[Raytestrak]

After reading the changes of Kodi 16.1 here, I was excited to read the first new improvement:

• Never cache addons directories

It doesn't seem to be working (for me), or I'm doing it wrong

I have a lot of images I don't want cached, because I have four SD card based media centers, but I do have a big (too big for SD) file share with pictures I use for my screensavers. Previously only the skin folder wasn't cached, so I have symbolic links in my skin folder point to a network drive. This worked fine, but causes trouble when the skin needs updating, since it can't or won't delete the symlink.

After reading the changelist, I tried making the symlink in the addons folder directly, but this didn't work. I also tried creating a dummy directory within addons, but this also got cached. What are the criteria for *not* caching images? I also have about 2GB of conditional weather wallpapers, which are stored locally, and they also get cached if I place them anywhere other than the skin folder.

I never got why kodi caches *everything*. Imo their should be no need to cache locally stored images, performance wise it should not matter if the database points to the thumbnail cache folder, or to the file directly.

So the FR is really, don't cache local files, or at least really don't scan the addon folder.

[Ned Scott]

Totally different cache. They're talking about list/directory data and not images, I believe.

As for images, Kodi caches them because it does make a significant performance impact. For one, cached images are scalped down, and two, Kodi doesn't know if the originals are on a local drive, network drive, or scraper website. This is the same for some add-on content (depending on the add-on). It only sees a database location.

Even for a locally connected drive, and without rescaling, it can be a significant increase if that drive is not the one that contains the userdata folder. For example, a spun-down USB drive full of movies. It's very common for users to have media on a different drive than the OS or Kodi.

Have you tried moving your thumbnails folder itself, using path subs (wiki) or symbolic links?

[PatK]

At this moment I have 10 drives locally, (usually only half that are spinning) takes time to wake them up after an auto spin down.

[Raytestrak]

Totally different cache. They're talking about list/directory data and not images, I believe.

As for images, Kodi caches them because it does make a significant performance impact. For one, cached images are scalped down, and two, Kodi doesn't know if the originals are on a local drive, network drive, or scraper website. This is the same for some add-on content (depending on the add-on). It only sees a database location.

Even for a locally connected drive, and without rescaling, it can be a significant increase if that drive is not the one that contains the userdata folder. For example, a spun-down USB drive full of movies. It's very common for users to have media on a different drive than the OS or Kodi.

Have you tried moving your thumbnails folder itself, using path subs (wiki) or symbolic links?

Okay, thanks for the info. I don't want all my thumbs on remote storage, that would decrease performance for Kodi. I just want my screensaver (and conditional weather) to not be cached. That's a total of 50GB of images. So for that, I'm already using symbolic links and mount folders in my skin dir. It works fine and those files aren't cached, but whenever there's a skin update, I need to manually unmount my share and remove the symlinks.