2016-02-29, 17:18
This one does not quite qualify as a bug, but since you have been looking at processing of backgrounds, let's talk about the behaviour of the backgrounds for the music library (this is not new, but rather is something I noticed when I started using the titan skin). I understand that the skin helper obtains and maintains the extra fanart for the music library and it does a great job of collecting it. However, when browsing the music library the display of this fanart is somewhat, er, 'clunky' -- for lack of a better word. I notice this in primarily two views: an album view (panel square) sorted by artist and in the artist view (big list) also sorted by artist. There are two scenarios in each case: scenario one is when the fanart has not yet been cached (skin just installed, or helper cache reset), and scenario two is where the fanart has been collected and cached (for example when you use the pre-cache option in the skin helper settings).
In scenario one, if you scroll rapidly through several artists worth of albums (or in the artist list) and then stop on a particular artist, the background will start off with the current 'Music' background (this is expected), after a moment (2-5 seconds for me) the background will change to the fanart for the artist in question (hurrah! and this is also expected as the fanart has to be found and downloaded), but what happens next is that the background will cycle through the intervening artists (as if the skin were processing a backlog of requests for fanart) and finally (time depending on the number of intervening artists) settle back again on the selected artist fanart. Needless to say, although the backlog processing is a good thing, displaying the fanart in succession as a background is not desirable (IMHO). One could always suggest that this problem is what the pre-cache option was designed to avoid (as well as to speed up normal processing), and to-date I have felt that this was acceptable.
In scenario two, after fanart has been pre-cached, starting with a particular artist where the background selected from the fanart has already been displayed, move to the next artist. The background will quickly switch, but not to the fanart for the new artist -- rather to the standard "Music" background. After a moment, the fanart for the selected artist will appear. In this case, a moment is less than one second (in most cases) but the flicker of the standard "Music" background is problematic.
I am guessing that there may be a logic flow that can be adjusted to prevent the second scenario. Perhaps a threading challenge is also involved (particularly for scenario one). In any case, the elegance of the skin could be enhanced by refining the approach. As this is not a 'bug', feel free to put this one in the 'when I can get around to it' queue.
Thanks, Lee.
In scenario one, if you scroll rapidly through several artists worth of albums (or in the artist list) and then stop on a particular artist, the background will start off with the current 'Music' background (this is expected), after a moment (2-5 seconds for me) the background will change to the fanart for the artist in question (hurrah! and this is also expected as the fanart has to be found and downloaded), but what happens next is that the background will cycle through the intervening artists (as if the skin were processing a backlog of requests for fanart) and finally (time depending on the number of intervening artists) settle back again on the selected artist fanart. Needless to say, although the backlog processing is a good thing, displaying the fanart in succession as a background is not desirable (IMHO). One could always suggest that this problem is what the pre-cache option was designed to avoid (as well as to speed up normal processing), and to-date I have felt that this was acceptable.
In scenario two, after fanart has been pre-cached, starting with a particular artist where the background selected from the fanart has already been displayed, move to the next artist. The background will quickly switch, but not to the fanart for the new artist -- rather to the standard "Music" background. After a moment, the fanart for the selected artist will appear. In this case, a moment is less than one second (in most cases) but the flicker of the standard "Music" background is problematic.
I am guessing that there may be a logic flow that can be adjusted to prevent the second scenario. Perhaps a threading challenge is also involved (particularly for scenario one). In any case, the elegance of the skin could be enhanced by refining the approach. As this is not a 'bug', feel free to put this one in the 'when I can get around to it' queue.
Thanks, Lee.
