[User 224999]

@popcornmix, thanks for helping me out on this matter.

In the meanwhile I think the issue is discovered with a big thank you for skinner wyrm (apptv skin) who was struggling with the same questions about the skinning engine. We think we have done a discovery on kodi's code but we don't know c++ well enough if it's indeed a bug.

Images that are hidden (wether by a visibility condition or not) are removed from texture memory, except when they have an effect applied).
It looks like that images with animations will stay in memory forever.

A quick fix by disabling animations on images confirmed to me that I suddenly kept more memory available.

I reworked the whole skin's textures, optimized the backgrounds and animations and I can now say that it runs moothly on the pi :-)

For all pi owners reading this: please check out the latest beta and let me know your results!
On my own pi it's working smooth now.

Also I've added some options if you want more speed on a low power device:

- disable extrafanart
- disable submenu's or widgets
- "simple" horizontal or vertical homescreen as an alternative for the (grahpic heavy) tiles screen.

Thanks all for participating in having the skin's speed optimized! It's now really fast on all platforms and even running smooth on a pi

[jmhenry5150]

This is excellent news!

[User 224999]

This is excellent news!

Yeah, I think so too... Please give the beta a try if you want and let me know your feedback.

[jmhenry5150]

For some reason I can't get the beta to install...it just hangs at 0% then the 0% disappears...

Can you point me to the actual zip file so I can manually install it?

[User 224999]

For some reason I can't get the beta to install...it just hangs at 0% then the 0% disappears...



Can you point me to the actual zip file so I can manually install it?

Please wait some time because the repo is currently syncing today's update... Sometimes its a bit slow. Should work within an hour

[jmhenry5150]

ohhhhh - ok thx!

BTW I was able to install this on my gameroom box and all seemed great - I will report back after thorough testing...

Quick question, if I get this installed on my living room box, what is the fastest way to copy the settings?

All of my boxes have the official titan release on them but I am switching to the beta:

Install The beta, then copy the script.skinshortcuts folder?

[User 224999]

ohhhhh - ok thx!

BTW I was able to install this on my gameroom box and all seemed great - I will report back after thorough testing...

Quick question, if I get this installed on my living room box, what is the fastest way to copy the settings?

All of my boxes have the official titan release on them but I am switching to the beta:

Install The beta, then copy the script.skinshortcuts folder?

Great to hear that it works great so far. Please test it all and let me know.
If you don't want to use the beta on your living room boxes, I will be pushiing out a new version to official repo next week.

To copy only the skin shortcut settings you need to copy the folder script.skinshortcuts in userdata\addon_data to your other boxes.
If you want to copy ALL settings of the skin you may want to copy the file guisettings.xml in userdata.

[mombasa123]

Sorry Marcel but I cannot get it to work

Platform Kodi Helix 14.0 on Raspberry Pi (1) Model B with 512k RAM running Raspbmc.

Barely anything plays - only the SD material is ok.

However interesting points :

1) if I switch to Amber skin (which plays everything) and then switch back to Titan it starts playing ok for a bit and then same same (ie switching to another movie stops working).
2) Rebooting makes no difference
3) Playing movies through File Manager seems ok too but I need to confirm.

Log errors :

