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phil65
Retired Team-Kodi Member
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you have to make the image accessible via VFS, so saving to disk might be the only easy option.
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Thanks Phil65. I'll use PIL for HDD based operations only then, and not as a dynamic skinning tool unless such an option should arise. There goes the fixed blurred background for a slide in menu.
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It's not possible. And, as I understand, this isn't even for Kodi itself, because it stores in a local image cache a copy of every image it has displayed.
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Hi Roman, sad to hear that Kodi isn't cool about dynamic images. Hopefully it will change sometime soon.
Assuming Kodi stores a local cached image of E V E R Y T H I N G it comes across, be that images from the internet or my local HDD, how does an update of a cached image happen? I ask because I get a sudden FEAR, that all my tens of thousands of images scraped online is being checked for updated versions.. P L E A S E tell me such an update never happens!!
It seems the deeper I dig, the less I find - to liek.
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2016-02-07, 12:03
(This post was last modified: 2016-02-07, 12:15 by Torben.)
Hi Roman, and thanks for being most informative on this subject - I really appreciate it! I hope you won't mind me being even more inquisitive. I do not mean to offend anyone in any way.
Q: What are the time intervals between these "check for updates"?
Q: How is it determined what images are in use by Kodi and what images are to be deleted from the thumbnail area?
Q: How does Kodi know where to look for updates?
Q: Can some or all of this be controlled/disabled in any way?
Q: How much data is needed to check a single on-line image source for an update to an image?
I know about the location of this "thumbnails" directory. And it saddens me to see that it is impossible to manage by a human. It's coded for machine-reading only.
When I write "thumbnails" in quotes, it's because they are not really thumbnails are they? Are they in fact not a cache folder that Kodi uses for display in the skins instead of the actual sources?
My thumbnail folder has around 30.000 image-files in it, and I need to know how much of my internet quota goes to maintain this.. mess.
I work towards my Kodi setup to be self-sufficent in lack of a better word - to have it all off-line. (Not the actual on-line sources obviously)
Assuming that Kodi uses these images... as they are, and has NO other skin-specific cache, I have more issues with this system:
Q:Is the same image (from the thumbnails area) used for the lists AND the detailed blow-up display?
If that is so.. A lot of on-the-fly resizing must take place in - especially - the panels that has - thumbnail - covers/posters.
I would expect a skin-specific cache to create just the proper sizes that I need for the current skin.
Depending on the answers to this, I wonder if I could/should somehow intercept the "art" part of populate lists, and pass links directly to my own folder with properly tiny thumbnailed images for lists, and links to full-sized versions when they are needed? Maybe a side-effect to this would be that the jagged scaling of the images in the skin went away.
Unless ofcourse all these custom image-links are simply being added to an autonomous "thumbnail" area by the Great Kodi Automatron..
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2016-02-07, 13:26
(This post was last modified: 2016-02-07, 13:30 by ironic_monkey.)
do you really think it is checking all those images all the time? would you have designed it as that?
A. It checks when an image is actually accessed, if it is 24h since it was cached it will hit the url to make sure the cached copy is not outdated.
A. Usage tracking.
A. Uhrr. How do you normally identify files? By their URL of course.
A. Not from scripting. Only the big boys have access to the functionality.
A. Depends on the protocol. On the order of 100 bytes for http (depends on the number of entries in the http headers).
It depends on how the images are used. If they are used as thumbs in the skin, the thumb version is used. if they are used in large image controls, a larger version is used. there has been some changes here lately i haven't followed.
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2016-02-07, 18:17
(This post was last modified: 2016-02-07, 19:32 by Torben.)
From the design I have seen here I expect about anything.
IMO checking thousands of images each day is Infact pretty close to all the time.
I need some time to edit this reply....
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2016-02-08, 13:01
(This post was last modified: 2016-02-08, 13:02 by ironic_monkey.)
alternative is downloading those images every time. it's much much much cheaper to check for changes.
and it's not checking thousands of images each day, or well, that depends on your usage pattern. it's checking them on use, if it is > 24h since they were last checked. unused images are not checked.