Thumbnail cache for "Panel Tall" view
#1
I've been using the Panel view on Alaska Revisted for a while now but I keep getting frustrated by the way it doesn't seem to keep thumbnails cached for more than about 5 seconds or so.

If I'm at the top of the library in Panel view and press <up> to go to the bottom of the library it loads all the thumbnails for the movies, and if I then press <down> immediately to go back up to the top of the library the thumbnails remain and it doesn't have to re-load them. If I wait a few seconds before going back to the top of the library, however, XBMC seems to have forgotten the thumbnails for the movies at the top of the library and has to re-load them.

This isn't a huge issue I know as it doesn't take long to reload the thumbnails, it's just a bit annoying and it seems odd that thumbnails aren't cached, at least for more than a few seconds.

I've looked at the Viewtype_Panel_Tall.xml and tried changing the <preloaditems> value but it doesn't seem to have any effect. Does anyone know if there's a way to address this at all?

Any help would be appreciated. Cheers.
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#2
For me it is instant either way.
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#3
<preloaditems> is maxed at 2 anyway meaning the next 2 images/rows get preloaded. Having said that they only stay preloaded for a certain amount of time.

If it's slow loading them then it's probably more to do with your hardware.
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#4
Is it at all possible to adjust the length of time the thumbs stay preloaded for?

It could well be a hardware issue as they seem to load faster on my Mac Mini than they do on my XP machine. It just seems odd that XBMC can't keep the thumbs cached for the duration of the session, considering that if I'm browsing my 800-or-so movies in Poster view it has no problem keeping all the thumbs cached.

But as I say, it's not a huge issue and I'm sure I can learn to live with it.

Thanks again.
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#5
Have you tried using DDS?

Speeds things up for me.
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#6
I just tried using DDS but it seemed to caused more problems - when I browsed through movies it took a good few seconds to load a new row of posters. Could this be because I'm using a Mac? I tried the same on my XP system and it seemed to work fine. Anyway I've disabled DDS now and am refreshing the library in the hope things go back to normal.

One other issue I noticed before I tried DDS is that, while the poster thumbs work fine just after I've loaded the movies into the library, if I then change the poster XBMC takes a lot longer to load the thumbs when browsing the library. I can't figure out why the default thumbs would load quicker than custom ones - are they downloaded at a lower resolution or something?

Cheers.
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#7
I've looked a bit closer at the poster thumbs and it definitely seems that the 'default' posters are downloaded at a lower resolution than the 'custom' ones. If I re-download the default poster it then loads it in a higher resolution.

Anyone know how I can get all posters to download at the lower resolution?
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#8
When you first use DDS it'll take a while as it has to convert each one as you're browsing.

It doesn't matter how big they are as they'll get cached at a default size. More info -

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Adv...umbsize.3E
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#9
I think the problem seems to be that the thumbnails aren't getting cached at the default size - they appear to be getting cached at the full size of the original poster.

I changed the <thumbsize> to 56px in advancedsettings.xml and deleted the thumbnail cache, and when I then refreshed a movie it downloaded the default poster in 56px, but when i change the poster to a non-default one it downloads the full-size version and stores that in the cache.

So what I'm trying to figure out is how to get custom posters to cache in the size defined in <thumbsize>, rather than in the original size.

Hope that makes sense. Thanks again for your help.
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#10
OK so I've been trying again to get DDS to work. I got it to work perfectly on my PC but no matter what I try I can't get it to work on my Mac Mini without it being very jerky when browsing.

I've also tried it on another Mac which is more or less the same spec as the PC, and it has the same problem. I've tried both RC2 and the latest stable release but both have the same results.

I'm guessing it must be something to do with the Macs, maybe GPU settings somewhere? It's weird that it handles jpg thumbs so much better than it handles DDS.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Thumbnail cache for "Panel Tall" view0