03:46:31 T:2714760256 NOTICE: Opening stream: 0 source: 256
03:46:31 T:2714760256 NOTICE: Creating video thread
03:46:31 T:2714760256 NOTICE: Opening stream: 1 source: 256
03:46:31 T:2714760256 NOTICE: Creating audio thread
03:46:31 T:2714760256 NOTICE: Opening stream: 0 source: 1024
03:46:31 T:2667574336 NOTICE: Thread OMXPlayerVideo start, auto delete: false
03:46:31 T:2765091904 NOTICE: Thread OMXPlayerAudio start, auto delete: false
03:46:31 T:2979714112 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent:ecoderEventHandler OMX.broadcom.video_decode - OMX_ErrorInsufficientResources, insufficient resources
03:46:32 T:2667574336 ERROR: OMXVideo:ecode timeout
03:46:32 T:2979714112 ERROR: Previous line repeats 37 times.
03:46:32 T:2979714112 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent:ecoderEventHandler OMX.broadcom.audio_decode - OMX_ErrorInsufficientResources, insufficient resources
03:46:32 T:2667574336 ERROR: OMXVideo:ecode timeout
03:46:34 T:2765091904 ERROR: Previous line repeats 140 times.
03:46:34 T:2765091904 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent::WaitForCommand OMX.broadcom.audio_mixer wait timeout event.eEvent 0x00000000 event.command 0x00000000 event.nData2 2
03:46:34 T:2765091904 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent::WaitForCommand - OMX.broadcom.audio_mixer failed with omx_err(0x80001011)
03:46:34 T:2765091904 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent::Establish - Error setting state to idle OMX.broadcom.audio_decode omx_err(0x80001011)
03:46:34 T:2765091904 ERROR: COMXAudio:ortSettingsChanged - m_omx_tunnel_decoder.Establish omx_err(0x80001011)
03:46:34 T:2765091904 ERROR: COMXAudio::AddPackets - error PortSettingsChanged omx_err(0x00000000)
03:46:34 T:2765091904 ERROR: COMXAudio:ecode timeout

[jmhenry5150]

mombasa123,

There is a few posts in this thread that discuss giving the GPU more memory...it fixed all of my issues around playing content...

[mombasa123]

mombasa123,

There is a few posts in this thread that discuss giving the GPU more memory...it fixed all of my issues around playing content...

Yes i have that set to 256K. Will check though in case its been reset.

Btw, are you using Raspbmc or Openelec etc?

[jmhenry5150]

Openelec for me - are you using the beta or the production version of Titan?

[User 224999]

It should work correctly with both Raspbmc and Openelec, although I had much better results with openelec in my testsetup.
While working on this together with @wyrm (from apptv skin) we discovered a possible memory leak in Kodi's code.

What I did is workaround (as much as I could) this possible issue by handling images in the skin in another way so the issue is still there but it doesn't hit the memorylimit as fast as before.
BTW: with raspbmc I had the issue with every skin, also with Amber: just browse your movie collection really a lot, so there's many fanart loaded and the error will show it's ugly head. Even with confluence and Amber.

It's just that confluence and Amber are both using less movie images by default, while in Titan a lot of artwork is enabled by default.

I had the best (fastests) results with disabling the "section backgrounds", using "simple home layout" and disabling extra fanart in the Titan skin for raspbmc. In openelec I could enable all those fancy features and it still works.
I tested both without increasing the gpu_mem setting, just left it to default at 128mb

Just play a bit with the skin settings. Keep in mind that fanart is really heavy for your memory.
See what happens if you use a little less fanart oriented views or settings or try out openelec.

If you have ssh access to your box you can type in a simple command to show the free memory:
sudo vcdbg reloc

After you press this command you get a list of all kinds of text and numbers and all the way on the bottom is the total free GPU memory listed. You should have a few MB's available in order to start playback.

Please let me know if you think I should make any more optimizations. As far as I'm aware right now the issue has been resolved and the skin is blazing fast but it might be that I just missed a spot in certain conditions, who knows.

[jmhenry5150]

This is MUCH appreciated marcel...even thought the new pi just came out...grrrrrr....

I might get 1 just for the family room and keep the lower end ones for the kids room.

Patiently waiting for the move to production

[User 224999]

This is MUCH appreciated marcel...even thought the new pi just came out...grrrrrr....

I might get 1 just for the family room and keep the lower end ones for the kids room.

Patiently waiting for the move to production

Just submitted version 3.2.50 Helix and 2.2.50 Gotham of the skin to official repo.
Will be available within a few days!

[jmhenry5150]

Whoo!