[turbinez]

I am running a centralized xbmc db using mysql off my synology NAS to stream to many different computers and devices in my house. Everything works wonderfully. However thumbnails are being shown only on my atv2 and not any other xbmc clients. Is there a way to get thumbnails to be stored in the mysql db so that all xbmc clients can share them?

Fanart shows up fine on all the clients, so why not thumbnails?

[jmarshall]

master already handles this, thus Frodo will to.

[turbinez]

it does? Could you please show me how to get this working correctly then? I am using xbmc 11.0 eden on all my client machines, and only my atv2 in my living room shows thumbnails. How do I get it to show on all my other xbmc clients?

[jmarshall]

master != Eden.

There's some hacky ways to do it via pathsubstitution in Eden. Personally I don't recommend it, but it's your only option without updating to master, and master builds are not stable.

[Jester]

@jmarshall, can you elaborate on this ?

I saw your commit just now:
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/11787#comment:2

I'm assuming this means the path/file location is stored in the database, but the actual files are local ...
(quote from the ticket "All actual image files will be kept local to each machine for speed-purposes, ofcourse. ")

Which to me means, if you have 4 systems running xbmc, you will have 4 locations of the same thumbnail files, correct ?

I'm currently running the ATV2 with path subs mainly due to space restrictions
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...and_fanart

Can you explain the difference / downside of using (or not) path subs. compared to mysql ?

[jmarshall]

Correct. The image URLs are stored in the mysql database.

Each client then automatically caches those files locally as needed (i.e. as you actually view them).

The difference is that:
1. Everything loads faster, as the images are local.
2. You can optionally cache at a smaller size on lower powered machines or machines that don't use a high-res.
3. The images are automatically updated on all clients at once if you update a local folder.jpg (after 24 hours potentially).
4. You don't need to worry about changing paths ruining all the cached art - the art is cached based on the URL of the art, it has nothing to do with the location of the media.

If space is an issue, you can cache at a smaller size for a start - setting <imageres> to say 480 and <fanartres> to 720 in advancedsettings.xml - after all, you can't display them at a higher quality than that anyway. If you're running a nightly, just change those and delete Textures.db - everything will then automatically be re-cached as you browse them at the new size.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Jester]

Correct. The image URLs are stored in the mysql database.

Each client then automatically caches those files locally as needed (i.e. as you actually view them).

The difference is that:
1. Everything loads faster, as the images are local.
2. You can optionally cache at a smaller size on lower powered machines or machines that don't use a high-res.
3. The images are automatically updated on all clients at once if you update a local folder.jpg (after 24 hours potentially).
4. You don't need to worry about changing paths ruining all the cached art - the art is cached based on the URL of the art, it has nothing to do with the location of the media.

If space is an issue, you can cache at a smaller size for a start - setting <imageres> to say 480 and <fanartres> to 720 in advancedsettings.xml - after all, you can't display them at a higher quality than that anyway. If you're running a nightly, just change those and delete Textures.db - everything will then automatically be re-cached as you browse them at the new size.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Thanks Jonathan, that makes sense, one question though,

I'm assuming you mean <thumbsize> and <fanartheight> or are the above un-listed options ? (As they are not in the wiki)

i'm running nightly, so I'll have a play today as this sounds interesting.

[jmarshall]

No, I've changed them to <imageres> and <fanartres> They default to 720 and 1080 respectively at the moment.

I haven't as yet updated the wiki.

[turbinez]

Jester, could you please show me an example of your advancedsettings.xml file? I'd like to see how you set this up for path subsitution of your thumbnails. I have a synology NAS and read somewhere that you need to create a share folder on the nas and name it thumbnails and then mention that folder inside the advancedsettings.xml? I have tried this method with no success and would like some assistance to get this working. Thanks in advance.

[manxam]

jmarshall, thanks for explaining all of that and thanks jester for asking the question

Now just to further this, do we need to make changes to the database or does xbmc do this automatically? Basically, I'm currently sharing my thumbs over NFS. Can I just delete this pathsubstitution and let xbmc handle the rest or must I make a configuration change elsewhere?

Thanks for the excellent work guys. I can't believe how much work such a small handful of devs. do.. Keep up the good work!

[jmarshall]

In current master, delete the pathsubstitution for the thumbnails. You can also delete most of Thumbnails/Video (except bookmarks), Thumbnails/Music etc - everything is stored in the root.

[Jester]

In current master, delete the pathsubstitution for the thumbnails. You can also delete most of Thumbnails/Video (except bookmarks), Thumbnails/Music etc - everything is stored in the root.

For the people reading along, put this in your advancedsettings.xml

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <imageres>480</imageres>
  <fanartres>720</fanartres>
</advancedsettings>

Question to jmarshall:

Are the following assumptions correct ?
In the Thumbnails folder:

To keep:
folders 0 through f

To remove:
folders generated ?
in Music, everything except FanArt / FanArt / LastFM?
in Video, everything except Bookmarks / Fan Art ?

Thanks

[jmarshall]

Remove generated, all of Music (assuming you're running latest master). Everything in Video except Bookmarks.

[Jester]

Remove generated, all of Music (assuming you're running latest master). Everything in Video except Bookmarks.

Thanks, confirmed it works fine with the latest nightly