Bit of a long one this I'm afraid....

I've been doing some investigation into artwork resizing and caching in
7.01, prompted by the fact that it takes 30 secs to resample a 500x500
image on my RadyNAS NV+ to each required size, which means teh
interface runs like a dog

Note: I have tried reducing the size of my standard artwork files to
see if it helps - it does reduce the resample time (to 15 secs), but
it's still not manageable


Having turned on logging in the server, I've seen the following:

1) Artwork is cached on a per song basis, rather than a per-album
basis

2) The initial scan creates and caches some artwork sizes (see below)
but only for the first song in the album

3) There are 7 different representations of artwork that I've seen:

50x50 (pad) - Created and cached for each album during initial scan.
Used for web interface album thumbnails

100x100 (pad) - Created and cached for each album during initial scan.
Used for web interface 'now playing' thumbnails

56x56 (original) - Created and cached for each album during initial
scan. Used in controller interface for album thumbnail

96x96 (pad) - Not created during initial scan. Used for 'now playing'
thumbnail in web interface. Gets created and cached when a song is
first played via controller, causing delay in now playing artwork to
appear

154x154 (original) - Not created during initial scan. Used for smaller
'now playing' thumbnail in controller. Gets created and cached when a
song is first played via controller, causing delay in now playing
artwork to appear

186x186 (original) - Not created during initial scan. Used for larger
'now playing' thumbnail in controller. Gets created and cached when a
song is first played via controller, causing delay in now playing
artwork to appear

240x240 (original) - Not created during initial scan. Used for 'show
artwork' screen in controller. Gets created and cached on first
request, causing delay in artwork to appear

25x25 - Not created during initial scan. Used for small non-artwork
thumbnails in the web interface. Gets created and cached on first
request, causing delay in the web interface to work first time


3) Most of the standard icons which sit alongside the cover art (e.g.
'no cover art' logo, favourites logo, genre logo etc.) come in a
standard jpg size (336x336) and have to be resampled on first use in
the interfaces (web and/or controller). This causes delays in first use
of either interface - particularly when using readyNas server



Some observations:

1) The initial scan doesn't do much to help the controller interface in
terms of resizing and caching artwork. Only the 56x56 image is used by
the controller

2) There is no sharing of cached cover art for different songs in the
same album. I understand that some people may have embedded artwork
which can vary by song, but if folder.jpg is used, the cached versions
should be re-used where possible

3) More could/should be done during the initial scan to help out those
of us who predominantly use the controller interface as opposed to the
web interface. Perhaps this could be made configurable so that I could
get all resizing and caching requirements done up front as opposed to
on first use.

4) If nothing can be done around point 2 (different songs, same album),
getting the initial scan to create artwork for all of the songs would be
useful - at least as an option

5) The standard logos used in the interfaces should be pre-prepared and
cached to meet requirements rather than on first use.


Overall, I think there a lots of things that can be done around the
management of artwork which would make the interfaces run much better.
It's particularly bad with ReadyNas, but would help across the board.
It may take some more programming and/or config options, but I think
it's worthwhile.

If all I had was my readynas nv+ to run the server, I would have given
up on the duet and returned it. At the moment, I'm using another
machine to run the server and it's useable - but has other issues.
Ideally I would migrate back to readynas as it's the only always-on
machine in the house.


-- 
cwinson
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View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48617

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