuild the cache, but I just say on the screen that says "Building File System based Cache. Please Wait." Nothing happens on that screen- there's no sign of progress- it just says 0/0.

However, it does peg one core on my server. But, there's no sign it's actually reading fanart. There's very little disk activity according to the Win7 resource monitor.

In the meantime, there's no fanart and performance on my extenders have gotten choppy as I navigate through menus.

[jusjoken]

If there is no progress indicated then there should be errors in the logs. Potentially Phoenix is not fully installed or one of the dependencies in Phoenix or gemstone failed.

Check the logs folder for Phoenix logs and/or enable the gemstone logs and check there and let me know what you find.

k

[wayner]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

Stuckless recently released a new Phoenix Core version 2.3.59 which changes the caching process used by Gemstone (and other plugins) to use jpg format files rather than png format files. There is a substantial disk space benefit to this change and in testing on my system my cache went from 1.38GB to 235MB

I know I am a year late on this but is disk space the only benefit or does it make the system run faster and use fewer resources as well?

[jusjoken]

My guess is you have already updated to the latest Phoenix Core but that is what I would suggest as it also ensures any fixes for providers for fanart/metadata are also current.

In testing we saw no loss in performance or noticeable quality so we made this change. I assume there would be a performance improvement and a memory cache improvement as the images loaded are considerable smaller....but I have not had any performance or memory issues for a long time with Gemstone on my HD300's or clients.

k