[Krieg]

This is the pastebin when I browse in Files mode and go directly to the share and play a movie:

http://pastebin.com/mb85f193

This via the Library:

http://pastebin.com/m51f12110

[Krieg]

Any ideas?

[arnova]

How long does it take to access this directory you are referring to? I can't spot the problem yet from your log file. Could you also provide some timestamps (for the logs) when you perform certain actions (access directory, start movie, movie plays, etc.) ? I already understood from one of the devs that smb has major performance issues which need to be looked at but I'm not sure yet that this is the same issue....

[Krieg]

When browsing the directory directly it takes about 20 to 30 seconds to open the directory. Then when I choose one file to be played it takes again 20 to 30 seconds before starting buffering the actual file. I've straced the smbd in the other end (the NAS server) and what happens is that XBMC is requesting a bunch of data from the whole directory (from every single file in the directory).

Whe I play a file in Library mode, again XBMC loads data from the whole directory. It takes the same 20 to 30 seconds before starting buffering.

This does not make sense, why you need to load data from every single file in the directory when you already know which file you want to play?

You will notice these delays only when you have lots of files in the same directory.

You can reproduce the problem in your own system if you have an SMB share. Just play any file and check how data about other files in the same directory is collected.

[arnova]

I think you're "experiencing" 2 problems: the background (fanart) scanner using the same connection which slows down the loading. And next to that an issue I'm also encountering and that is that every file inside an SMB directory is being stat()'ed. For Xbox I wrote a patch to disable this (via advancedsettings) but maybe we should commit it to the other branches too. Please create a trac report about this issue as it certainly is something that needs to be looked at...

[arnova]

Another idea is to set the content on the directory again and disable "scan for fanart"... This might improve things (if you didn't already)....

[Krieg]

I think you're "experiencing" 2 problems: the background (fanart) scanner using the same connection which slows down the loading. And next to that an issue I'm also encountering and that is that every file inside an SMB directory is being stat()'ed. For Xbox I wrote a patch to disable this (via advancedsettings) but maybe we should commit it to the other branches too. Please create a trac report about this issue as it certainly is something that needs to be looked at...

How can I do that?

Another idea is to set the content on the directory again and disable "scan for fanart"... This might improve things (if you didn't already)....

I already tried and it does not help much.

[arnova]

How can I do that?

http://xbmc.org

[Krieg]

Ticket in trac:

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5351

[Krieg]

Any updates on this? I saw the priority of the error was changed to "normal".

I realized this problem has other implications, like when you want to watch pictures, same thing happens when you have many pictures in the directory. You need like half a minute to open a picture because always you move to a new picture data about all the pictures in the directory is collecteed. It is madness. Basically you can not watch your pictures (or you need to be really patiente and have lot of free time).

This error is pretty much a stopper for everyone with a decent collection.

[arnova]

You could try to disable smb_stat() with the new stat_files option in advancedsettings and see whether this improves things? Note that you need to compile an up2date version of XBMC to use this feature. Please report back if it fixed the problem.

[Krieg]

I can help testing if binaries are provided either for ATV or for Hardy.

[arnova]

Aren't there any new SVN versions in the PPA? Else I kindly ask you set up a compile environment for Ubuntu: it's really easy if you follow the steps described in our wiki.

[BLKMGK]

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=HOW-TO_compi...ource_code

[Krieg]

I tested the statfiles parameter under Linux (self compiled) and AppleTV Atlantis bf1 and it works in both, the movies are played immediately in a directory with over 300 movies. Excellent!

In case someone is interested, my advancedsettings.xml looks like this:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
        <skiploopfilter>8</skiploopfilter>
        <samba>
                <statfiles>false</statfiles>
        </samba>
</advancedsettings>

I think the default behavior should be not to stat the files, but that's just my opinion.

Thanks again for all the help.

PS. It would be nice a Linux bf version as well.