[sonox]

What about pre-caching of my private picture collection? Is this supported? In my case the previews are still created on-the-fly, which puts too much load on my rpi.

Am I doing something wrong? How can I pre-cache my pictures library too?

Picture folder thumbnails (the little composite folder images) are created by the GUI as you browse your picture library and can't currently be pre-loaded by JSON, however such thumbnails, once cached, will be retained by default when pruning (controlled by @prune.retain.previews).

The pictures themselves will not be preloaded into the cache, for several reasons: 1) I didn't have much success caching pictures via JSON; 2) I'm not sure it would be a good idea to have your entire picture library reproduced in your cache, and 3) the standard slideshow facility doesn't appear to use the cache as it doesn't store in the cache the pictures it shows, suggesting the cache is being by passed which is understandable and reasonable. However some addons do dump your pictures in the cache, which is probably not (IMHO) a good thing (think: cache bloat). When pruning the cache, any pictures found in the cache will be deleted by default unless you enable @prune.retain.pictures.

Thanks for the fast reply!

My focus is simply to increase the feel and fun of my media on the rpi. I believe there must be a way to improve this with picture libraries too. You mention three reasons:

I can't say much about the first one regarding JSON, because I have not studied your script I do not know how xbmc is creating those photo previews. However, I'm sure there is a way to make this work. Let me quote one of the statements you made some time ago:

This is much easier than laboriously browsing through your media library while the Pi slowly re-caches all the missing items!

This is exactly what I'm still forced to do at the moment with my pictures library to increase performance. As you say, it is laboriously, especially if pictures are organized in many different folders.

You say it wouldn't be good to reproduce the entire library. Well, why not? Is this not what your script is doing with artwork? Is this not working very well and increasing performance significantly? Why shouldn't this work with pictures? You are afraid of cache bloating? Well, maybe you are right. However, some picture libraries are not too big and pre-caching could help a lot.

The slideshows are working fine. I don't have performance issues there. My problem occurs when I have to search through my pictures library to find a particular one. That's when I need fast-displaying previews.

You say, there are addons out there which can pre-cache the picture library aswell? Can you please direct me?

Kind regards,
Roman